art darts

Ask a Silly Question at the British Museum

“What were people thinking about when they went to the GlobeTheatre to see the latest Shakespeare plays?” 

 This question posed by a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company gave NeilMacGregor, director of the British Museum, the idea for  “Shakespeare: Staging the World,” which just opened. It is widely agreed that MacGregor is an intelligent, erudite fellow but whatever made him think such a dopey question could serve as the armature for a major exhibition. A bookish show of diaries or essays by articulate, self-aware playgoers might have had a shot. Without them, the result was likely to be a lot of hot air.  And that is what this vaunted collaboration between the BM and the RSC turns out to be.  

    Actors have a well documented adoration for their own words but, usually, they aren’t altogether rewarding to listen in on. But terrific actors reciting Shakespeare now that is a very different thing.  In what the BM calls “a series of new digital interventions,”—video clips to you and me—provide... HarrietWalter speaks as Cleopatra, Sir Antony Sher as Shylock, Sir Ian McKellan as Prospero and Paterson Joseph as Brutus. I fear it sounds ungrateful but the result was irritating rather than inspiring. These performers and their declaiming kept popping up out of the dark as I crept around  trying to figure out what the 200 or so paintings and objects were going to tell me about Shakespeare. (I wasn’t expecting illumination about the preposterous conceit of reading theatre goers minds.) Very soon I felt all the theatrics were so much noise. What a waste.  

   As for the objects themselves…  Jacopo de’Barbari’s vast woodcut map of Venice (1.3 x 2.8) is always terrific to look at with its steeple top view of every house, convent, church and garden in the city. It was published in 1500; Shakespeare was born more than 60 years later. Okay, call this a quibble. How about this one: Shakespeare set plays in beautiful Venice but he never actually went there. So why this map? Even if he had been there what would this map tell us about his reaction to it? Most London playgoers would not have been to Venice, either. I enjoyed studying the map and I think most anyone who’s been lost in the city’s maze of alleys will, too. It is fun to see what has changed and how much has not. I always play the ridiculous came of trying to find the palace where I was lucky enough to live even though I know that I won’t find it. It is on the Fondamenta Nuove which was made from landfill after de’Barberi drew his map.

   Neil MacGregor is an historian with strong religious commitment. His best exhibitions reflect this. The First Emperor and Hadrian were terrific. So was the beautiful show about reliquaries or holy jewels as I think of them. (Here are links to my Economist review of both: FirstEmperor; Treasures of Heaven.)  Shah ‘Abbaswas a nightmare for me. The relatively few objects on view were treasures that were meant to introduce a neophyte like me to the Persian ruler’s importance. The carpets were fabulous but all I learned was that a rich, powerful, ambitious Muslim gave expensive gifts to important religious sites; a practice well known among similarly powerful Christians and Jews. I got a headache trying to find something to say in the Economist story I was committed to write. Thankfully I eventually had a brain wave; I ignored the exhibition and instead compared the portrait of Robert Shirley in it with another large portrait of the Englishman on view in the Van Dyke then at Tate Britain. (At BM below with his wife.)  If I learned almost nothing from the Shah ‘Abbas exhibition, I learned less from “Shakespeare: Staging the World.”