University Fellow Frets That Shakespeare’s Works Could be ‘Triggering’ Due to Lack of Sexual Consent
“Women in those plays basically never actually got to consent to sex or marriage, it just happened, despite the fact that often they’d repeatedly said no.”
Historical context. How does it work? And this is at a school in England, no less.
The College Fix reports:
University fellow: Shakespeare’s plays could be ‘triggering’ due to lack of sexual consent
A university researcher claims the failure to seek consent by various Shakespeare characters could be “triggering” for audiences and for the actresses “playing coerced female characters.”
As such, University of Roehampton Fellow Hailey Bachrach (right), founder of the Shakespeare and Consent Project, said actors who portray characters such as Henry V and Richard III “should be schooled in sexual ethics,” The Telegraph reports.
“If Shakespeare is being more regressive and less careful about consent than other writers, that is very interesting to know,” Bachrach said. “It can make Shakespeare problematic. No matter what Shakespeare intended, it is experienced by modern actors and modern audiences. It could potentially be triggering.”
Bachrach, a “dramaturg and writer” who looks at Shakespeare through a “feminist lens,” said actors should seek an interpretation of a Shakespeare’s play they’re “comfortable” with.
She also sees the consent issue as one related to labor: Women are “doubly disempowered” since their roles in the English playwright’s works are smaller and played by younger actresses.
Ms Bachrach believes that Shakespeare does not dwell on scenes where sexual or marital consent would usually be given or refused, unlike contemporaries such as Thomas Middleton and John Ford, who used rape and coercion as key plot points in works including Hengist, King of Kent and The Broken Heart.
Ms Bachrach said of Shakespeare’s history plays: “Women in those plays basically never actually got to consent to sex or marriage, it just happened, despite the fact that often they’d repeatedly said no.”
[Bachrach’s] 3 year project […] ultimately aims to develop a workshop which collaborates with performers, such as those at the Royal Shakespeare Company and The Globe, on how best to explicitly highlight rather than ignore moments where consent is not given.
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Comments
Oh, shut up…
Triggering. Right. No one cares that idiocy is triggering too.
They are giving me PTSD. Pretty Tired of Stupid Democrats
Yet another example of examining the great works of the past via the far left perspective of today.
I do not believe that this person understands Shakespeare in the slightest; it appears that (whichever pronoun seems appropriate) parrots others who also have no understanding of this great author.
Perhaps Disney will release a Disney Version of plays (and sonnets, and other works).
I’m sure Disney can make Shakespeare palatable for even the most critical of contemporary readers.
Readers? Why read? Just watch the movie.
Can you remember when colleges had a dept. of English Literature? Before these fine academics decided authors were really insignificant little worms, as it is only Critical Reading that can cast meaning upon these otherwise meaningless texts. And, therefore, it was academics who, having pushed mere authors off the stage, could take their rightful place as the Stars!
What’s Shakespeare anyway, as against the jaw-breaking, unreadable tripe of High Theory?
This from a society that officially considers being triggered by actual Muslim rape and grooming gangs as “hate speech” and “Islamophobia.”
The female roles at Shakespeare’s Globe theatre had to be played by apprentice actors; in other words, boys. The cultural and legal mores of the time did make the bride and her property the property of her husband. That almost all the female characters in Shakespeare’s comedies were in love with and beloved by their husbands was actually ground-breaking. The Tregedies were tragic for a reason.
I have an idea:
You should definitely not do Shakespeare, you should run like the wind away from him. He’s too old fashioned for you. You should do that new wacko leftist crap instead, and leave Shakespeare for the rest of us. And don’t even think about Shakespeare — All that King James Bible English! Yech! Don’t want to trigger you.