Shakespeare doesn’t need dumbing down

The BBC is missing the point with its coverage of the quatercentenary – the play’s the thing

The word “overkill” doesn’t appear anywhere in the Shakespearean canon. The words “over-hasty”, “over-much” and “over-reach”, yes – but not “overkill”. Yet were the greatest playwright the world has ever known to rise from his Stratford-upon-Avon grave on April 23, the 400th anniversary of his death, and take stock of the gargantuan “festival” the BBC is mounting in his honour, I suspect that even he might be forced to concede that there was a useful noun missing from his lexicon.

In total, the Beeb is offering 100 hours of programming to mark the quatercentenary. Ye gods! Unveiling the blueprint for the month-long culture blitz this week, Helen Boaden, the Director of Radio, had a little Agincourt moment, rallying the nation. “We want to make Shakespeare irresistible to everyone,” she declared. Whatever you’re doing, wherever you’re going – ran the subtext – the airwaves will be so consistently jammed with the fruit of Shakespeare’s genius, that you’ll feel as if you’re bumping into the Bard on a daily basis.

But here’s the strange rub: while there’s an incredible amount of spinoff flim-flam, look closely at the schedules and the cupboard of dramatic delights – the actual reason we’re still celebrating his name – is dismayingly bare.

One flagship small-screen adaptation stands out. Continuing BBC2’s fine Hollow Crown series, Benedict Cumberbatch will play the villain: Richard III. That performance will come on the (hunched) back of a compressed version of the Henry VI trilogy – which, with the best Will in the world, are still the least enthralling Histories, and rank as apprentice works. The Wars of the Roses, to give the three-parter its full title, contains blood and guts but few traces of gleaming verse. As for a modernised A Midsummer

Night’s Dream especially adapted for prime-time consumption, purists can look away now. After that, what? BBC Radio has productions of Hamlet,

Julius Caesar, King Lear and The Winter’s Tale. Something to listen to on the road, in the kitchen – hardly dropeverything stuff – a short-cut to covering a lot of ground. Does any of this do justice to the richness of the canon? Methinks not.

No one is demanding the BBC mount every single play. And there’s a clear, winning argument for saying that if you want to get the fullest flavour of Shakespeare’s masterpieces, you should seek them out at a theatre (the RSC and Globe are more than happy to oblige with beefed-up programmes).

But at the BBC, the sort of modish thinking satirised in the sitcom W1A has prevailed, ensuring that a golden opportunity is squandered. Hey, let’s make Shakespeare cool for the kids (ergo an app which finds a quote from the works to match your mood “emoji”). Hey, let’s sneak Shakespeare into a long-running TV soap (hence a whole week of plot-lines on Doctors, inspired by a sonnet). Will it be naff if we get Gyles Brandreth to chat to people called William Shakespeare on

The One Show? Who cares, it’ll be a laff. The best ambassador for Shakespeare are the works he left behind; yes, that’s right, the play’s the thing. Paying only lip-service to the effect they can have by relying on other “product” to share the limelight suggests that at core those who’ve put this celebration together don’t fundamentally believe he’s still got what it takes. “Dumbing-down” is an over-used phrase but it’s a manifest consequence of the mania for accessibility. I get that the BBC is anxious about its role – will it last another 40 years, let alone another 400? – but here it is guilty of building its brand at the Bard’s expense. They’re turning the event into Shakespeare-In-Need.

Of course, you can’t coerce anyone into a love of Shakespeare. It can happen, as love does, by chance, a sudden infatuation. It might be hearing Gielgud read the sonnets, watching Peter Brook’s outstanding black-and-white film of King Lear starring Paul Scofield, standing in the rain in Shakespeare’s Globe watching Romeo and Juliet kiss. In my case, the moment I relaxed the knitted brow of scholarship at school and let myself loose on Cassius in Julius Caesar was the spark. “For once upon a raw and gusty day, the troubled Tiber chafing with her shores…” Just those few words of poetry and you’re away, transported; how I’ve admired and envied Shakespearean actors, and marvelled at the playwright, ever since.

The intent behind the BBC commemoration – which runs in tandem with multiple other attempts to give Shakespeare the biggest boost of our lifetime – is laudable. But the corporation’s meddlesome strategy is depressing – and could even backfire. The double-whammy of insufficient original work and a glut of froth could put off some newcomers to Shakespeare – those the Beeb is so self-consciously trying to attract – for life. Why must it spin new lines for the greatest writer the world has ever known? “Hush, and be mute,/ Or else our spell is marr’d,” says Prospero in

The Tempest. Yes. Well. Quite.