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Chapter Three

BOND'S CULTURAL OTHERNESS: RE-WRITING SHAKESPEARE

Bond not only wrote plays about 'internal colonisation' of the marginalised class of

Britain by thteir upper-class brethren but also set out to re-create Shakespeare in three

major plays: Lear (1971), The Sea (1973) and Bingo (1973). Bond's Shakespeare re­

creations are neither a mere concession to contemporary fashion of intertextual re-writing

of Shakespeare nor are they dramatic venture with a mercenary motive behind it. He sets

out to re-create Shakespeare to explore the class politics which is often ignored in the

study of the relation between Shakespeare the artist and Shakespeare the man. By

questioning the iconic status of Shakespeare and his significant characters, Bond almost

challenges the cultural superiority enjoyed by Shakespeare in post-war Britain.

Incidentally, commercial considerations of the post-seventies British theatre led to the

frequent staging of Shakespeare's Festive re-creations. The middle class audience,

swayed by the festive plays, gradually took their social problems lightly. Jim McGuigan

in Cultural Analysis (2010) rightly notes that by the middle of the twentieth century"[ ... ]

masses were becoming amused consumers, indifferent to the great issues of their day and

preoccupied with their own everyday lives" (9).Though this view fails to appreciate

popular cultural subversion of hierarchical relations, it nonetheless emphasises the nexus

between culture and commerce with regards to Shakespeare re-creations in Britain of the

seventies. With a mission of re-structuring the society, Bond embarks on a voyage to re­

create Shakespeare but decides to swim against the tide. He not merely refuses to be a

part of the tmcritical admiration of Shakespeare propagated by the dominant class but

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also drifts away from the leftist tendency to use the Bard as a tool to counter right-wing

ideologies. In Bond's re-creations, Shakespeare-centered culture is not allowed to

dominate over other cultures but is posited in a harmonious relationship with other

cultures. This Bondian way of giving importance to the existence of other cultures or

alternative perspectives is an attempt at social re-construction through mutual

understanding and interaction, for Bond's re-creations, mostly considered as political

discourses s:tress the need for cultural exchange. Acknowledgment of cultural diversity

helps to redress social imbalance, leading to social integration. Bond's re-creations,

therefore, look ahead to construct a common civic culture based on freedom, liberty and

of human rights. Hence the "counter-culture" which Bond envisions through his plays is a

social space that would encourage interaction of different cultures without attempting to

prioritize one over the other or assimilate others in one.

I

Bond wrote at a time when the festive plays were mostly favoured by the middle

class audience. Apparently speaking, the festive comedies were re-created keeping an eye

on the box-office so that the escalating financial crisis could be met. Interestingly

enough, these festive comedies - for instance, Trevor Nunn's The Comedy of Errors

(1976) and As You Like It (1977) - were staged in the main auditorium of the Royal

Shakespeare Company, one of the pioneer institutions for Shakespeare re-creations in

post-fifties Britain, while experimental plays were staged before a smaller audience at

The Other Place1, Royal Shakespeare Company's studio theatre. Apart from the

commercial tilt of the theatre, the bifurcation might have been caused due to the Rightist

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swing in British politics. In 1971, as Britain moved politically from Left to the Right with

the Conservative victory in the general election, the demand for comic, escapist plays

increased. This craze reflected the attitude of the bourgeois society, their inert acceptance

of a middle··brow political thought which was going to be completely encapsulated by

Thatcher and Regan. Michael Scott in Shakespeare and the Modern Dramatists ( 1989),

rightly opines that in such a society a "tamed Shakespeare and its attendant processed

culture (sic) is the reflection of the dominant ideology [ ... ]" (130). The escapist plays

staged in the~ main auditorium of Royal Shakespeare Company were tailor-made for the

unquestioning middle class. Shakespeare, appropriated for class interest, was thus

exploited for subject formation. James H. Kavanagh in "Shakespeare in ideology" affirms

that in a class-divided society:

ideological practices seek to offer a 'lived relation to the real' in which a

conflicted social order, appropriate to particular class interests, has the

force of a necessary, unified, natural structure in which subjects find their

rightful place, and conflicts resolve, disappear, or are 'produced' as

ratifying a given set of social relations. (Alternative Shakespeare 150)

In the Britain of the seventies, Shakespeare thus operated as the culturally dominant

"ldeology"2 marketed by contemporary capitalist society. In this sense Shakespeare came

to represent the "culture industry"3 of Britain in the seventies. Shakespeare's festive

plays, like any consumer goods became a saleable product, for people flocked to the

theater house to consume (emphasis mine) the festive plays. Since the "culture industry"

does not want the consumer to think but merely to consume, the demand for the escapist

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plays reflected the transformation of individual from a reflective and discerning person

into an unthinking consumer, consuming uncritically the festive plays. Thus the middle­

class audience became, what Adorno in his essay "Culture Industry Reconsidered" (1991)

calls, an "appendage of the machinery" (99). In other words, the audience became

unthinking mass of people, accepting commodified sentiments and entertainments as

normal. Raymond Williams in The Long Revolution (1961) anticipated this inertia among

the spectators .. He opined that most of the British cultural institutions "are in the hands of

speculators, interested not in the health and growth of the society, but in the quick profits

that can be made by exploiting inexperience" (366).

However, in The Other Place, codified sentiments were challenged by the radical

plays of the left-wing dramatists. Their radical plays continued to disturb the

complacency of contemporary audience. In his book mentioned above Michael Scott

laments: "It ils a pity that if the RSC and the NT are to produce the radical theatre of

Bond, Wesker, Brenton and Griffiths that they can rarely do so in the main auditoria"

(130). However, apart from the Fringe, The Other Place continued to stage experimental

plays. Most of the plays were written to attack the conservatives who according to Harold

Wilson freeze initiative and petrify imagination. In his book The New Britain: Labour's

Plan (1964), Wilson urged the "[ ... ] the youth of Britain to storm the new frontiers of

knowledge, to bring back to Britain that surging adventurous self-confidence and sturdy

self-respect which the Tories have almost submerged by their apathy and cynicism" (9-

1 0). Inspired by him, in the seventies, the left-wing dramatists exploited Shakespeare as a

leftist tool to counter the right-wing ideologies. Actually these playwrights - Arnold

W esker, David Hare, David Edgar, Howard Brenton etc - mostly born in the 1940s, were

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weaned on the ideals of a post-war Labour government. So, writing in the Conservative

70s, they lashed out at the "social, sexual and cultural corruption beneath a Conservative

veneer of peace and prosperity" (Cohn 49). They often adopted Shakespeare, as Ruby

Cohn in her article "Shakespeare Left" (1988) says, as a "strategy to display the

inadequacy of England's genteel cultural heritage" (49). David Hare's Slag (1970), which

suitably adopts some of the situations from Love's Labour's Lost, is a prime example of

Shakespearean re-creations at the Fringe. In 1973, David Edgar collaborated with

Howard Brenton for A Fart for Europe using "King Lear to oppose Britain's entrance

into the European Economic Community" (Cohn 51). Brenton, whose Revenge (1969)

exposes the demoralisation of British society, draws a parallel between the Duke and the

Conservative Harold MacMillan in Measure for Measure (1972). Thus these plays help

to split the consciousness of the audience. In The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on

Mass Culture (2006) Adorno warns against any general assumption of cultural product.

He argues, instead, that the consciousness of the consumer is split between "the

prescribed fun" offered by culture industry and a "doubt about its blessings" (103). The

plays of the },eft-wing dramatists systematically worked to raise doubts in the minds of the

consumers.

Edward Bond, the eldest among all, however, should not be bracketed with these

dramatists as he refuses to use Shakespeare simply as a leftist tool for political

propaganda. True, Bond's leftist leanings4 helped him to identify how the capitalist

society enthralled the mind of the middle class audience by promoting Shakespeare's

festive plays. But as one who is genuinely contesting for a "counter-culture", Bond

rejects the radical approach to utilize the iconic status of the Bard for political power-

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games. Unlike the left-wing dramatists who waded so far in their political tug-of-war that

their artistic creations almost became propagandist in nature, Bond's Shakespeare re­

creations have other intention. Since Shakespeare's plays deal with important issues in

relation to people and their society, Bond rightly discerns in "The Rational Theatre" that

they "still work for those who live in this later time of revolution, the twentieth century"

(Plays: Two xi). Alarmed by the hegemonic trend of Shakespeare re-creators in a crassly

materialistic era - either to commodify or to politicise Shakespeare - Bond in his re­

creations sheds light on the needs of the dominant culture to share space with other

cultures. They resist the dominance of the main stream culture and its hegemonic role.

