Of an Age But Not For All Time?: Staging Shakespeare’s Contemporaries at the Swan

Abstract

The Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon opened in 1986 with a production of The Two Noble Kinsmen. In his program note, Trevor Nunn explained that as far back as 1964 the Royal Shakespeare Company had “almost continuously responded to the imperative of presenting examples of the plays which might have influenced Shakespeare, or the plays which he might have influenced, or the plays which give us, both practitioners and audiences, greater insight into sixteenth and seventeenth-century England.” The Other Place (TOP), the company’s studio theater that opened in 1974, had proved that “neglected works can still provide tremendous entertainment and theatrical excitement.” However, the “comparatively lower box-office response” to such items made such choices impractical for the main house, the Royal Shakespeare Theatre (RST). Enter the Swan. From the outset this playing space designed by Michael Reardon, a thrust stage theater that can accommodate 430 playgoers in three tiered galleries, was a huge success. Reardon’s goal was “to re-create in modern terms” the structure and aesthetics of the original playhouses “in which the art of the actor takes precedence over that of that of the scene painter” (10).1 The intimacy of the space encouraged a greater emphasis on text and action as opposed to spectacle and allowed a greater subtlety in presentation, and many playgoers (me included) delighted in the contrast with the larger RST. The success of the Swan in turn was a significant factor in the design of the temporary replacement (the Courtyard) and the ultimate redesign of the RST. The scripts on display have included items by Shakespeare and contemporaries such as Marlowe, Jonson, Webster, Middleton, and Ford but also premieres of new plays (e.g., The Penelopiad in 2007), musicals,