Prague as the Congress Venue
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Historical and Cultural References
The reign of the Habsburg Emperor Rudolph II (1552-1612) was a period of intense relations between England and the Czech lands, whose court in Prague attracted artists, alchemists and scientists from all over Europe.
Political and Cultural Contacts in Elizabethan and Jacobean Times
- In 1584, John Dee arrived in Prague and was hosted by the leading Czech aristocrat Vilem of Rosenberg.
- Dee had to leave the country in 1589, failing to win the support of Rudolph II, which was granted, though only for a short time, to his countryman, Edward Kelley, a charlatan alchemist, who died as the Emperor’s prisoner.
- Alchemic formulas also found their way to the poetry of Sir Philip Sidney, who visited Prague in 1575, to report on the new Austrian policies to Lord Burghley, and again in 1577 to congratulate Rudolf II on his election as Holy Roman Emperor.
- During his second visit Sidney saw a Jesuit play and met Edmund Campion, a poet and professor of rhetoric at the Jesuit College of St. Clement (Klementinum). Here Campion started to prepare for his mission to England, where he was executed in 1581.
- In 1592 the English traveller Fynes Morison visited Prague. He traced the movements of the first troupes of English actors through continental Europe in his Itinerary (1617).
- The early period of Anglo-Czech relations closes with the marriage of the daughter of James I., Princess Elizabeth, to Frederick, Elector of Palatine in 1613. In 1619, Frederick was elected the King of Bohemia against the will of the Catholic estates who supported Ferdinand II of Habsburg. This led to the Battle of the White Mountain (1620), where scarce Scottish troops sent by James I could not offer much help to the Czech estates against the Habsburg armies.
Shakespeare on Prague Stages
- The “English comedians” of Robert Browne’s troupe might have played in Prague as early as 1596 and then certainly in 1603. In 1619 they returned to celebrate the wedding of Princess Elizabeth to the Elector of Palatine. Shortly before that time Czech aristocrats watched plays in the Globe and other London theatres whilst on their travels.
- As in other countries of western and central Europe, the clown Pickleherring was an important mediator of English dramatic influences. A recent production of a Czech opera Picklehering 1607 by Ondřej Kyas and Pavel Drábek marks an interesting revival of this transcultural figure.
- The number of early adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays is amazing. In the 1650s The Winter’s Tale could have been produced as The Tragicomedy of the Clever Thief, in the 1790s you could watch Hamlet, or The Prince of Lilliput, two decades later you could read the witch scenes of Macbeth in a Slovak folklore style and see The Comedy of Errors in a Russian setting as The Twins, or, Brothers in Archangelsk.
- Throughout the nineteenth century, the Czech national emancipation movement was rallied under the banner of Shakespeare’s art. In 1864, during the tercentenary celebrations, Perdita was presented to the festive crowds as “Perdita Ars Bohemica,” and in the bleak years of World War I Prince Hal represented hopes of the restoration of an independent Kingdom of Bohemia ruled by a member of the British Royal Family.
- In the twentieth century, the cultural appropriation of Shakespeare acquired stronger political overtones. While in 1938, a Brechtian adaptation of Hamlet was performed as an avant-garde “Theatre of Labour”, in 1979 a group of dissident intellectuals staged Macbeth in a living room with a protest-song style. The performances, disrupted by the secret police had such a resonance that they inspired Tom Stoppard to write Cahoot’s Macbeth.
- At present, up to ten new productions of Shakespeare’s plays appear on Prague stages every year. A new Czech translation of Shakespeare’ s complete plays by Martin Hilsky was recently completed. An important theatre event is the Summer Shakespeare Festival in the Prague Castle, which will become a major highlight of the cultural and social programme of the Prague Congress.