Bond, who would always vote for cultural pluralism, acknowledges in his plays the social

contradictions unleashed by the corruptive regime of dominant culture. Thus contact and

resultant clash of distinct cultures in Bond's re-creations pave the way for a social­

reconstruction where mutual understanding and respect signal a new social formation.

It should be pointed out that Bond became aware of Shakespeare's potentialities

at a very early age. Shakespeare's Macbeth5 struck Bond as a text which mirrored his

world, bridging the chasm between art and life. In a letter to John Hind, Bond notes that

by the time he came to read Macbeth he "knew all about witches flying in the night and

about murder" (Edward Bond Letters 4 8). As a child Bond was perceptive enough to

realise the similarities between a distant age and his torrid time. In this context he further

writes: "I was first tutored in Macbeth by German airmen trying to kill me in the blitz"

(Edward Bond Letters 4 8). Yet as he matured he felt that Jonson's words that

Shakespeare was not of an age but for all time or Jan Kott's claim in his book

Shakespeare Our Contemporary (1964) that Shakespeare is timeless, must be taken with

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a grain of s:alt. In post-war Britain technological proliferation has immensely altered the

nature of relationship between man and his society, making the societal problems

increasingly complex. As a socially conscious playwright Bond is not blind to the

disastrous effects of technology as borne out by Hiroshima holocaust. Cultural theorist

Hughie Mackay in the article "Technological reality: cultured ·technology and

technologized culture", enlisted in the book Theorizing Culture: An interdisciplinary

critique after Postmodernism (1995), notes that now "[ ... ] technology is seen as the

problem rather than the solution, to be avoided rather than embraced. The growth of

concern for environmental issues has contributed substantially to a loss of support for the

notion ofteehnology as the progressive human mastery over nature" (237). In "Author's

Preface" to Lear Bond expresses his disgust with what he calls "technological culture"

(Lviii). Neither the dominant nor the other can escape from its disastrous effect. In order

to save mankind from the reckless use of technology, the social situation needs must be

altered by the construction of a "counter-culture". Post-war Britain beaming with the

success of its technological achievement was a society totally unconscious of its

imminent destruction. The solutions suggested by Shakespeare's plays, as Bond says,

were hardly adequate for the complex problems of post-war Britain6. While Shakespeare

was intimateily mired in his class-divided society, Bond creates space for other cultures.

They resist their subversions and earn their inherent right to freedom and dignity.

Bond''s re-creations thus address the problems of the other cultures and promote

their cause. Overlooking the class-division in Shakespeare's society, Alfred Herbage, in

Shakespeare's Audience (1941 ), views Elizabethan theatre as "a democratic institution in

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an intensely undemocratic age" (11). Since a section of Shakespeare's audience

comprised the working-class, he argues, the theatre prices were designed for them. But as

John Drakakis in the "Introduction" to Alternative Shakespeare (1985) rightly points out

that Herbage could not synthesize between the commercial aspect of the theatre and the

intellectual nature of Shakespeare's plays. In his "Introduction" to Alternative

Shakespeare,. Drakakis contends that the intellectual nature of Shakespeare's plays "could

only be fully understood by an intelligentsia" (13) while the working-class was ignorant

of their intellectual subjugation. Judged on the basis of class character of the audience,

Elizabethan playhouses were no doubt democratic enough. But in reality they fail to

express the spirit of democracy. Eminent theatre critic, author and academic, Richard

Wilson, in a conversation with notable critics and dramatists at a conference celebrating

the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of Jan Kott's Shakespeare Our

Contemporary in the next year, 1986, rightly says that "the Warwickshire land-owner and

textile speculator" voiced the "world view of an enlightened, but none the less

determined, middleclass [ ... ] that has ruled England by keeping 'democracy

subservient"' (qtd. in Elsom 151). However, it should be pointed out that Shakespeare's

work, even though it remained quiet on the question of democracy, appealed to all

classes. This is because Shakespeare could balance well between the demands of the

mass and the class. Pramod K. Nayar aptly says that Shakespeare had the genius of a

"marketer" who was "able to sell his product to both the royalty and the masses" (126).

In fact, Shakespeare was practical enough not to quarrel with the authority and so never

strongly demanded the dissolution of the social hierarchy. The Russian critic, Alexander

Anikst, however relates this mass appeal of Shakespeare's plays to the absence of the

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idea of democracy and says that "Shakespeare could mock at the simple folk, at the pit,

and nobody would take offence, because the idea of democracy had not risen in society"

(qtd. in Elsom 160). Naturally therefore, while feeling sympathetic for the poor and the

naked, he lacked any agenda of promoting their cause in his plays. Undoubtedly,

Shakespeare had insights but he lacked the ideological orientation to complement his

vision.

Since Bond focuses on this ideological gap and the consequent flaws in

Shakespeare's treatment, in his Shakespeare re-creations other cultures are seen to rise

into prominence. This is done by highlighting the limitation of the power structure.

Detection of the conflicts and contradictions of the power structure is termed as

"faultlines" by Alan Sinfield in his book Faultlines (1992). It is through this faultlines

that the alternative identities, values and dissident perspectives are unearthed to create

space for other culture whose striving for inherent rights and dignity ends the domination

of the dominant culture. However, it should be noted that Shakespearean characters or

Shakespeare himself, as representative of the dominant culture in Bond, also undergoes a

process of se:lf-transformation. Thus contact of two or more distinct cultural sensibilities

finally promises a better society based on interaction of different cultures where neither

loses its cultural distinctiveness. This is how Bond's Shakespeare becomes a culturally

dynamic presence, creating a common civic culture for the present generation.

II

While re-writing Shakespeare's King Lear (1665) as Lear, Bond mainly objects to

the passivity of the King and questions the central message about passive resignation to a

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situation which is beyond redressal: "[ ... ] Men must endure I Their going hence even as

their coming hither. I Ripeness is all" (King Lear 363). Charles Marowitz rightly

identifies the fact that despite "an avowed admiration for his Ur-text, Bond attacks what

he takes to be Shakespeare's spirit of resignation and acceptance" (197). The formulaic

solution - what cannot be cured must be endured - might be applicable to the

Renaissance social set up. But in a technological era, resigned approach to human cruelty

is an escape from social responsibility. Post-war British theatre, Bond says m an

interview with K. H. Stoll, is directed to this end for it endorses the King as "a sort of

archetypal culture-figure who lays down certain standards for civilized perception - the

way civilized people ought to think and feel [ ... ] " ( 412). That thinking otherwise

becomes virtually impossible is reflected in the attitude of the audience who, Bond

thinks, undergo a "marvellous art:istic experience" (Gambit 24) while seeing the play and

feel a great cultural uplift. Objecting "to the worshipping of that play by the academic

theatre" (Gambit 24), Bond says that King Lear has been used in the "wrong way"

(Gambit 24). So for Bond an uncritical acceptance of the message about passive

resignation is a "totally dishonest experience" (Gambit 24). Similarly in The Sea, a play

structurally influenced by The Tempest (1611), Bond faults the escaping and excusing

mindset of the post-war audience. Bond selected The Tempest (1611) for re-creation

probably because it relies heavily on the power of magic to bring about imaginary

solution for social problems, thus excluding human involvement. Bond argues that in the

technological society, there can be no "supernatural answers to natural problems" (Plays:

Two x). If it had been so, then, Bond argues, Prospera would have been able to save

himself from his political enemies by the power of magic which he could not. The Sea,

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therefore, is a rejoinder to those who in the post-war era still mythicise social problems as

too mysterious for human beings to solve. What binds the two distinct plays together is

the resistance to the authoritative rule of King Lear and Mrs. Rafi by the marginalised of

the plays. The breakdown of the authoritative rule in the former and its negation in the

latter adumbrate a new social order, expectantly free from the vices ofthe one it replaces.

