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The Battle of the Bard: Shakespeare on U.S. Radio in 1937 . By Michael P. Jensen

2020; Oxford University Press; Volume: 71; Issue: 3-4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/sq/quac003

1538-3555

Robert Sawyer,

Cinema and Media Studies

The title of this book refers to what Newsweek magazine dubbed the “Battle of the Bard” and “The Shakespeare Wars.” As Michael P. Jensen explains, this “Battle” took place in the summer of 1937, “when half of the networks broadcast Shakespeare in the 8:00 p.m. slot on Monday nights” (2); these broadcasts were a result of the rivalry between the two major radio networks, CBS and NBC, when the latter was still divided into the Red Network and the Blue Network. The radio “competition” was initiated when William Paley of CBS decided to produce and promote The Columbia Shakespeare Cycle and NBC decided to counter with Streamlined Shakespeare; CBS opted for an ensemble approach to casting, while NBC depended on solo star power. The introduction to Jensen’s book, “What Was Radio?,” provides a handy overview in which Jensen points out that “radio dominated recreation time the way that television later did and internet content increasingly does” (1). Chapter 1, entitled “Preliminary Bouts: Shakespeare on American Radio before the Battle,” does a fine job of surveying Shakespeare on the radio prior to the 1937 “Battle.” The second chapter, “In This Corner: Streamlined Shakespeare,” details how the two network approaches differed. Unlike CBS, NBC hired John Barrymore to perform all the leading roles in its six-part series, usually costarring with his wife Elaine Barrie. The Barrymore productions employed a limited cast of extras, and the aging Shakespearean stage star often doubled roles in each production. He played both Hamlet and the Ghost in Hamlet—not a particularly unusual doubling—and in The Tempest he read the lines of both Prospero and Caliban—rarely done—while his wife doubled the roles of Miranda and Ariel. As Jensen notes of the Hamlet broadcast, “Barrymore is emotional in the first scene” employing a “throb in his voice to indicate Hamlet is crying, yet he switches to anger during certain lines”—failing to “express both emotions simultaneously”; more significant was the fact that listeners could not distinguish the Ghost from the Prince because Barrymore employed a similar voice, “though at different pitches” (37).