Shakespeare's Nationality Today

JOE DOWLING: Of course, Shakespeare is American. He's also British, he's also French, he's also Italian, he's also Spanish, he's Japanese. He's whatever country he's presented in can see a mirror of their own society within his work. So, of course, over the last 400 years Shakespeare has become universal. I think it was Ben Jonson who first said he's not a man of his time, he's a man for all ages.

And so as American theater has become more confident in itself to present Shakespeare, so also the plays have taken on a dimension that has a particularly American feel. That's not to say that all American Shakespeare is great and not to say that every production reflects something back of the society we live in. But I think increasingly as actors and directors become more confident in doing the work and less British about it, the work gets deeper and more layered.

For many years in this country when I came here first, there was a certain sense that, "Oh well, we can't do Shakespeare as well as the Brits can do it." Well, that's nonsense, and people like John Barton and Peter Hall, both of whom I've heard speak on this subject, have made it very clear that in their view American actors nowadays are better trained to speak Shakespeare than their British counterparts. Young British actors are not being trained as well as actors coming out of some of the American schools to speak Shakespeare, and that's really wonderful. But they don't need to find British accents or to be putting on British airs.

Shakespeare is universal, you can find the truth in what he's saying and the characters, truth in the characters, with a Texas accent as much as you can with a Warwickshire one. So I think the reason that Shakespeare's become Americanized, or whatever you might say, or become an American playwright, is because he's a universal playwright and America is part of the world.