The plays initially highlight the arbitrary rule of the dominant which results in the

creation of a monocultural social situation literally stultifying to the other. Staged at the

Royal Court on 29 September, 1971, Lear begins with the ruthless exploitation of the

Monarch. When we first encounter Lear, we also see a dead body of a worker and

instantly realise the anarchic state of affairs within his empire. Distinct from

Shakespeare's Lear who was bent on fragmenting his kingdom, Bond's Lear is initially

seen obsessed with cementing it by constructing a walL In this sense, the wall functions

as a trope of an existence protected from Lear's enemies, Dukes of Cornwall and North:

"My people will live behind this wall when I'm dead. You may be governed by fools but

you'll always live in peace" (Lear 3).This protection is in fact the justification of

domination and one unmistakably understands the autocratic power structure of Lear's

kingdom. The disturbing social state is further stressed as Lear, mercilessly shoots one of

his workers in order to speed up the construction of the wall. Lear, therefore,

unflinchingly uses the "Repressive State Apparatuses" and controls by application of

force. His arbitrary use of power has caused "Wall death" (Lear 25) but he seems not to

care. One doubts his so called role of a Messiah as one hears the Gravedigger's Boy­

Bond's version of Shakespeare's Fool - speaking of the inhuman misery of the wall

workers. Though the Boy has been fortunate enough to have escaped the torture, he

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grieves for the hapless state of the workers: "They'd worked with their hands all their

lives but when they started on the wall their hands bled for a week" (Lear 25). Their

lives, as it were, like "Living in a grave" (Lear 25).

Like the King, Mrs. Rafi in The Sea - staged at the Royal Court theatre in May,

1973 - exploits and dominates her entire community. Bond here jostles with the time

frames- re--situating Shakespeare's The Tempest in Edwardian England- but keeps the

theme of colonisation intact in order to focus on the exploitation of the other. With her

English snobbery, Mrs. Rafi, for instance, refuses to even check whether Indian Dhurries,

Turkish carpets and Japanese nainsooks are worth buying, demanding instead

Birmingham's Utrecht velvet. Her colonial mindset is evident from her allergy to non

British items: "I'm not interested in this new-fangled craze to support the trading efforts

ofthe Empire by getting the east coast into native dress" (Plays: Two 107-8). But in order

to highligh1t the conflicts and contradiction within the power structure Bond

problematises the concept of colonisation by showing the 'internal colonisation' of the

poor and hellpless British subjects by their own economically privileged brethren. Like

Shakespeare''s Prospero, Mrs. Rafi presides over a class-divided society. The poor,

marginalised inhabitants, represented by the draper Hatch and his friends, are bullied and

tortured by her. Hatch is the Caliban-figure whose gradual "mental deformity" (Cohn 58)

counters the "physical deformity of Shakespeare's figure" (Cohn 58). Mrs. Rafi's

capricious shopping habits of ordering costly items and not buying them testifies to her

economic exploitation. Hatch's life remains dependent on her whims and fancies. While

taking an order Hatch thus ruminates whether she will change her mind or not: "Last time

she ordered cushions she wouldn't even look at them. Now I have to send cash with

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every order, and they'll only take back against bona fide complaints" (Plays: Two 113).

Tony Coult in The Plays of Edward Bond: A Study (1977) aptly says: "The main class

conflict in The Sea is between Mrs. Rafi and Hatch, and what brings it to a head is the

corrosive influence of commerce on human relations" ( 44). Hatch pathetically

communicates to Mrs. Rafi the precarious position of a small businessman like him who

is "on the black list" and has to "pay for all this before they sent it" (Plays: Two 136) but

in vain. Apart from economic exploitation, she also physically assaults Thompson, one of

the inhabitants of the island, who is appointed as the gardener in her house. Titanically

powerful, she not merely takes "hold of Thompson's ear" (Plays: Two 138), but also

holds the town doctor, vicar and constable in thrall. Any form of disregard is met with

threats. For instance, she is influential enough to see that no one in the town ever uses

"any shop of' (Plays: Two 139; original emphasis) Hatch. When Hatch's friend,

Hollarcut, disobeys her, he is strictly told to work in her garden rigorously or she will

"take up this matter with the local magistrates" (Plays: Two 160).True she is not the

Queen as Lear is a King; but she seems to believe in the concept of divine rights of the

King. Hence she justifies her domination: "People expect my class to shout at them.

Bully them. They're disappointed if you don't" (Plays: Two 160). Like Lear who

suffocates his subjects in the garb of protecting them, Mrs. Rafi feels that she is a

lighthouse who provides security to the community when in reality she chokes them to

death . The dismal social states in both the plays are created by their oppressors whose

hegemonic rule creates a flawed power structure.

Since Bond's Shakespearean re-creations plead for cultural pluralism, the

dominant culture in the play is not allowed to exercise authority for long. In other words,

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the limitation of the power structure is dramatised along with the depiction of the

autocratic rule. The rebellion of the local farmers who are against the construction of the

wall in Lear bears out the point. Lear's officer reports to him that they are unable to stop

them: "We can't catch them, they scuttle back home so fast" (Lear 3). Though this is not

an open revolt but through this rebellion of the oppressed other, the potential of the

marginal to strike back is hinted. The limitation of the power-structure gets manifested in

the failure of Lear's officers to stop the local farmers from digging up the wall. Hence

contradictions and conflicts create necessary gap for the uprising of the marginal in

Lear's kingdom. Writing in The Times, Irving Wardle, theatre critic, thus points out

Bond's originality, negating any "anxiety of influence": "The play [ ... ] starts with civil

war, and whatever Shakespearian plot material it contains is shortly disposed of' ( qtd. in

Roberts 23; original emphasis). Like The Tempest, The Sea also begins with a storm but

unlike that in The Tempest the storm in The Sea is not raised by the Prospero figure. It

rather is a real storm which drowns Colin Bentham, engaged to Mrs. Raft's niece, Rose.

Though Willy Carson, Colin's friend, tries to save him from drowning, he fails to do so

since Hatch refuses to help Willy. Evans, the drunkard was not in his sense to provide

any assistance. Expressing his helplessness Willy later tells to Rose: "One was drunk and

the other stood and shouted at me" (Plays: Two 131). Evidently one understands that

Hatch out of his grudge against Mrs. Rafi refuses to help her class. Both the farmer and

Hatch therefore resist the rule.

The vulnerability of the hegemonic centre is further evident when it is internally

opposed by ilts own members. This has been dramatised by Lear's evil daughters -

Bodice and Fontanelle - ousting their father, taking up the helm of the kingdom and

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putting the father on trial. This hunger for power, ironically enough, is what they have

imbibed from their father. They are doubly cruel as manifest in their vindictive torture of

their father's lieutenant, Warrington. They order and witness the inhuman torture of

Warrington: his tongue is tom, teeth uprooted, eyes blinded and his ear poked with a

needle. Bodice and Fontanelle sadistically rejoice in the torture and this testifies to the

barbaric nature of their cruelty. Their soldiers are mimic men, throbbing with ferocity. As

the soldiers ransack the Gravedigger Boy's house in search of the King, they kill the Boy

and rape his pregnant wife, Cordelia. The murder of the Boy, living in an idyllic

landscape, suggests that nature has no palliative effect on this cruelty. Socially and

politically privileged, Lear's daughters are monsters who in the name of maintaining law

and order put their father on trial, hire spies to keep a watch on their husbands and pay no

heed to the sacrifice of young lives at the war. More fissure within this new power

structure is noticed when they conspire against each other, thus inadvertently creating

space, like their father, for the marginal to strike back. There are cracks within the power

structure also in The Sea. Though Mrs. Rafi is not ousted by any of her genteel ladies as

happens in the case of the King, her rule is certainly resented by them. Her offensive

behaviour towards her friends antagonises them. Mrs. Jessie Tilehouse is openly ignored:

"Jessie, please don't try to hustle me into a purchase" (Plays: Two 109). She is also told

to walk back home as Mrs. Rafi's pony cannot take extra weight. During the rehearsals of

Orpheus & Eurydice Mrs. Rafi does not give any role to Jessie and reigns over her co­

artists. She tells Mafanwy to play a dog. When Mafanwy expresses her desire to be one

of the "floral maids-of-honour" (Plays: Two 124), she is reminded of favours done to

her: "You collect for your Save the Animals Fund every year and your never go away till

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we've given twice as much as we can afford. Now you have the chance to earn some

more gratitude from your little friends" (Plays: Two 124). Mrs. Rafi is challenged by her

friend Mrs. Tilehouse when the latter denies her of the highest honour of spilling the

ashes out of the urn at the funeral of Colin. Her fussy search for smelling salts during

Mrs. Rafi 's dramatic declamation is her attempt to upset her dominating friend.

