"The society Shakespeare knew was heading for tremendous change, and he seems to have recognized that and written about it in a coded way. I understand those codes, I think"
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Redgrave is doing two things at once: paying tribute to Shakespeare’s stealth and staking a claim to her own authority. The “tremendous change” she invokes is the pressure-cooker of late Elizabethan and early Jacobean England: expanding commerce, religious fault lines, precarious succession, and the ever-present reality that theater lived under censorship. If you believe that world was unstable, the idea of Shakespeare writing “in a coded way” isn’t just a romantic flourish; it’s a practical theory of how art survives when power is touchy and consequences are real.
The slyness comes from her phrasing. “He seems to have recognized that” is modest on the surface, but it sets up the punchline: “I understand those codes, I think.” That last “I think” is classic actor’s equivocation, half humility, half dare. It acknowledges that decoding Shakespeare is a contested sport while also implying that performance offers privileged access. Actors don’t just interpret; they test meaning against breath, timing, and audience reaction. Redgrave suggests the “codes” aren’t purely scholarly riddles but living signals embedded in character, gesture, and rhythm.
There’s also a cultural self-portrait here: Redgrave as the politically alert artist who reads canonical texts as dissident technology, not museum relics. Shakespeare becomes less a national monument and more a collaborator across time - someone who smuggled anxieties into entertainment, and someone she can still, with practiced intuition, bring back into focus.
The slyness comes from her phrasing. “He seems to have recognized that” is modest on the surface, but it sets up the punchline: “I understand those codes, I think.” That last “I think” is classic actor’s equivocation, half humility, half dare. It acknowledges that decoding Shakespeare is a contested sport while also implying that performance offers privileged access. Actors don’t just interpret; they test meaning against breath, timing, and audience reaction. Redgrave suggests the “codes” aren’t purely scholarly riddles but living signals embedded in character, gesture, and rhythm.
There’s also a cultural self-portrait here: Redgrave as the politically alert artist who reads canonical texts as dissident technology, not museum relics. Shakespeare becomes less a national monument and more a collaborator across time - someone who smuggled anxieties into entertainment, and someone she can still, with practiced intuition, bring back into focus.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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