“It was dangerous to be playwright in the times of Shakespeare”

To the wealth, beauty and density of their works, Shakespeare He added the magic of, telling the past, talking about the present, of the politics and conflicts that are going through us. In “Hollow crowns. Power according to Shakespeare”, Marta Cichero illuminates, on a tour, as attractive as scholar, works based on historical facts of the “swan of Avon”. Eight stories that, from ruler to ruler, work to work, are showing how “inside the hollow crown that surrounds the mortal temples of a king, death maintains his cut mocking his power” (Ricardo II). We dialogue she.

Journalist: In addition to actor and playwright Shakespeare was a political militant?

Marta Cichero: He was not a politician in the sense of exercising politics, but he had acute perception of political facts and conflicts. I did not have a position. He had learned in rhetoric classes in Stratford Grammar School to be ”in utramque part”, on both sides of the litigation. That allowed him to release works without being censored, prohibited and imprisoned as Ben Johnson and Thomas Nash for the satire “The Island of Dogs” or to kill him as Christopher Marlowe. The playwright profession was dangerous. There was an leisure office with a censor that could approve or not the representation. Shakespeare was ordered to omit in his work the abdication of Ricardo II, which only remained in the text. Queen Elizabeth and did not want the public to see that and give ideas to the agitators.

Q.: To refer to the present showing the past, offer a gallery of human beings, use effects, suspense, emotions, was it key to the success of the works?

MC: He was popular since his first work, when he was a 27 -year -old actor. The owner of the Rose Theater writes in the accounting book that in March 1593 “Enrique VI” had made the greatest collection of the season with ten thousand spectators. I had to compete with another theater where there was a tied bear that had to face a dog’s hole. Shakespeare had to capture the attention of the people who piled up in the theater hole. According to the public’s reaction, the work modified, that makes it very difficult to get the final version.

Q.: What is power for Shakespeare?

MC: He set up a laboratory of power in his works. He overturned the historical chronicles to verses, condensed the times, altered ages, resurrected dead to create antagonists, rivalries, crimes and revenge. He analyzed the “War of the two roses”, the contest between the Royal Houses of York and Lancaster, where the nobles disputed power before the weak government of Enrique VI. A king who does not know how to make government decisions and generates the bloodiest battles. Politics is not governed by moral laws but their own laws that are the art of governing.

Q.: Does the features of the rulers, on which Shakespeare focuses on his historical works, are the axis of his laboratory of power and politics?

MC: Vanity in “Ricardo II”. The betrayal in “Enrique IV”. The courage and the art of diplomacy in “Enrique V”, the weakness in “Enrique VI”. Evil in “Ricardo III”. And, when it is no longer allowed in the theaters to go to England’s past, excess in “Julio César” and “Antonio and Cleopatra.”

Q.: Why doesn’t the excessive ambition of the sinister “Macbeth” appear in “hollow crowns”?

MC: Because I try the works based on history. “Macbeth” is historical, but it melts two different chronicles of the chroniclers of the time that do not sympathize with the real story. Anyway, what Macbeth and Lady Macbeth do is excessive.

Q.: Is there a relationship between the political moments of these works and Machiavelo’s work?

MC: My conjecture is that Shakespeare read “The Prince.” In “Enrique VI” it is named. The cut of power management by the rulers, vanity, indecision, excess, seem to have taken them from “the prince.” The political work of Machiavelli was circulating in London. On the other hand, Southampton’s tutor, his patron, was the humanist, linguist and lexicographer John Florio, who translated Montaigne, Boccaccio and, for his Italian-Engine-English dictionary he used a play in Machiavelli. Florio and Shakespeare met, had common interests, theater, history, knowledge of political arts, and real power management. Both invented words that joined the English language. Shakespeare has been counted a thousand seven hundred.

Q.: What do you think of the theories that argue that Shakespeare was not the author of his works, but behind his were the Count of Oxford Edward de Vere, Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe or John Florio?

MC: I do not adhere to those theories. Shakespeare had an education that supported him. He went from being a cast actor to playwright and theatrical entrepreneur. His works were represented in the Court at the request of Queen Elizabeth I. He became appointed Gentleman, Sir, a title that his father wanted to have, he obtained it.

Q.: What led her to investigate the historical theater of Shakespeare and confront it with the real story of the time he tells?

MC: About twenty years ago I had to pass a stage in the Caribbean and the suffocating heat overwhelmed me. Then I decided to lock myself and dedicate myself to rereading the least common works of Shakespeare and therefore the most unknown, which on the other hand had had to study repeatedly at school. Thus I began to investigate in books on the historical period of works. Every king who read in a work sought to know how historical facts had been in reality, because the works do not paint the story as it was. That curiosity finally became “hollow crowns.”

Q.: You have written a highly valued research essay, “dangerous letters”, two historical biographies and this essay that joins literature and history, what is it now?

MC: In a long breath novel.