Admittedly as Mrs. Rafi is alienated from the members of her own class, those on the

periphery of the power structure can challenge her authority without resistance.

Intere:stingly enough, both Lear and Mrs. Rafi are unconscious of the damage

consequent upon their tyrannous rule. In his hiding Lear refuses to act responsibly, for he

rhapsodised over the frre and blood around him. Such social unconsciousness is

dangerous and destructive to social health. No wonder Bond says that he feigns madness:

"I think that iln his first madness, there is an element of almost pretence [ ... ] he is saying I

have been a great king, now I'm going to be a great madman[ ... ] so that in a way he acts

his madness [ ... ]" (qtd. in Hay and Roberts 123). Lear's pretence however, is his

unconsciousness about his despotism and the ill effect of his regimentary rule. Naturally

therefore, when he is put on trial, he sees not himself in the mirror, given by Bodice

during the trial, but animal in a cage. Due to his autocracy, Lear has, in fact, deteriorated

to the level of beast. Richard Scharine in The Plays of Edward Bond (1976) rightly says

that "The animal is Lear himself and [ ... ] all the members of the society that he created.

Society is the cage and the restrictions of social institutions are the bars" (204). Ironically

enough, Lear does not realise that he is the architect of the prison and feels "My

daughters have been murdered and these monsters have taken their. place!" (Lear 35).

Unaware of her corruptive effect, Mrs. Rafi, like Lear, foolishly accuses Hatch of

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murdering Colin: "You let an innocent man drown" (Plays: Two 136). Not only this but

she also refuses to buy the velvet which she ordered out of vengeance. This attitude

points to her inability to realise the beast within her. Thus the blind autocracy of the

dominant comes to the fore.

These conflicts and contradictions within the power structure are highlighted to

create space for the other or alternative identities to emerge. However, in between

autocracy and alternative identity, Bond creates space for pseudo alternative identity

represented by characters who challenge the misrule with a promise for good governance

but consistent with their class character they in the long run proved to be the other side of

the coin. Bodice-Fontanelle regime stands threatened when the soldiers in Lear refuse to

mimic their rulers anymore and join the new emerging force headed by Cordelia and the

Carpenter. ·while Fontanelle is murdered by Bodice's men, Bodice is shot by Cordelia

and the Carpenter. Tagged as the agitators and malcontents, who are gearing up for an

"upcoming civil war" (Lear 36), Cordelia and Carpenter now take the charge of running

the State. Initially they seem to represent hope of a new era. Herself wronged, Cordelia

gears up to end the autocratic rule. But she becomes hardened and harsh through the

exercise of power. Her method of governance comes under severe criticism when she

agrees to take Soldier I under her fold on condition that he must hate the existing

monarch like herself and the Carpenter: "To fight like us you must hate, we can't trust a

man unless he hates. Otherwise he has no use" (Lear 44). Moreover, as Bodice confides

to Carpenter, Cordelia has accepted Bodice's offer to run a coalition government. One

understands that this would mean a continuation of the evil regime all over again. The

despotism of Cordelia, her insistence on continuing the construction of the wall, is a

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repetition of Lear's military rule. The poor peasants are dispossessed of their land. No

wonder the Farmer's Wife, lamenting Cordelia's repressive rule, says "An' now they're

buildin' the wall again, count a the govermin's changed" (Lear 65). Cordelia becomes

equally autocratic and is bent on routing her opposition. When Lear becomes the "guru",

ideologically indoctrinating the innocent rural village folk, Cordelia decides to put him

on trial. : "I knew you wouldn't co-operate, but I wanted to come and tell you this before

we put you on trial" (Lear 85). Cordelier's revolt against the despotism of Bodice and

Fontanelle, therefore, is futile as she does nothing to improve the health of the society.

Rather she repeats the victimisation of the people. She thus emerges as a pseudo-marginal

who inches forward to match up with the cruelty of the existing centre.

In The Sea Hatch is Cordelia's counterpart who secretly plans to overthrow the

oppressive mle. Aware of the fact that this struggle might lead to loss of some innocent

men, Hatch declares that the battle must go on. In his anger, Hatch explicitly strikes back

at Mrs. Rafi when she refuses to buy the velvet which she ordered: "liars, swindlers,

frauds, bankrupts" (Plays: Two 142). During the funereal of Colin, he even physically

attacks Mrs. Rafi and upsets the whole ceremony. But Hatch also misguides his

associates. Far from having a definite strategy to counter their hapless state, he vainly

calculates to overpower an unidentified force which, he believes, is bent on destroying

them: "They come from space. Beyond our world. Their world's threatened by disaster

[ .... ] They'll take our jobs and our homes. Everything. We'll be slaves working all our

lives to make goods for sale on other planets" (Plays: Two 114). This speech neatly

divides "us" from "they" and points to Hatch's blind acceptance of class-division. As one

who is supremely unconscious of the root of social malady, Hatch constructs a false

99

notion about extra-terrestrial beings waiting to wipe out their existence. This fear of the

aliens is a constructed fear of something that does not exist and for this misjudgement -

his failure to trace the malady of the social causes - he fails to address the problem

correctly. As Cordelia's revolution does not reform rather fragment the society, Hatch's

secret plan fails to set right the wrong that prevails in society. Thus it is not the substitute

that Bond re:commends as both Cordelia and Hatch are caught up in the rhetoric of

violence as much as their rulers and fail to create a healthy atmosphere. True change can

be brought upon only by overhauling the society not by changing the pilot at the helm.

Lear rightly says: "Then nothing's changed! A revolution must at least reform!" (Lear

84).

Social overhauling, as Bond envisages it, can be achieved through cultural

exchange which gives shape to alternative identity. However, it is the "technological

culture" which obstructs rather than facilitates the social overhauling that can bring about

meaningful change in the power structure. Interestingly both the dominant and the

pseudo-marginal suffer due to the perpetration of the "technological culture". In Lear, the

dominant King is extremely casual about the use of weapons. His controlling instruments

are guns, pistols, rifles etc. Lear's merciless shootings point to his inhuman fixation with

the use of technology to control. The «technological culture>> which he ushers has far

reaching effect for it spoils his family and corrupts his daughters. True Lear's daughters

are equally venomous as Shakespeare's Goneril and Regan. But what is interestingly

shown is that: they inhabit a society that thrives on repression and violence. Bond holds

that as long the society continues to remain violent and aggressive, it will produce

children of violence. Their names, carefully chosen by Bond, point to their innocent

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origin. In a letter to Fay McNamara Bond explains the significance of naming the

daughters: "Fontanelle is the name for the gap in the skulls of little babies which isn't

(sic) quite closed when they're born[ .... ] The gap closes as the child grows[ ... ] Bodice is

the item of girl's clothing that covers the breast- again an image of care and nurture"

(Edward Bond Letters 4 178). Thus their developments into vicious creatures are a result

of the corruptive effect of the 1echnological culturtf. Bond in the same letter rightly points

out that "it's our culture's misunderstanding of our situation, its misuse of power and the

environment [ ... ] that corrupts human behaviour" (Edward Bond Letters 4 179). So not

only Bodice and Fontanelle ,but Cordelia too could not escape the corruption. Unlike

Shakespeare's Cordelia who was goodness personified in a fiercely autocratic condition,

and hence unreal, Bond's Cordelia is arguably the most real character who also could not

escape the damaging influence of a technologically crazy society. Though Cordelia in

Bond is not Lear's daughter; it is her social corruption that makes her a close cousin of

the brutish royal sisters.

The over-arching effect of technological era eats into every nook and comer of

the society. Lear is unable to control both his daughters and later on Cordelia. From the

beginning there is no understanding between the father and the daughters. In fact the

father's unconsciousness of being an evil-monger accelerates the daughters'

deterioration. Bodice and Fontanelle attempt to bridge the gap between their father and

their suitors by marrying them: "We've brought them into your family and you can pull

this absurd wall down" (Lear 5). But the power blind Lear arbitrarily disowns them: "I

have no daughters" (Lear 6) and accuses them of betraying their father. This clearly

points out the communication gap between the father and his daughters. The conflict

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within the family, in this sense, is metaphorised in the image of the wall - Lear has built a

wall between himself and his daughters. Disobedience enrages the father who

unhesitatingly equates his daughters with his enemies: "I built my wall against you as

well as my other enemies" (Lear 7; original emphasis). One understands why Bond tells

Glenn Loney that there is "no real understanding between Lear and his daughters" ( 41 ).

