Director Elizabeth Freestone on The Tragedy of Thomas Hobbes.
Why choose Wilton's Music Hall, a little known theatre in London's East End to stage a new play by the Royal Shakespeare Company?
The Tragedy of Thomas Hobbes charts the revolution in philosophical thinking that took place during the seventeenth century. The play celebrates the growth of public scientific demonstrations at a time when, under Cromwell (and less than thirty years after Shakespeare's death) the theatres were closed. Against this backdrop of civil war and social upheaval, science became the new theatre and philosophy a new faith.
After the restoration of Charles II, science was officially recognised in the form of the Royal Society, whilst the theatres reinvented themselves with new dramatic forms. Restoration comedy, with its uncensored ribaldry, blew away the scars of the civil war along with the cobwebs of the closed theatres. Anything was a target for the new playwrights - including the newly founded Royal Society. In Thomas Shadwell's outrageous satire The Virtuoso (staged by the RSC in 1992), Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke, two of the central characters of our play, are mercilessly lampooned for their experimental processes. The last scene in The Tragedy of Thomas Hobbes shows Robert Hooke watching a performance of The Virtuoso realising he is the target of the audience's laughter.
The story of The Tragedy of Thomas Hobbes is told in the history of the streets and places that surround Wilton's Music Hall. The Royal Society's first home was Gresham College, on the southern end of Liverpool Street, now the site of the NatWest Tower. The coffee-houses where our characters would have met, argued, performed impromptu demonstrations, swapped pamphlets proclaiming new theories and denouncing old ones, litter the locale. Change Alley, west of Wilton's, was the home of Jonathan's and Garraway's coffee houses, places both Thomas Hobbes and Robert Hooke were known to frequent. The street is now home to glass-fronted financial institutions. The Tower of London, where the Leveller John Lilburn was imprisoned by Oliver Cromwell, and whose trial opens our play, is a short walk away. Royal Mint Street, Isaac Newton's workplace, backs onto Wilton's. And most notoriously of all, Pudding Lane, the place where the Great Fire of London began, is nearby. The fire stopped just one street away from Gresham College, where our scientists gathered every Wednesday to share their latest discoveries. The fire gutted much of the East End, razing not only locations particular to The Tragedy of Thomas Hobbes, but also destroying forever much of Shakespeare's London.
And that is why, as our research continues to show, it has become ever more apt that the RSC finds itself at Wilton's. It's not just that this play belongs here, but that the RSC itself has a profound connection. Because the East End was Shakespeare's home too. He was a man of city streets, spending much of this time here until retiring back to Stratford. This area is where Shakespeare ate and drank, lodged and scribbled. This is the London of money and marshes, traders and the Thames, science and the stage. Southwark may have been where he built his theatre, but Shakespeare's London life was largely lived in E1. The Theatre, the structure that Shakespeare and Burbage moved south of the river to become the Globe, is currently being excavated in Shoreditch, just 5 minutes walk from Wilton's.
The play and the venue sit perfectly together: it's a wonderful play and a beautiful venue. Intuitively, walking the streets of this part of London, the history of the seventeenth century comes alive, and the creative line from Shakespeare to the Enlightenment becomes clear. The RSC continues to demonstrate its commitment to presenting work at venues across London, a bold and liberating moment in its history. Taking this play to Wilton's Music Hall is a continuation of that freedom, but it also feels that in doing so, a little bit of Shakespeare is coming home.
Elizabeth Freestone
Director of The Tragedy of Thomas Hobbes
