Much ado over Shakespeare’s lack of sexual consent
Workshop to highlight times when characters did not give agreement to intimacy or even marriage
THE words of Henry V and Richard III as dictated by William Shakespeare have beguiled audiences for centuries.
But their failure to ask for consent is problematic, an academic has warned, and stars playing these roles should be taught sexual ethics.
Henry V woos Princess Katherine and Richard III marries Lady Anne, but it is argued that neither receives a “yes” from the female characters, and Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream is too drugged to consent to sex with Bottom.
Staging these non-consensual acts could have a “triggering” effect on audiences and the actresses playing coerced female characters, Hailey Bachrach, at University of Roehampton, has claimed.
She has launched the Shakespeare and Consent project backed by the Leverhulme Trust to identify these moments in the Bard’s scripts, with a view to working with performers on highlighting the issue on stage.
Ms Bachrach said: “If Shakespeare is being more regressive and less careful about consent than other writers, that is very interesting to know. It can make Shakespeare problematic.
“No matter what Shakespeare intended, it is experienced by modern actors and modern audiences. It could potentially be triggering.
“It’s important to bring attention to these moments, rather than just gloss over them. It’s about not being coerced by the script, and finding an interpretation you’re comfortable with.”
She added: “This is very much a labour issue. Because female parts are often smaller in Shakespeare, they are often played by younger actors, so these performers are doubly disempowered.”
Ms Bachrach believes that Shakespeare does not dwell on scenes where sexual or marital consent would usually be given or refused, unlike contemporaries Thomas Middleton and John Ford, who used rape and coercion as key plot points in works like Hengist, King of Kent and The Broken Heart.
This “glossing over” of coercion could be an issue when Shakespearean directors also ignore the lack of consent in scripts, Ms Bachrach has said, such as when Richard III “woos” Lady Anne without ever getting “an actual ‘yes’.”
Ms Bachrach said of Shakespeare’s history plays: “Women basically never actually got to consent to sex or marriage, it just happened, despite the fact that often they’d repeatedly said no.”
Ms Bachrach believes that the dramaturgical decision to ignore a lack of consent could be problematic for modern viewers, and also disempower actresses by making them play scenes without reference to a lack of consent they might find uncomfortable.
A three-year project begun by Ms Bachrach aims to develop a workshop to work 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.
These include the final scene Henry V, often staged as a flirtatious encounter between the English king and the French Princess Katherine, but a scene in which it is claimed “Princess Katherine says everything but an actual ‘yes’.”
In Measure for Measure, nun Isabella is offered marriage, but isn’t given the chance to respond before the play ends, Ms Bachrach has said.
She added that in A Midsummer Night’s Dream: “Titania has sex with Bottom under the influence of mindaltering fairy drugs and is openly appalled at that fact when she comes back to herself.” Other Shakespeare works like The Two Gentlemen of Verona and Titus Andronicus feature rape and attempted rape.