A murder took place in the speaker’s rooms at the House of Commons on Monday night. Greg Doran, former director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, was stabbed in the front – unusual in theatrical circles where people are more often stabbed in the back – by his successor, Daniel Evans. Rather than being reported to the police, the action was widely applauded since it was part of a potted, all-star performance of Julius Caesar staged to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the publication of Shakespeare’s First Folio.
The setting was appropriate in a number of ways. The current speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, reminded us that one of his predecessors, Thomas Hanmer, was a Shakespeare scholar who published his own edition of the plays in 1744. James Morris, MP and chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Shakespeare, stressed Shakespeare’s eternal political relevance. “He deals,” said Morris, “with the danger of tyranny, the narcissism of politicians, the thin dividing line between fantasy and reality.”
