Was Shakespeare in the commercial world? Would he have done better if he had been left alone instead of having the pressure of pleasing others?
In Paul Cantor’s second lecture on Commerce and Culture, he goes in depth about some of the history behind Shakespeare and the culture during his time. Towards the beginning of the lecture, he quotes a lady who basically said something to the effect of “If Shakespeare had been commercialized in the way we commercialize entertainment he wouldn’t have been able to produce the plays we have today.” I paraphrase her at best.
Cantor goes on to say conversely, that Shakespeare was very much commercialized and in the market in his day. He was not just a writer sitting in his attic producing two plays a year. He was heavily involved in his plays getting produced and even was a shareholder in the theater.
He talks about how most of the playwrights of that day probably had a similar role with the public that screenplay writers have today. When people are advertising a movie, they often advertise it with the big actors, or maybe from a well-known producer or director, but rarely do you see a movie advertised because of who wrote it.
Shakspeare was the exception in his day. Once he started becoming more well known, people really did start coming to see plays simply because it was “Shakespeare’s new play.” They would use his name in the headline to get people interested. He was very much commercialized.
Cantor points out that while it’s impossible to know whether Shakspeare would have done better or worse in a less commercial or marketized system, we can see by his success that the market system at least didn’t hinder him. He is still known today as one of the most intelligent men in history and even more so the greatest playwright in history.
Something else that I found incredibly interesting was Cantor’s explanation that Shakespeare, in his day, was not this “high culture” idea that we see him as now. When someone is into Shakespeare now, I tend to see them as more of the “high culture, drink wine on our terrace while we watch the sunset” kind of people. But in Shakespeare in his day, was considered the “pop-culture.” The theater was put outside the city because it was seen more as a rebellious and frivolous endeavor. They thought of it then, how we might think of risque TV shows now.
Cantor talks about so much more in his lecture that I couldn’t even hope to go into in a single blog post, but it’s an incredible history of the culture around Shakespeare and I highly recommend listening to the whole lecture.