Shakespeare’s Violence with Jared Kirby and Seth Duerr

Many of Shakespeare’s most powerful scenes are based on physical action that isn’t directly written about in the scripts of his works. For example, when Ophelia goes mad and demonstrates her madness on stage, we know for certain what she says during that scene because her lines are written out for us but it’s unclear what her physical movements should be on stage. Similarly, in fight scenes, like brawls, riots, or acts of domestic abuse that happens within Shakespeare’s plays, it is up to interpretation of the director as to how the actors would have performed. Our guests this week, Jared Kirby and Seth Duerr, have decided to take some of the guesswork out of these scenes by investigating the history of fights, physical violence, and stage performance to determine what kind of actions should accompany the fights, assaults, struggles, and foul play in Shakespeare’s plays.