Not Merely Players

Scandal continues to rock Shakespeare's Globe theatre over the question of whether a stage actor spouting iambic pentameters should be permitted to pretend to be something they're not. A new pressure group has efficiently if perversely courted headlines by insisting that the Christian notion of physical affliction being an indicator of moral depravity (if you didn't deserve it, God wouldn't have given it to you) should be faithfully reflected in the exclusive casting of disabled people as Shakespeare's rather more than half made-up Richard III. The role in a forthcoming production has been taken by the Globe's female artistic director, so perhaps it was felt that gender blindness in casting should be balanced by galumphing literalism in other regards. Since morals and opinions, like other disabilities, are socially determined at least in part (I myself was unaware of my antisemitism until alerted to it by the acolytes of Team Starmer), presumably we can look forward to the same group campaigning against non-betrayers playing Iago, or non-bigots playing Henry V, or non-Royalists performing any works at all by a prominent member of the King's Men.