The bawdy Bard

A few years ago, five artists at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival were asked what the greatest writer in the English language would be doing if alive today. They surmised he might be a tattooed hip-hop singer or a filmmaker challenging the status quo. Above all, he would be popular -- he had to fill houses -- but not necessarily with the people who make the rules.

Near the end of the 16th century, London's mayor wanted all theaters torn down. That's because the audiences contained a sizable amount of street people who had nothing else to do.

The Puritans were especially scornful of theatrical presentations. For 20 years during the middle of the 17th century, they succeeded in shutting down all the theaters in London.

Shakespeare's comedies and tragedies were violent and bawdy entertainments for the unwashed masses. They also contain some of the most profoundly beautiful insights into life ever expressed.

As time passed, profanities of all kinds were excised to make Shakespeare more palatable to Victorian sensibilities. Thomas Bowdler's "The Family Shakespeare," published in 1818, attempted to sanitize the Bard so no one's daughter would be subjected to his indecencies.

Today, to say a work has been bowdlerized means it's been cleansed of anything anyone would consider offensive.

The production of "Romeo and Juliet," which just completed its run at Southeast Missouri State University, was based on the original text and occasionally included physical gestures that illustrated Shakespeare's ribaldry. Mercutio and friends had much in common with the Southeast fraternity brothers who have been kidnapping mascots and spray-painting obscene words in and on each other's houses this year.

Is such behavior honorable and worth modeling? No. Is it reality? Unfortunately yes.

Some high school administrators who planned to send students to school-sponsored matinees asked the Department of Theater and Dance to tone down the production. Director Dr. Kenn Stilson refused. Five districts kept their students at school.

The school officials who decided not to expose their students to content the administrators deemed objectionable certainly have that right -- and duty. Criticizing them for censorship is misplaced. If the affected students and their families wondered what they missed, they certainly had opportunities to see the play on their own.

But we would have preferred the administrators had based their decision on a first-hand viewing of the play.

As for Stilson's decision not to tone down some of the more flagrant gestures in at least one matinee performance where administrators could have been more comfortable to bring freshmen, that too is unfortunate.

This "Romeo and Juliet" purportedly wanted most of all to make Shakespeare more accessible to its audience. Shakespeare appreciated irony, too.