Cancel the Bard? It strikes Bell as nonsense

If we strike out everything that might offend, we’ll end up with no cultural heritage at all, says actor John Bell.

Renowned actor John Bell who is appearing in a one-man show at the Sydney Opera House. In One Man in His Time, Bell performs excerpts from Shakespeare's plays and discusses their themes and characters. John Feder/The Australian.

As John Bell again prepares to tread the boards and play some of Shakespeare’s greatest characters, he does so with an ear for the Bard’s “tremendous empathy” that, he says, counters any ­attempts to cancel him.

Bell, 80, and the nation’s eminent Shakespearean, is appearing in a solo turn, One Man in His Time, in which he will perform speeches from Richard II, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Antony and Cleopatra, The Merchant of Venice and other plays.

The short run opening at the Sydney Opera House on Thursday and then at the Canberra Theatre Centre is a chance to see Bell create with his voice such characters as Hamlet, Falstaff and Shylock.

Bell said the Elizabethan playwright was deeply interested in the people who were outsiders or marginalised, such as the Jewish money-lender Shylock and dark-skinned Othello, the Moor of Venice.

“It’s contentious, but I think it shouldn’t be,” he said. “Othello is a tragic hero who is a victim of ­racial hatred and vindictiveness. Shylock is given the floor and makes a very eloquent plea about persecuted minorities. The Merchant of Venice is not an anti-­Semitic play; it’s about anti-Semitism, and a kind of society that breathes anti-Semitism.”

One of the most important lessons that could be learned from Shakespeare was the ability to ­listen, a necessary precursor to empathy. “I don’t think he was much of a talker, I think he sat in a corner and took notes and worked on his craft — watching and listening,” said Bell, who also has written a book to be published in May, Some Achieve Greatness: Lessons from Shakespeare on Leadership. “I think he was naturally ­empathetic as a person, that seems evident in the writing. He was interested in people from all levels of society and genders and backgrounds.”

Bell’s show was to have coincided with the 30th anniversary last year of the theatre company he founded, Bell Shakespeare. The pandemic has delayed its premiere by a year.

“We shouldn’t cancel Shakespeare on any account, or any great work of art,” Bell said. “Come to terms with when it was written, and what it is saying, and live with that, and see what other qualities the piece has. If you strike out everything that might offend somebody we’ll end up with no cultural heritage at all.”