Audience to Audiences

Subject: Audiences of Audiences

The ever-present audience in Shakespeare in Love takes on a couple different obvious forms that both influence the plot line or serve as humorous devices throughout. I have always found that I subconsciously put myself in the audience’s position that is on stage. For instance, the other day I was reading a comic and found myself reacting to the scene as if I were there with the characters rather than realizing the dramatic irony the artist/writer intended. Again I did this in Shakespeare in Love, however a more humorous outcome was involved. In the instances of pseudo-homoerotic love between Will and Thomas Kent, I found myself thinking, “what if someone walked in on them?” Specifically during the boat scene in which Thomas is asking Will to describe his love of Viola and their faces are mere inches apart, I couldn’t help but laugh and wonder what the rower must be thinking. I think the director specifically picks up on this and almost alludes to the couple being caught later on by Webster. By the time the two kiss, I was almost in tears laughing at what the rower’s face might look like. What would he be thinking? Would he be disgusted due to the time period they were all living in? I was happy that this confusion was cleared up and the “audience participation” was brought in when the rower said that Viola “couldn’t have tricked a child” with her disguise. This audience to Will’s “natural” life is important in another such scene in which Webster spies Will touching Viola’s “buhbies” and then reports it. Though the consequences result in a much more dire situation than the first, the ever-present audience is still, well, present.

The second audience acknowledged in the film is portrayed more on film than the former and is spoken about constantly. The audience I speak of is Shakespeare’s audience, the audience that physically witnesses the first showing of Romeo and Juliet. Kirk had spoken in class about the honest portrayal of the audience in this film, so I expected much worse than what was shown. I visited the Globe Theatre a few years back and was told all the disgusting stories of bodily fluids released where the “poor” would stand, because people didn’t want to lose their places. I expected the raucous crowd to continue their taunts throughout the entire performance as was told to me during my tour, but it did not. However, I cannot blame the crowd for growing quiet once the stuttering Narrator began to speak so eloquently. I myself would become silent and amazed by such beauty and love even if I was a simple commoner as those before the stage were.

The most important audience member in this fictitious scene is of course the Queen who stopped the arrest of the numerous actors and, in the end, wrote the fate for the lovers. All bets were settled and her own critique of the play was spoken, though it is most improbable that the queen would ever sit amongst her subjects in such a lewd atmosphere even if to see arguably the most amazing love story and tragedy in history.

Lastly, the final audience that is only acknowledged once as I remember is the viewer of the actual film. There have been numerous films and plays using the “play within a play” scenario and Shakespeare in Love is no stranger to the constant Twilight Zone feeling it gives. Almost as if looking into a mirror reflecting a mirror, it seems the image is constantly doubling itself. This gives a strange atmosphere to the film, causing the audience to lean back sometimes and find a need to grasp their actual reality. When watching a play in a film, I almost get the feeling as if my reality is that of the audience portrayed. It was quite odd to suddenly realize that instead of being one of those women in their body crushing bodices, I was lounging in a t-shirt while staring at my roommate’s laptop. This was the time of computers and renaissance people, not ink and the birth of classics. I was the audience to the life of a fictionalized story while the same time an audience to my own life. I was caught judging myself through the judgment of an idol.


- Ani McCurnin