Much as the tropes, idioms, and practices of the British Variety tradition shape the comedy of Eric Morecambe and
Ernie Wise,
all-things-Shakespeare consistently serve their comic needs for over 40 years. Addressing those needs in their 1981 dual autobiography, Eric and Ernie direct actors to keep moving or television audiences âthink youâre dead,â indicating,
Eric Morecambe: Of course, they turn âround and say, âShakespeare didnât want it like that. It has been done this way since his day.â
Ernie Wise: We say, âThatâs why itâs so boring.â
EM: And Ernie says, âShakespeare doesnât mind it being done this way, he was contacted only this morningâ ⌠and heâs happy with Ernâs treatment. Just put a hole in the tights, that always gets a laugh. (M&W, 1981, 52â53)
Here discussing a characteristic
adaptation of the playwrightâs work, the needs and standard practices of two consummate Variety
artistes emerge clearly. Layering revised text, traditional wardrobe, and a comic âhole in the tights,â Britainâs most successful double-act (
TI, 24/3/19; Cornell et al.,
1996) synthesizes usefully disparate materials and expertly engages a professional practice that, arguably, âalways gets a laugh.â Embracing such laughter, Britainâs most studied playwright diegetically validates Ernieâs comic âtreatmentâ in a characteristically surreal fashion. Morecambe & Wise thus parody the claim that thespians performed his plays âthis way sinceâ Shakespeareâs âday,â deploying interpretive conflict
as comic material.
Going to the source for approval, Eric (1926â1984) and Ernie (1925â1999) comically contrast two interpretive traditions within this Shakespop iteration, that is, the popular adaptation of Shakespeare. Rather than vesting authority with performers, here the writers emerge dominant, eliciting Shakespeare and Ernieâs combined âauthor function.â Appropriating Michel Foucaultâs terms (1980), Harry Berger, Jr., defines the author function as âa principle of closure, of semiotic inhibition, employed in the conflict of interpretations to privilege certain readings and control âunruly meaningsââ (2005, 112; cf. Wrothen, 1997). Neither using Shakespeare to âprivilege certain readings,â nor seeking ostensibly âauthenticâ meanings, Eric and Ernie position âthe conflict of interpretationsâ to engender the comic itself. In this imaginative fantasy, Shakespeare approves of âunruly meaningsâ because they serve comedy. Rather than a âboringâ writer, as some British comedians hold (e.g., Powles, 10/3/2018; Davidson, 1/3/10; Curtis, 22/12/2007; Wright, 22/5/1998; Bye, 4/12/1994; Dyson, 27/9/1994â2014, 4/10/1994â2014; Croft, 1/12/1989; Graef, 22/12/1979), Shakespeare functions as a Variety artiste making audiences laugh through Ernieâs revisions. Ernie and Eric, known as âthe Boys,â here wrest interpretive authority from âlegitimateâ actors, yet in other comic fictions they favour thespians; such a promiscuous approach to Shakespeare remains, moreover, their norm.
As a notable part of their highly popular comedy, the Boys deployed distinct aspects of Shakespeare, his plays, and other Shakespeareana more than 125 times and coded sexual humour innumerable times on television, on radio, on stage, and in their written work. Alongside Monty Pythonâs Flying Circus (B, 1969â1974) and Spitting Image (I, 1984â1996), in fact, the popular work of Morecambe & Wise provides some of the most varied appropriations of Shakespeare in British comedy. Over the course of a 44-year career (1940â1984; McCann, 1999, 57), Morecambe & Wise appropriated snippets of verse, scenes, and other play elements from Antony and Cleopatra , The Comedy of Errors, Hamlet , Henry V, Henry VI, Julius Caesar, King Lear , Loveâs Labourâs Lost, Macbeth , The Merchant of Venice, The Merry Wives of Windsor, A Midsummer Nightâs Dream , Much Ado About Nothing , Othello , Richard III , Romeo and Juliet , and The Taming of the Shrew (Kiss Me Kate).
