The welcome announcement that the Malta Amateur Drama Club – the MADC - will be reviving their long-standing tradition with a Shakespearean production of Midsummer Night’s Dream at the lush San Anton Gardens from July 15 to July 24, has rekindled my vivid imagery of the Bard on the 400th anniversary of his death, going back in time when he strutted our literary and political scenes of Maltese societies of the late 19th century and the early 20th century.
Undoubtedly British culture in Malta received a massive boost with the setting up of the MADC on October 10, 1910. Their Shakespearean productions at San Anton Gardens have helped to popularise the Bard since their inception in 1938 with a classic production of As You Like It, when the garden was turned into the Forest of Arden where “Sweet were the uses of adversity”.
Those turbulent years have to be viewed within a much wider context in that after centuries of Italian culture in these islands that gave us a European identity, in Mare Africanus it was not easy for the cultured classes to accept the dominance of the English language which our intelligentia believed would classify the island with darkest Africa.
However, ever since the English language became firmly established in these islands the Bard has been a major figure in the cultural, literary and political landscape of our country.
As an English national icon Shakespeare was used, or abused, by Italian politicians of the early 20th century
In my generation the Bard unwittingly found a place in the consciousness of the Maltese cultured class with colourful and philosophical quotations as if to prove what a contemporary poet Ben Jonson said of him: “He was not of an age; but for all times.”
And to confirm Shakespeare’s relevance today it will not be amiss to point out that in the aftermath of Brexit, Shakespeare’s Richard III, that draws a parallel with Britain’s political situation, is being staged at the famous Almeida Theatre in London to packed houses with the participation of Ralph Fieness in the major role, considered as the most demanding after Hamlet.
It received raving reviews stating: “There was not a dry eye in the theatre. In the larger picture this play is a potent spectacle of how bad bad leadership can be.”
I think it will do no harm if the present generation assesses and analyses the political situation in Malta in the last decades of the 19th century. The Maltese elite classes and the nobility, at that time more Italophile than Anglophile, were very much aware of Shakespeare’s dramatic plays mainly due to their familiarity with Italian opera.
In fact Verdi’s Othello, based on the Bard’s brutal drama, premiered in Italy in 1882 when the great Italian composer was 74 years old, was first performed in Malta only 10 years later during a special occasion in honour of the well-known impresario Maestro A. Malfiggiani.
In November 1929 Verdi’s last opera, Falstaff, based on Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor, was premiered in the magnificent Royal Opera House in Valletta at a glittering performance attended by Governor Du Cane.
In the political turbulent years of the early 20th century, Malta, a colony torn apart by bitter linguistic loyalties, was a veritable political battle field, rife with nationalistic feelings and a rousing propaganda campaign.
In the wake of the Sette Giugno riots in1919 these patriotic outbursts of pro-British sentiment found expression at the Manoel Theatre with the performance of King John (1199-1216) in the original version, a performance loaded with an explosive political message. It is believed that this was a reaction to Gerolamo Roveta’s Italian play Romanticismo performed at the Manoel in the same season.
Undoubtedly the legacy of Shakespeare is still alive and relevant in our islands. Some communities in our towns and villages have no problem in identifying themselves with such themes as the Montagues and the Capulets in Romeo and Juliet as they get entangled and estranged in bitter parochial feuds in God’s name or unbridled partisan politics.
An international search for contemporary relevance in Shakespeare’s plays reveals the staging in modern dress of King John in Bucharest, Romania during the reign of Ceaucescu as a political satire of the Communist regime and Titus Andromicus, one of the Bard’s most brutal plays, a perfect metaphor for South Africa in the apartheid era.
As an English national icon Shakespeare was used, or abused, by Italian politicians of the early 20th century. In 1902 Giovanni Pascoli, a prominent Italian poet in the fascist mould of Gabriele D’Annunzio, dubbed Malta as “the spiritual colony of Dante under the British flag”.
And in that same year when the status of Italian in Malta was somewhat enhanced, a member of the Italian senate suggested the erection of two monuments in Rome representing Dante and Shakespeare to commemorate this “auspicious event”.
In my youth Shakespeare had become our phrase book as we referred to him in various situations with apt quotations to express our emotions. “Thou this be madness; There is method in his madness,” came to us via Polinius in Hamlet, and in issuing warnings against too long dragging deliberations we quoted: “He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous.”
We quoted the Seven Ages of Man from As you like it with relish, little realising that I would reach the last scene of all at the venerable age of 86 “That ends this strange eventful history / Is second childishness and mere oblivion / sans teeth, sans eyes / sans taste sans everything.” Words of wisdom indeed.
Characters in his plays always expressed opinions that would set up an answering chime in our hearts as they do today. Who wouldn’t react to Portia’s impassioned plea for mercy in the Merchant of Venice? Or who wouldn’t shed a tear for Shylock the Jew in his poignant appeal: “Hath not a Jew hands, organs dimensions, senses, affections …..?” Yes, if you have tears to shed, prepare to shed them now.
May the forthcoming MADC play of Midsummer Night’s Dream at San Anton Gardens serves as a catalyst and a glittering spotlight on the beauty and richness of the English language and rekindle interest in Shakespeare’s undisputed position as one of the greatest dramatists of all times.
Lino Bugeja is a Commonwealth scholar – Edinburgh University.