So their betrayal- by marrying their father's enemies- is prompted by their father's rigid

stance. In "Drama and the Dialectics of Violence", Bond says to A. Arnold that he

wanted Lear to recognise his role in the corruption of his daughters: "[ ... ] they were his

daughters - they had been formed by his activity, they were children of his state, and he

was totally responsible for them" (8; original emphasis). The corrupted sisters are

programmed to be unsympathetic. No wonder Bodice insensitively reacts on hearing how

one of their lieutenants was killed by a shell. When Cornwall says that Crag died when

"the first shell fell between them and blew their heads off' (Lear 12), Bodice says to

herself "One can't allow for everything" (Lear 12). Naturally, therefore, she loads her

men with rifles and a saga of massacre follows. Improper use of technology thus

threatens the extinction of human lives. In this techno-crazy state, men rot and bullets are

valued above human lives. The lack of mutual understanding and respect between the

dominant and the other affects social integration. The corruptive impact of "technological

culture" may also be traced to The Sea. Hatch fails to analyse the social dialectics

rationally but dreams of an alien invasion because his imagination is stuffed with ideas

like extra-terrestrial beings which are a gift of "technological culture". For instance,

without realizing his role in Colin's death Hatch justifies it by saying that he was

murdered to resist from marrying Rose since his marriage would increase the "numbers

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of gentry" (Plays: Two 133) which "they don't want", for fewer they are 'the easier we're

overcome" (Plays: Two 133). Hatch could not identify the problem since he lives in a

dreamy world, believing in a fantasy of invasion from the outer world. His madness is

symbolic of his detachment from reality. Like Hatch, Mrs. Raft is no less detached from

reality, for somewhat like Nero she is "playing lutes to the sound of gunfire" (Plays: Two

130). Again, both Hatch and Mrs. Raft are averse to the sea. While Hatch resents his duty

as the night coastal guard despite his economically impoverished condition, Mrs. Raft

draws the curtains of her drawing room to avoid looking at the sea and remains immersed

in her theatricals. Like ignorant armies clashing in the dark, Hatch instigates his friend

against the haughty Mrs. Raft, and the latter leaves no stone untumed to disrupt the lives

of the wretched. This dismal social picture arises due to the lack of cultural exchange

which is a pre-requisite for social overhauling. Evans, however, best expresses the

dreading social state when he says: "They'll transplant the essential things into a better

container. An unbreakable glass bottle on steel stilts. Men will look at each other's

viscera as they pass in the street" (Plays: Two 168). Fierce commercial competition in a

techno-crazed society creates economic injustice and results in widening the social

division. Since human beings are not technocratic by nature, desire to adapt to such a

society leads to emotional imbalance. In other words, madness and destruction are an

outcome of e:conomic and social injustices. Economic and social justices are not only

essential for creating conditions for happiness, but also of human sanity. Lack of socio­

economic justice results in Hatch's madness. Mrs. Raft, deserted by family and friends, is

condemned to be alone. Like them Evans also cannot construct a "counter-culture", for

he is a "wreck rotting on the beach" (Plays: Two 168). Thus there is no mutual

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understanding, knowledge and respect between cultures and it is this absence that is

mainly responsible for social disintegration outlined in the play.

But the endings of both the plays open a new chapter of social re-integration.

While the n~presentative of the dominant cultures realise the futility of domination in

Lear, the other in The Sea leave the fragmented society with the desire of sinking hopeful

roots into difficult soil. The realisation of the damage he has caused to his family and

society transforms Lear. He becomes aware that the obsession with the wall is an

expression of his desire to maintain social division. It should be pointed out that this

realisation comes when the King becomes physically blind. Before that he was detached

from reality. For instance when he was in prison, the ghost of the Gravedigger's Boy tries

to soothe the troubled heart of Lear by conjuring up the blissfully uncorrupted childhood

of his daughters. But this is just a vision of the past and not reality. Bond says to Stoll:

"And if you try and live in the past, then that becomes a very destructive thing. And the

ghost does live in the past, and he does belong to a stage of society that I think one can't

go back to. I don't believe in returning to the past" (420). What Bond means is that if one

wants to address the problems of one's own time, one must keep the present in focus.

Bond is also sceptical about miraculous solutions of social problems, for in a letter to Fay

McNamara he writes that the ghost avoids "the tensions created by an unjust society and

the human need for justice" (Edward Bond Letters 4 179). Unlike Shakespeare's King

who longed to see what stuff his daughters were made of to gauge their intensity of

cruelty, Bond's King is shown the autopsy of Fontanelle to realise that the real cause of

corruption lies elsewhere. During the autopsy Lear is aghast to see the inner beauty of his

daughter: "The things are so beautiful. I am astonished. I have never seen anything so

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beautiful. If I had known she was so beautiful [ .... ] If I had known this beauty and

patience and care, how I would have loved her" (Lear 59). Lear's shocking encounter

with the real nature ofF ontanelle finally drives Lear to understand what he has done. He

accepts his role in her ruin and resolves to tum things round: "I must walk through my

life, step after step, I must walk in weariness and bitterness[ ... ] I must open my eyes and

see!" (Lear 60). Ironically enough Lear sees the reality only when he is physically

blinded. Blindness, for Bond, as for Shakespeare, is a metaphor for insight, and that is

why he feells Gloucester, Oedipus and Tiresius were all blind. It is only after Lear

becomes blind that he realises that "Men destroy themselves" (Lear 67) in a corrupt

environment. He decides to stop Cordelia from doing what he did: "Cordelia doesn't

know what she's doing!" (Lear 67) and she must be stopped. Meeting her he expresses

the need of an alternative administration, distinct from her autocratic rule. He tells her

that the world is made by the people, who should take responsibilities for either good or

bad: "( ... ] we made the world - out of our smallness and weakness. Our lives are

awkward and fragile and we have only one thing to keep us sane: pity, and the man

without pity is mad" (Lear 84). This is the dominant voting for a common civic culture

where man's inherent right to freedom and dignity would not be violated. Lear's society

was unsympathetic; it killed to maintain power and now Cordelia is doing the same. Her

government also fails to protect ordinary people. There is always a wall between the ruler

and the people. The wall thus actually divides; so Bond makes the aged Lear, despite his

frailty, rectify his mistakes. Though he is shot dead in the process, the attempt is really

the starting point of re-framing the society without the walls, that is, making allowances

for cultural exchange. The optimism of Ben, Thomas and Susan, who represent the real

105

other not the pseudo marginal in the play, that they would reclaim their land when the

wall will h~ down is Bond's way of communicating the message that an integrated

society can be built when the others become assertive and a space is created for them

through intercommunication. As everyone makes his exist, leaving Lear's dead body on

the stage, one of the workers looks back. This is significant enough. What Bond suggests

is possibly that Lear's dead body is an object lesson to the representatives of alternative

identity about the ruinous effect of power monopolisation and the exclusion of other

stake-holders from the power-structure.

The young couple in The Sea may be described as architects of alternative

identity. Though Rose was initially numb with pain, she gathers courage to face the

reality of Colin's death. In contrast to Hatch who insanely attacks with knives the dead

body of Colin, washed ashore, and Mrs. Rafi who refuses to buy the velvet for that will

remind her of the tragic loss of Colin, Rose and Willy realise that the dead cannot be

called back to life: "The dead don't matter" (Plays: Two 163). Unlike the genteel lot who

will eventually crawl towards death- as "old, ugly, whimpering, dirty, pushed about on

wheels and threatened" (Plays: Two 161)- Rose and Willy show sheer determination and

courage to move ahead of the chaos and insanity of the community. They thus reject a

society that privileges the dominant class. Their departure testifies to their ability to risk

themselves, to try other possibilities open to them. They have learned, from Evans, the

greedy nature of the techno crazy society where fierce competition encourages

individuals to fight with each other. But still there remains a lot to uncover, for Evans

"never knows enough" (Plays: Two 168). Actually Evans fails to direct his personal

virtuousness to political actions; so his virtuousness is inefficacious.· Bond rightly says

106

that Evans "indulges in the luxury of admitting this without doing anything about it" ( qtd.

in Hay and Roberts 57). The last sentence uttered by Willy is purposefully left

incomplete. What Bond suggests is that the young couple is ready to march ahead for a

"counter-culture" not by turning away from but by listening to the howls of the flame and

looking into the fire.

