Exploring Jacobean Comedy Online

Posted on: 26 September 2014

In 2011 I was responsible for the first staff-directed production – of Thomas Middleton’s A Mad World, My Masters – in my department’s largest theatre, a 208-seat thrust stage lay-out.  Its opening performance was filmed, with the aid of a four-camera operation, under the direction of my colleague, Patrick Titley, a highly experienced television producer and director – a welcome early example of the cross-disciplinary collaborations the new department was created to foster. The success of that initial experiment meant I could confidently depend, for the website project, on a filming of the next production of professional quality; and beyond that the prospect of other collaborative possibilities with film, television and inter-active media colleagues beckoned.

Indispensable to the scheme was the appointment of a project administrator whose skills combined sophisticated knowledge about website design and development with research-level knowledge of early modern theatre. I was extremely fortunate to be able to secure for this post Dr Ollie Jones, who had just completed a PhD on touring theatre in the 1580s-1590s.  Ollie has outstanding administrative abilities and also possesses the knowhow to design and construct the website – www.dutchcourtesan.co.uk – himself.  He proved adept at fulfilling the key specifications set for it – in particular, that it should be easy to access and navigate, that it should be responsive to the needs of users with different kinds of interest in the subject it explored, and that it should encourage and facilitate cross-referencing between the different kinds of material it contained.

I was unsure how fellow scholars would respond to the invitation to contribute thought pieces about the play to a website which did not yet exist, but was delighted by the enthusiasm with which they greeted the idea. Six months after the website’s launch, we have, to date, posted fifteen explorations of subjects ranging from The Dutch Courtesan’s treatment of marriage, of religion, and of age and ageing, via an essay exploring the proposition that “If Shakespeare is the Beatles, Marston is the Kinks”, to a comparative study of Dutch and English city comedy c.1600. I have contributed three articles of my own, querying how the play has traditionally been discussed, and highlighting aspects of it which have, in my view, usually been misrepresented or disregarded. These articles grow from that exciting, unsettling, pre-rehearsal moment when familiar passages start to look strange and inexplicable, and when one lists puzzles and challenges which exploratory work with the actors must soon address.

The website also contains rehearsal footage and cast interviews.  The show enjoyed the services of a professional designer, Jan Bee Brown, and had a specially composed musical score by Odinn Hilmarsson, while its lighting was designed by Roberto del Pino.  All three explore their crucial contributions in separate filmed interviews.   In addition, Perry Mills, celebrated for his productions of this repertory with casts composed entirely of boys from King Edward’s School, Stratford-upon-Avon, visited our rehearsals and worked with some of the actors. The Dutch Courtesan website contains a conversation between Perry and me after these sessions, comparing our experiences of working on the play in contrasting production circumstances. Finally, before the second performance of our production, I took part in a public debate (also filmed for the website), about Jacobean plays on the modern stage, with Michael Billington, the Guardian theatre-critic, who is also a Professional Associate of my department. Some of our discussion compares the different approaches to A Mad World, My Masters adopted by the 2013 Royal Shakespeare Company production of the play, for which I wrote a programme article and conducted a workshop with the cast, and my 2011 York one. Our website contains the film of our staging of the Middleton, as well as the film of The Dutch Courtesan.