Of Cassidy Cash, Dan Burkarth, Instant Shakespeare, and The Red Dragon

Actor and teacher Dan Burkarth was in an Instant Shakespeare production of Antony and Cleopatra recorded from a Zoom performance and available on YouTube. Instant Shakespeare does annual readings of all Shakespeare's plays and has a LinkedIn page here, and a website here.

After some initial chatter and clearing of throats, the performance begins about two minutes in, at this YouTube link. 

In the 400+ years since Shakespeare's death, performances of all of Shakespeare's plays usually took place long before the advent of motion pictures, TV, and internet. But one could imagine some families holding dramatic readings of Shakespeare's plays, with certain family members doubling or tripling their roles they played to cover all the parts. (It is said that Jane Austen participated in "family theatricals" at home, and it would not be too much of a stretch of the imagination to think that at times these may have included some Shakespeare plays or scenes....)

This is also the sort of activity some families could have used to pass the time during the Covid-19 pandemic, when many countries had lock-downs, with theaters and restaurants closed. Inviting the participation of more friends and family in a Zoom-based reading/performance would also have been an option, as Dan's work with Instant Shakespeare demonstrates.

What about performing Shakespeare at sea to pass the time? It has long been claimed that on September 5 in 1607, Shakespeare's Hamlet was performed (or at least read aloud) on board a ship called the Red Dragon, off the West African coast of Sierra Leone, bound for the Spice Islands (now Indonesia), and that later on their journey, they also did Richard II and Twelfth Night. This could be another example of informal readings of Shakespeare, and in unusual or unexpected places.

But more recently, Shakespeare podcaster Cassidy Cash did an article and YouTube video that explained why some scholars have come to believe the shipboard performance was a fiction, a forgery made up perhaps hundreds of years later. This is because the actual logbook does not mention the performance, only later second-hand sources claiming to be based on the original documents. 

Cassidy is a top Shakespeare podcaster, winning praise from the likes of Shakespeare scholar Julie Lupton and actor Kenneth Branagh, as shown in some of the endorsements on her web page. She makes a good case for being skeptical about the shipboard Hamlet claims.

The performance on the Red Dragon is debated, and may or may not have actually taken place, but the Zoom performance of Antony and Cleopatra is definitely available on YouTube for anyone who would like to experience what an informal reading might look like. I plan to work it into my routine - as I will Cassidy's upcoming episodes of "That Shakespeare Life."

So here's a shout-out to Dan for the heads up about this performance, and to Cassidy for her sleuthing about the Red Dragon performance claims.

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Thanks for reading! My current project is a book tentatively titled Hamlet’s Bible, about biblical allusions and plot echoes in Hamlet.

Below is a link to a list of some of my top posts (“greatest hits”), including a description of my book project (last item on the list):

https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/12/top-20-hamlet-bible-posts.html

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