III

Distinct from Lear and The Sea where Bond re-writes Shakespearean plays, in

Bingo- staged at the Northcott Theatre, Exeter, on 14th November 1973- he re-creates

Shakespeare, the man. Cashing in on Shakespeare's intellectual and moral passivity in the

Welcombe enclosure, Bond compels him to make penance for a deplorable lapse of his

life. Incidentally speaking, Bingo is based on a historical incidene. In 1602 Shakespeare

brought 107 acres of arable land from William and John Combe. In 1614, Shakespeare's

decisive step to defend his own interest against the peasants' rendered farmers jobless.

The enclosur,e, meant to convert plough land into sheep pastures, inevitably increased the

price of grain and threw men out of work. One of the notable Shakespeare's biographers,

Peter Levi in The Life and Times of William Shakespeare (1988), observes that "in the

case of the "VII elcombe enclosures one ambiguous phrase in the record throws weight on

the question of Shakespeare's attitude to landowners who were his neighbours and to the

dispossessed"' (331 ). Actually, in his retired life, a large part of his income came from the

rents paid on the common fields at Welcombe, near Stratford. Some landowners wanted

to enclose the lands and there was a chance that Shakespeare's revenue might get

reduced. He was left with two options - either to side with the landowners and secure

107

himself or to do something for the poor who would lose their land and livelihood if the

fields are enclosed. Levi informs us that Shakespeare entered into an agreement with

William Replingham that he "should be indemnified for any loss of tithe value in the

fields 'by reason of any enclosure or decay of tillage there meant and intended"' (332).

He therefore chose to secure himself and his heirs and signed a deed that would guarantee

against any loss. As A. L. Rowse in his biography of Shakespeare, William Shakespeare:

A Biography (1962), writes: "Combe's agent agreed with Shakespeare to compensate him

for any loss to his tithes. He apparently did not think the enclosure would be proceeded

with, but he: was protected anyway" ( 448-9). He also agreed not to help any people

fighting against the enclosures. Jenny Spencer in Dramatic Strategies in the Plays of

Edward Bond (1992) also notes that "the town's resistance to enclosure was not formally

endorsed by Shakespeare" ( 44). This is historically correct as Rowse confirms this fact.

In spite of the opposition of the corporation and the local people, William

Combe went forward with his plans.The town clerk noted in his diary, 'I

also writ of myself to my cousin Shakespeare the copies of all our oaths

made then, also a note of the inconveniences would grow by the

enclosure'. Unfortunately his answer, if there were one, is missing. Combe

defied the corporation and proceeded with hedging and ditching his

intended enclosure. When some of the tenants set about filling in the

ditches his men threw them to the ground, while Combe 'sat laughing on

his horseback and said they were good football players'. (450)

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Thus Shakespeare sided with the landowners and there is no document of any opposition

from him. He sat at home with his guarantee while others resisted against such

enclosures. No wonder Bond in the "Introduction" to the play notes that as a property­

owner Shakespeare was closer to Goneril than Lear: "He supported and benefited from

the Goneril-society - with its prisons, workhouses, whipping, starvation, mutilation,

pulpit-hysteria and all the rest of it" (Bingo ix). His stature as the greatest English artist of

all times cannot excuse him from this indifference to social causes. In an interview with

K. H. Stoll, Bond says: "If you are an unjust person it doesn't matter how cultured you

are, how civilized you are, how capable you are of producing wonderful sayings,

wonderful characters, wonderful jokes, you will still destroy yourself' ( 418).

Focussing on the gap between what Shakespeare preached and what he practised,

Bond relates the contradictions of Shakespeare's society to his own. The purpose is to

stress the fact that the conclusions could be the same provided the society is changed for

the better. In Bond's technological society, as Bond states in the "Introduction" to Bingo,

fierce competition has made the citizen "avaricious, ostentatious, gluttonous, envious,

wasteful, selfish and inhuman" (Bingo x). Money, in this society, is not used to perform

any socially useful function but is employed to create and satisfy artificial needs for those

who can afford and thus act in widening social divide. Like Shakespeare in the

seventeenth century secured himself while endangering others, consumerist Britain,

throbbing with a competitive attitude, seems to follow the same path. So if Shakespeare

had been a '"corrupt seer' [ ... ] we are a 'barbarous civilization"' (qtd. in Bingo xiii). Thus

when the characters interact in the play one notices an image of a society, which though

distant, appears to be a close cousin of post-war techno-crazy Britain. Bond's objection to

109

the "technological culture" is pertinent enough for both the dominant and the other fall

prey to such culture which ultimately leads to social disintegration. So focussing on the

gap, Bingo actually stresses on the horrible effect of the marginalisation of the other

cultures by the dominant culture in the "technological culture". So Shakespeare's

realization of his mistakes in Bond's play and the efforts taken to undo what has been

done are his attempt at social re-construction by taking into consideration the

perspectives of the other. Hence Bingo impresses one as a text that supports cultural

pluralism where the rights and dignity of the other cultures along with the dominant are

protected.

As the play opens one unmistakably notes a fragmented society void of any

understanding between the dominant and the other. Socio-economically privileged

Shakespeare remains immersed in his cloistered self and pays no heed to anything that

happens in the external world. The initial pages of the text are often punctuated with

Bond's stage directions about Shakespeare's indifferent attitude: "silence" (Bingo 1),

"doesn't react" (Bingo 3). The miseries of the other increase as the dominant are

indifferent to the pmblems of the other. Social integration is never possible when there is

absence of mutucil understanding and knowledge. As Shakespeare is completely

engrossed in himself, he cares little for the well being of the other. So when an old man,

Shakespeare's gardener, sexually exploits a young woman, Shakespeare remains passive.

This picture of a morally degraded society, one understands, is a microcosmic

representation of the macrocosmic fragmented social space. Social fragmentation is

further caused by the gluttonous nature of the dominant culture. This becomes evident

when Combe, representative of the dominant culture, comes to his cultural cousin,

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Shakespeare, to sign a deal that would further de-stabilise the society. Combe's plan to

shun the others - p'loughers, sowers, harvesters, threshers, carters - by converting plough

lands into sheep pastures is a typical instance of the marginalisation of the other by the

dominant. Combe unflinchingly claims: "But there's a difference between us and the

beast" (Bingo 6). The de-humanisation of the other by Combe and Shakespeare's

protection of his own interest by signing the deal are opposite sides of the same coin. No

wonder the flawed power structure creates a cruel, tension-ridden society where the

others would inevitably suffer. Resultantly, a poor, young woman is easily charged of

begging and whipped as part of punishment. What shocks one is the passivity of a

cultured dominant, Shakespeare, who, instead of doing anything, ironically enough,

complains of social unrest: "I didn't sleep last night. So many people on the streets. All

that shouting. And the sky-like day" (Bingo12). As one goes inside the heart of the

matter, one surprisingly notes that Shakespeare is too immersed in his own easeful

idleness to care even for his daughter, Judith, and his sick wife. Judith's piercing question

- "D'you know why mother's ill? D'you care?'' (Bingo 18) - bears out the point. No

wonder Shakespea]}e's family is seen to be tearing itself into bits while he sits in his

garden. Judith repeatedly reminds him: "You must learn that people have feelings. They

suffer. Life almost breaks them" (Bingo 18) but in vain. What Bond suggests is that self­

interest ultimately gets narrowed down to one's own self in relation to which everyone

including one's family becomes other.

In Scene '".Chree Shakespeare leaves his home and steps into the external world.

But he is still reluctant to participate in the real world, for he turns back upon the

gibbeted woman. Shockingly enough Shakespeare describes the body of the gibbeted

111

woman as "still perfect. Still beautiful" (Bingo 28). This suggests that the culture he

represents is not holistic in nature. Instead of tackling the social storm that breaks outside,

Shakespeare remembers a visit to a river where he saw a white swan. The white swan,

symbolic of his cloistered artist-self, contrasts the "dark water" (Bingo 28) of reality that

surrounds him. Shakespeare's recollection of the white swan - "I could still hear its

wings" (Bingo 28) - amidst murder and chaos points to his socially evasive existence.