In addition to play texts, the Boys comically appropriate an array of elements connected to Shakespeare, his life, and the institutions dedicated to him. These include Shakespearean actors, adaptations, and auditions; interpretive authority over his work; his birth and birthplace; the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC ), the National and the Shakespeare Memorial Theatres; co-writing his plays; Shakespeare as contemporary; the authorship âcontroversyâ; Shakespearean conventions, props, roles, and wardrobe; ânewâ biographical âfactsâ; his garden; Anne Hathaway; Shakespeareâs supposed homosexuality; his manuscripts and masterpieces; his sobriquet, âthe Bardâ; his status as a national figure; the Sonnets ; the putative âimmortalityâ of his works; and both new and apocryphal works. The Boysâ samplings also include âdirectingâ Shakespearean performance, impersonating Shakespeare, posing as him in print images, and representing his characters. Such Shakespop iterations notably neither automatically denigrate nor blindly deify him, his work, or his reputation. Very few scholars, moreover, engage the Boysâ comic approach to Shakespeare and sexual humour. In fact, contemporary work on Morecambe & Wise is far more narrowly focused than this study (e.g., Roberts, 2018, 280â283; Archer, 2017, 36â44; Geddes, 2017, 100â101).
Contextualizing the duoâs work within traditions of British comedy, Shakespeare criticism, the history of sexuality, and their own historical moment, Shakespeare and Sexuality in the Comedy of Morecambe & Wise offers the first sustained examination of the twentieth centuryâs most successful double-act, providing analysis of those appropriations of Shakespeare seen by the largest number of British viewers. In addition to the Boysâ performative brilliance capturing those viewers (cf. Boon, 2004; Crowther, 1987; Tynan, 1975; Priestley, 1975), Morecambe & Wise achieved great success by adaptively working through the medium of televised British Variety and by fashioning a kinder, more inclusive world within their comedy, reaching family audiences on multiple levels. Rejecting claims that they offer only nostalgic escapism, this chapter establishes the situated nature of the Boysâ work, analysing them within their contemporary political and professional contexts.
Imagined Pasts
For many, Morecambe & Wiseâs appeal lies in the ostensibly âcleanâ or âfamily-friendlyâ nature of their work. Although a strategic overstatement, claims that âthey were never âblueââ or dirty (GM, 1987, 10; GM, 2013, 109) helps maintain the Boysâ hard-won reputation as âfamilyâ comedians (Saville, 2018; Burton, 2008; Ellis, 2005). Further sustaining that reputation, their comedy has also unfortunately been regularly dehistoricized. Much as elite writers interpreted early Variety comedy as not specific to one class (Phillips, 2002; Faulk, 2001; Rutherford, 1986; cf. Higgins, 2015), most twentieth- and twenty-first-century critics misrepresent the Boys as transcending contemporary concerns, including class. In contrast to the more accurate cultural histories of the 1970s emerging in the last decade (Sandbrook, 2016; Moran, 2013; Beckett, 2009; Turner, 2008), such misguided, often ânostalgic,â approaches to Morecambe & Wise cloud understanding of their coded humour and their situated complexity.
The Boysâ comedy sits firmly within its moment, yet reductive decontextualization continues to misrepresent their work. Whether defining them as the quintessential double-act, Americanized romantics, apolitical nostalgia peddlers, conservative yet liberating comics, low comedians, populist proponents of the working class, or traditional seaside entertainers (Lloyd, 10/1/2019; Roberts, 2018; Archer, 2017; Geddes, 2017; Seaton, 2017; Bramley, 2016; Sandbrook, 2010; Smith, 2000; Banham, 1984; McGrath, 1981; Midwinter, 1979; TL, 4/1/70), a range of writers continue to deploy Eric and Ernie as emblematic of a simpler time separated from the tumultuous 1960s and 1970s when the Boys enjoyed their greatest popularity. John Ellis suggests, however, that this kind of ahistorical segregation misconstrues the nature of television. âTelevision programmes,â as Ellis indicates, âwere made for a particular moment in time and for a huge audienceâ (2005, 41â42). Despite the laughter still created through...