'He who the sword of heaven will bear
Should be as holy as severe...'
December 12th, 1992, is a date seared onto my memory. It's the day Miss Johnson, my A-Level English teacher, made me rap Duke Vicentio's speech at the end of Act III of Measure for Measure before twenty classmates in an attempt to prove Shakespeare's relevance. Needless to say, the merciless seventeen-year-olds in my class never let me forget it. But to be fair to Miss Johnson, while the rap was her idea, she never actually told me to impersonate Chuck D.
Like many, I have a love-hate relationship with Shakespeare, although the hate has gradually given away entirely to love. Even the bad memories - the dismal school productions, the even worse university productions, the revising for exams - have melted away. Two weeks ago, I saw the Young Vic's superb production of Measure for Measure, staring Romala Garai and about fifty sex dolls, and found myself merrily mouthing along to the Duke's speech (there's a fair amount of hip-hop in the production too, so I guess I was before my time). Earlier in the month, I was knocked for six by Lindsay Turner's brilliant interpretation of Hamlet, which - oh, yes - also happened to feature Benedict Cumberbatch.
There's no getting over the fact Shakespeare can be a tough sell. Bad school experiences can put people off for life. However much a production is dressed up, you still have to work hard to follow a dialect which is now over 400 years old. And yet, Shakespeare has never been bettered. Romeo and Juliet is still the best love story, endlessly imitated. House of Cards is just Richard III re-heated. And we still use his language in everyday speech, whether we realise it or not. 'Mum's the word', 'too much of a good thing', 'eaten out of house and home', and 'a wild goose chase' are just some of the phrases he coined.
A master of story, a master of language - and a master of emotion. Whether Othello's jealousy, Hamlet's doubt, Lear's rage, Shakespeare captured human experience unlike any other writer. That's why even in translation he is loved around the world.
So next year, the BBC is joining many others in marking 400 years since his death. We're doing it because understanding Shakespeare is the key to understanding and enjoying the English language, British history, life itself. And let's not forget, he's in our DNA HERE AT THE BBC: last time I looked, there was still a vast statue of Prospero and Ariel above the doors of our London headquarters.
A year ago, when we formed the poetically named BBC Shakespeare Steering Group (chaired by our Director of Radio, Helen Boaden), we asked ourselves what it was the BBC could bring to Shakespeare celebrations in 2016 that few others could deliver. We quickly agreed an ambition to make Shakespeare irresistible and put him right in the mainstream, by using the full range of our services and working in partnership with arts organisations across the country.
We've already announced some of the highlights of our BBC Shakespeare Festival. There's Russell T Davies' star-studded re-imagining of A Midsummer Night's Dream on BBC One, The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses and a live birthday celebration with the Royal Shakespeare Company on BBC Two. All three projects, plus a superb range of plays and documentaries from BBC Radio, will harness the power of a vast array of British talent in the way only the BBC can.
And today, we're announcing another round of commissions, all of which have one thing in common: Birmingham. Shakespeare was the Midlands lad who conquered the world, so it always felt appropriate that teams in the Mailbox, just twenty-three miles as the crow flies from where Shakespeare was born, should be at the heart of our output - locally, nationally and globally.
Three projects in particular stand out:
The first is an unprecedented partnership between the BBC, the British Council and some of the nation's greatest arts institutions - from the Royal Opera House to the BFI to Hay Festival - to create a global Shakespeare festival online using world-class content from each organisation. Shakespeare Lives, the work of a team in BBC Birmingham, will launch on April 23rd and will remain live for six months.
Then there's Shakespeare On Tour - a special project from BBC English Regions. Working in partnership with the British Library and REED (Records of English Drama), using academic research spanning 40 years, Shakespeare on Tour will create a digital map showing the location of performances of his plays - from the 16th Century until more recent times. Through it, audiences will be able to discover town halls, pubs and private houses around the country where Shakespeare's plays were performed. And - cover your ears, Equity! - how much his players were paid. The stories that emerge from this data, including villages where Shakespeare himself performed, will be broadcast across BBC Local Radio. The project will be hosted by BBC Online from Birmingham.
Finally - it's not clever, it's not grown up, but I still find this next programme title funny after nine months - there's The Best Bottoms in the Land. Needless to say, this is not a competition to discover the most shapely posteriors in England but a unique collaboration between BBC English Regions and the Royal Shakespeare Company. It follows a traveling production of A Midsummer Night's Dream that recruits the parts of Bottom and the Rude Mechanicals from amateur actors in each town it visits. Nine half-hour programmes will be produced for BBC One, all overseen by BBC Birmingham.
Jonty Claypole is Director, BBC Arts
- Read more about our plans for marking the Shakespeare anniversary next year on the Media Centre website.
- Discover more arts related content via BBC Arts online.