Thus the "faultlines" of the power structure in the play becomes evident.

The conflicts and contradictions within the power structure are further stressed in

Shakespeare-Jonson debate at the pub, the Golden Cross. Shakespeare is mocked and

taunted by Ben Jonson, for overlooking the "noisy comers" for "something spiritual" in

his last series of plays. While Shakespeare is nestling in "peace and quiet" (Bingo 30),

Jonson ventures out for Scotland. Shakespeare and Ben Jonson express two different

approaches to life: the former marked by self-obsession, the latter by a continuous

struggle for socio-cultural change. In contrast to Shakespeare, who is intimidated by the

"dark waters" that surround him, Jonson feels at home in it. Jonson who has had

experience of the seamy sides of life taunts Shakespeare for.his well guarded cleanliness:

"Life doesn't seem to touch you, I mean soil you. You walk by on clean pavement [ .... ]

You are serene" (Bingo 32). But the protected and apparently secure state of the

dominant is really vulnerable as evident from Jonson's remark: "you can't ignore an

elephant when it waves at you with its trunk, can you" (Bingo 33). Shakespeare fails to

see that the power structure to which he belongs is fragile and hence bound to crumble

because it is exclusivist in nature.

112

The "faultlines" of the power structure create space for the other to emerge. The

other in the play - Son, Jerome and Wally - gear up to end the domination of the

hegemonic centre. These young revolutionary labourers resist the enclosures and protest

against social segregation. Their protest is against the design of the dominant to rule their

lives, denying them, therefore, the right to exist in the same social space with the

dominant. The group is headed by Son who unlike Shakespeare does not romanticise

death but detects blood tickling "down the comer" (Bingo 23) of the gibbeted woman's

mouth. They are not idealized spectators but are engaged in continuous subversive

measures to get back their land. Sometimes they fill the ditches and break down the fence

while at times they fight with Combe's men and trample his crop. They exhibit courage

and strength to make a room of their own. Jerome, for instance, in order to feed his wife

and children thinks of extreme opposition. His decision to break Combe's neck for

robbing him of his land is the aggression "of the weak against the strong, the hungry

against the over-fed" (Bingo xi). Since the strong are unjust, the weak try to get

elementary rights aggressively. Such a situation arises when there is an absence of

harmonious co-existence of the dominant and the other. Lack of exchange and dialogues

compel the other te> take extreme measures against their oppressors. Hitting hard at the

dominant- "Rich thieves plunderin' the earth" (Bingo 34) - Son, therefore, questions the

futility of such enclosures which would perpetuate conflicts and clashes: "Whose

interest's that protectin'? Public or youm?" (Bingo 36). Men like Combe are not

concerned with social integration and therefore look upon the fight against the enclosure

as unjust: "You live in a world of dreams" (Bingo 36), thus disallowing any space for the

other. What Bond implies is that acknowledgement of cultural diversity in a pluricultural

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society can help formation of alternative identity and, thereby, lead to the mitigation of

social tension.

In contrast to Combe, Bond's Shakespeare redeems himself by gradually realizing

the importance of acknowledging the rights and demands of the other. He, therefore,

decides to help the revolution of the other, fighting against the enclosure, since it would

save the society from further fragmentation. He accepts his mistake of social segregation,

of filling the hearts with hate and anger. His desire to live in a world of private fantasies,

he realises, has resulted in social fragmentation. When Judith comes to report that her

mother is crying, Shakespeare confesses to his evasion of familial responsibility and its

resultant effect: "I treated you so badly. I made you vulgar and ugly and cheap. I

corrupted you" (Bingo 41 ). In Lear Lear admits his share in corrupting Bodice and

Fontanelle; here Shakespeare realises how much of evil his daughter owes to him. His

poignant self questioning- "Was anything done" (Bingo 43)- drives home the truth that

nothing was done or rather everything was undone by his self-centeredness. We see a

drunken Shakespeare, driven to despair, and has to be escorted home by the old woman.

It is surprising to note that what a peasant woman could predict - "I told yo' long ago in

the garden: that'll cause trouble. Yo' yon't listen. Sign a piece of piper[ ... ]" (Bingo 44)­

Shakespeare could not foresee. His lamentation, "I could have done so much" (Bingo 48),

therefore, is his penitent realisation of being the "hangman's assistant, a gaoler's errand

boy" (Bingo 48). In order to make penance, he decides to help the revolutionaries and the

uprising. So he refuses to divulge to Combe that he has seen Son when a shootout took

place in the snow. By saving Son, Shakespeare also grants Son a chance to create a space

where he can exist freely. Like Bond's Lear, who realises that he can still make his mark

114

by destroying the wall, and like the young couple in The Sea, who leave the island to

create a better world, Bond's Shakespeare grants "Liberty" to Son and thereby saves him

from falling prey to Combe's manipulation of the legal system. Shakespeare could not do

anything to save the young woman from hanging by men like Combe; his attempt to save

Son is a part of his penance for living a cocooned life. Thus the gap between

Shakespeare's art and life is bridged by his social reformative act in Bond. Son rejects to

live in this society since his freedom and liberty are threatened here; he, therefore, tells

Shakespeare that he will go away to a place where he can be free. The death of his father

in a gunshot had made him aware of the ingrained aggression and violence that lurks

under the veneer of a prosperous social order. His departure is a refusal to be engulfed by

the culture promoted by men like Combe.

As the curtain comes down, Judith frantically searches for his father's Will or

money while Shak;espeare whimpering and shivering commits suicide. Bond suggests

that Shakespeare's daughter will be as cruel as her father, for she too belongs to the

hegemonic class. Shakespeare's suicide, as Bond tells Stoll, is the outcome of his non­

reactive existence: one cannot "cheat in life" (421), for one has "to bear the consequences

of the life" ( 421) one leads. Moreover Bond tells Howard Davies, the director of Bingo,

that Shakespeare commits suicide simply because "he had no reason to live" ( qtd. in

Roberts 33). Art thrives on life and if it gets divorced from life, it becomes emptied of

substance. But Shakespeare's suicide is not to put an end to the Art versus Life debate.

The action actually signals the possibility of the end of domination o( the dominant

culture. Shakespeare here might appear as an escapist because unable to find any way of

dealing with the cultural clashes in his society, he succumbs. Moreover, though he helps

115

Son to escape, he lacks any definite strategy to counter Combe and other dominant

landowners. But OI;J.e should take into consideration that through his suicide he tries to do

his bit by paying with his life. This is because he now understands the requirement of

harmoniously existing in a pluricultural society. Shakespeare-Son conversation before

Shakespeare's suicide indicates that Shakespeare from his experience of life came to

realise the importance of cultural diversity lacking in his society. Thus Shakespeare's

suicide although escapist in nature is a rejection of a society that maintains walls among

communities and impedes the construction of a common civic culture. It is the lack of

cultural exchange, based on mutual understanding and knowledge that creates the chaotic

social space in Bond's plays. Things do fall apart and it is beyond the power of the

dominant to hold. The message of the plays seems to be that the social space is to be

shared while retaining the cultural distinctiveness.

IV

The imaginative re-writing of Shakespeare's life in the light of the Welcombe

enclosure may strike one as New Historicist in nature. But while New Historicism is an

interpretation of literary texts in the light of a non-canonical historical document, Bond's

Bingo is an imaginative re-creation and therefore a different kind of interpretation of

Shakespeare's life. Besides while in New Historicist reading a "parallel reading of

literary and non-literary texts, usually of the same historical period" (Barry 172; original

emphasis) is done, in Bingo Bond keeps an early seventeenth century historical episode in

focus of his play but situates it in his own time. One may rather find a parallelism

between Bond and the Cultural Materialists of the 1980s who emphasise the political

116

function of literary texts in the present to critique the "ways in which literature is often

appropriated in conservative political discourses to shore up notions of national heritage

or cultural superiority" (Brannigan 135). Bond's employment with Shakespeare in the

plays described in the chapter should not be mistaken as "anxiety of influence". Harold

Bloom in his book The Anxiety of Influence (1973) notes that strong poets suffer from

"belatedness" which in the ephebe culminates in a deliberate misreading of the

precursors. Wrestling with a strong precursor is actually an attempt to "clear imaginative

space" (Bloom 5) and assert one's distinct identity. Bloom notes in the "Preface" that

those who resent canonical literature are "nothing more or less than deniers of

Shakespeare. They are not social revolutionaries or even cultural rebels. They are

sufferers of the anxieties of Shakespeare's influence" (Bloom xix). Jean Marsden in The

Appropriation of Shakespeare (2006) echoes Bloom in his claims that "each new

generation attempts to redefine Shakespeare's genius in contemporary terms, projecting

its desires and amdeties onto his work" (1). But Bond's projection of Shakespeare

without his aura is no anxiety of influence, for in Bond's time Shakespeare has become a

part of the tradition from which one may borrow without being accused of anxiety.

