thoughts on shakespeare
the stratford festival
the national post

According to the Web site of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, which was scheduled to picket last night's gala opening of the Stratford Festival, the black-tie audience members climbing out of their limos "may not know much about Shakespeare but they are all experts at keeping us in poverty." This is because, "They are a Who's Who of the rich and vile (including members of the Ontario Government)." I don't know how much OCAP members know about Shakespeare but, by accident or design, they chose a remarkably pertinent play at which to stage their protest. The show kicking off this year's festival is Coriolanus, which actually begins with an anti-poverty riot. OCAP didn't let on whether they intended to demonstrate outside or disrupt the actual performance, but we were in for an evening of total theatre.

Coriolanus starts with starving citizens swarming the streets of ancient Rome. They're turned aside by a smooth-talking patrician, Menenius Agrippa, who persuades them that the senate has their best interests at heart. He may even believe it. There are many ways of interpreting the scene and the play: left, right and neutral. As usual, Shakespeare turns a merciless eye on all varieties of self- interest, while maintaining complete understanding of those who practise it. The citizens think their prime enemy is the warrior- hero Caius Martius, later glorified as Coriolanus: "Let us kill him and we'll have corn at our own price." They're wrong; Martius is a raging snob, but he's no politician, and certainly no economist. His fellow nobles pressure him into running for office, and have no hesitation in discarding him when he proves a liability. After he dies, a victim of just about everybody in the play including himself, political life goes on exactly as it did before.

At the risk of sounding like Menenius, I think OCAP's methods on this occasion were similarly confused. It isn't clear whom they were targeting. It could've been the MPPs in the audience, whom they hoped to embarrass into raising welfare rates by 40%. I hope they succeeded, but I doubt that they achieved much beyond making themselves feel better. It could have been the opening-night festivity, though this seems rather an inconspicuous symbol of conspicuous consumption. Or it might have been the Festival itself, which "speaks to a... tradition in which poor and homeless people are swept from sight to make way for an annual play pen for the rich."

I haven't myself noticed much poverty and homelessness on the streets of Stratford, Ont., but of course that could just be a tribute to the ruthlessness of the sweeping process. I did, though, telephone John Spencer, a retired Anglican pastor who has lived in Stratford and been involved with the festival for 20 years, and who corroborated my impression that Stratford is actually one of Ontario's more affluent communities. He also mentioned the theatre's record in helping members of the community who are in need; "The festival," he said to me, "is basically not just another Stratford factory." That's one of the ironies. OCAP are picketing an institution most of whose members, like most people working in the arts, would agree with them.

I sense a kind of reflexive philistinism here, a feeling that classical theatre is just a fancy way of grinding the faces of the poor. I haven't heard of any poverty protests at major hockey games, though seat-prices there are at least as prohibitive and the stars earn money beyond any theatre actor's dreams. It's true that the festival gets public money that might, in theory, go to poverty relief instead (hence, presumably, references to the festival's "Queen's Park sponsors"). But (a) that wouldn't happen even if all arts subsidies were removed tomorrow; and (b) the amounts involved are, certainly by European standards, pitifully small. Which helps explain why the prices are so high, and why the repertoire is so commercially weighted. But that's another story, and probably one that wouldn't interest OCAP very much.

What is at work, obviously, is a visceral anger that such inequalities should exist, that there should be poverty in a society that is demonstrably capable of producing great wealth. And they're right; it's wrong, indefensibly so. But that's a situation that indicts all of us above the poverty line, which would include some of the organizers of OCAP. After that, it's all finger-pointing, an arbitrary matter of where you draw the line: How much money is anyone allowed to have and how are they allowed to spend it? It's symbolism, and symbolism is important -- as Shakespeare knew and as everyone in Coriolanus knows, except the hero. But as a soldier, though not as a civilian, Coriolanus grasped one principle that OCAP on this occasion has forgotten: Choose your battlefield.