Moreover whatever thematic and verbal similarity one may come across is deliberate and

intended to deconstruct Shakespeare in order to highlight what in Shakespeare is still

relevant to our time.

Bond's dismantling the authoritative power structure by highlighting the

"faultlines" and wresting power in the hands of the oppressed other might tempt one to

equate his project with that of the post-colonial writers who are consistently engaged in

questioning and contesting the imperial assumptions in Shakespearean texts and thereby

117

re-defining the Shakespearean canon. This is because, as Julie Sanders claims,

"Shakespeare was undoubtedly deployed as a tool of empire, taught in schools across the

world as a means of promoting the English language and the British imperial agenda"

(52). Helen Tiffin in "Post-colonial literatures and counter-discourse" terms this project

of the postcolonial writers as "canonical counter-discourse" (22). This project involves a

process by which the postcolonial writers unveil and dismantle "the basic assumptions of

a specific canonical text by developing a 'counter' text that preserves many of the

identifying signifiers of the original while altering, often allegorically, its structures of

ppwer" (Gilbert and Tompkins 16). Bond's approach is different from that of the post­

colonial writers. This is because Bond not only refuses to resort to allegory for creating

"counter-culture" but also keeps the structure of power intact. He attacks the domination

of the power structure by unmasking its ideological biases and urges upon the need to

create a space for the other so that the social space becomes culturally heterogeneous.

The difference also lies in the fact that while the post-colonial writers assert their local

histories and culture that has been almost annihilated by the imperial practices, Bond, a

British himself, critiques the cultural blindness of his own society. Thus Bond refuses to

doodle in the margin as a parasite to the profound originator.

118

Notes

1. The Other Place: It is the studio theatre of Royal Shakespeare Company which was

founded in 1973 by Trevor Nunn and Buzz Goodbody. It staged experimental, intimate

and low budget Shakespearean and contemporary plays. It can be contended that the

Royal Shakespeare Company's best works throughout 1970s and early 1980s were staged

in this auditorium. Prominent instances are Goodbody's Hamlet (1975), Nunn's Macbeth

(1976), Ron Daniel's Pericles (1979) and Timon of Athens (1980) and Adrian Noble's

Antony and Cleopatra (1982).

2. Ideology: According to Louis Althusser "Ideology" refers to an imaginary, compelling

sense of reality in which crucial condition of the self and society appear resolved. In

Lenin and Philosophy (1971) Althusser defines "Ideology" as "a representation of the

imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence" (153). It

interpellates individuals and constitutes them as subjects who accept their role within the

system of production relations.

3. Culture Industry: German theorists Max W. Horkheimer and Theodore Adorno in

Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947) opine that culture is not an abstract thing but can be

produced and sold like any other consumer good. The term is used to define culture as a

product of social and economic conditions in any society. The term also refers to the

political function of culture. In other words, it includes the utility factor or use-value

derived from the commodity by the consumer and how that use-value is marketed by the

capitalist society.

119

4. Leftist leanings of Bond: Bond's anti-capitalist mindset is most prominently reflected

in his "Nott:s on Post Modernism" where he says: "capitalism uses problems to belittle

us. Spectacle becomes vicious excitement that appeals to biological resonances which

capitalism wrongly supposes to be free of cognition; with best intentions it trivializes

spectators" (Plays: 5 31).

5. Bond and Macbeth: While studying at Crouch End Secondary Modem School, he went

to see a performance of Donald Wolfit' s Macbeth at the Bedford theatre, Camden. The

impact was tremendous: "for the first time in my life- I remembered this quite distinctly

- I met somebody who was actually talking about my problems, about the life I'd been

living, the political society around me" ( qtd. in Hay and Roberts 15).

6. While post-modem Britain celebrates cultural pluralism, the new bourgeoisie system

of the early seventeenth century endorsed the rigid class-divisions. Shakespeare, as the

representative of that system, as Bond writes in "The Rational Theatre", was rooted in his

time; he approved the "class government administering class justice" (Plays : Two ix).

His 'History' plays, ending with Henry V, mark the establishment of such a government

under a "king who had both wisdom and vitality" (Plays: Two ix). But the individuals of

his Tragedies could not fit themselves into the society of the 'good government' of his

History plays: "Lear dies old, Hamlet dies young, Othello is deceived, Macbeth runs

amok, goodness struggles and there is no good government, no order to protect ordinary

men" (Plays: Two x). Shakespeare's Romantic Comedies that lack any rational

understanding of the society are, according to Bond, the "supreme literature of the

bourgeoisie"' (Plays: Two x). In his late comedies the same problem persisted. Questions

120

concerning society's problems remained unanswered, at times dealt with in a grotesque

way. Yet Shakespeare impressed Bond because with his intellectual honesty and

encompassing experience Shakespeare anticipated the 'decadence' of the new

bourgeoisie system. Bond held that it would be wrong to conclude that Shakespeare did

not ponder over the nature of his social problems, for the resolutions of Shakespeare's

plays are not sloppy and stale. But as one who was "too much a part of his own time"

(Plays: Two ix) to work for the rational solutions of the problems in his plays,

Shakespean~ learned to bear them "with stoical dignity" (Plays: Two x). But Shakespeare

was fully aware that "the peace, the reconciliation that he created on the stage would not

last an hour on the street" (Plays: Two x). While writing for the post-war society, Bond

dramatises this contradiction and its resultant effect. Shakespeare's solutions cannot solve

the social problems of the twentieth century. Thus Bond's re-writings hammers on the

abolition of the irrational social structures that fosters class divisions.

7. Historical Fallacy: It has been alleged that Bond has been historically inaccurate in his

portrayal of Shakespeare's retired life. In the "Introduction" to Bingo Bond notes that

"Combe represents several men, and the undertaking signed in the Sec-ond Scene by

Combe and Shakespeare was in fact between Shakespeare and a representative of the

enclosures called Replingham [ .... ] Shakespeare's last binge was with Jonson and

Drayton. Only Jonson is shown in the play" (vi). Apart from these alterations certain

dates are also altered. The deletions and additions are made, as Bond says in the

"Introduction" to Bingo, for "dramatic convenience" (Bingo vi). As Bond envisions it,

Bingo is based on the "material historical facts so far as they're known," (Bingo vii). But

the play's "psychological truth" is based on Bond's perceptions. Defending the

121

conclusion of his play, he argues, that the consequences in the play follow from the

"facts, they're not polemical inventions" (Bingo vii). He, of course, admits that the

description of Shakespeare's death that happens at the end of the play is not based on any

fact: "[ ... ] I admit that I'm not really interested in Shakespeare's true biography in the

way a historian might be" (Bingo vii). Bond, in his own words, is a creative artist who

"looks down from a bridge at the place where an accident has happened. The road is wet,

there's a skid mark, the car's wrecked, and a dead man lies by the road in a pool of

blood" (Bingo vii). Exercising his imaginative faculties coupled with his perception,

Bond can "only put the various things together and say what probably happened" (Bingo

vii). Faultilng the attitudes of Shakespeare's defenders, Bond says that they might

consider Shakespeare to be an excellent driver who can never have an accident.

Anticipating such petty criticism, Bond says that he is not a historian but an artist: "Part

of the play is about the relationship between any writer and his society" (Bingo vii). The

main purpos:e of Bond, as he says, is not to be "historically accurate" but, one feels, is to

stress on the dynamics between man and his socio-cultural environment. Re-writing

Shakespeare in the 1970s, it is natural for Bond to be less concerned with historical.

accuracy than with translating his vision of a "counter-culture". His play, therefore,

brings down the dominant cultural icon, Shakespeare, to the same level with the other,

creating in the process a socially integrated space based on mutual understanding,

knowledge and respect.

122

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