Henry 6 is a landmark for The Old Globe. We complete Shakespeare’s canon with this production; it’s the largest Shakespeare project we’ve ever assayed; it brings our community-based work and our professional art-making work together in unprecedented ways; it enjoys major support from a significant national philanthropist. Elsewhere in this program you can read more about all these distinctive and exciting things. But in this space, I’d like to share something more personal: how I feel as I watch The Old Globe accomplish something that looks very much like a culmination of my 12-year tenure as Artistic Director here. 

I came to the Globe in 2012 in large part because it was—and remains—one of America’s great Shakespeare theatres, and I am a Shakespearean. Of the 14 plays I’ve directed in my time here, eight have been by Shakespeare, and if these two Henry 6 plays count as all three of Shakespeare’s Henry VI plays, then they bring the number of his works I’ve directed to 19. That’s one more than half. I’ve produced or dramaturged an additional dozen and taught the remaining ones, so, alongside The Old Globe, with Henry 6, I too complete the Shakespeare canon.

That’s a lot of Shakespeare. I’ve been struggling to wrap my head around just how much of the stuff I’ve done, and in so many places, and in so many ways, and with so many extraordinary people. I love the writing—that part I understand. It makes me laugh, it makes me cry, it makes me grasp things about being human that no other art or literature does, it nurtures my spirit like nothing else in my life that isn’t my family. I love that the plays are old and new at the same time, that they tell us how far we’ve progressed from the world of 450 years ago, and also how we haven’t moved at all. I love the idea of Shakespeare as a kind of magnet, a hub, that gathers people from everywhere and forges groups of strangers into communities that share things together.

But all this put together doesn’t quite explain why I’ve made it my life’s work to immerse myself in these three dozen plays, and why I’ve invested so much emotion and intellect and imagination into them. What is the mysterious power that this William Shakespeare, gentleman of Stratford-upon-Avon, exercises over me? 

He might call it a madness, or a drunkenness, or maybe a dream. He might write a scene of me talking to his ghost, or in the morning brushing my teeth or scrambling my eggs to the beat of iambic pentameter.

And he might tell me to stop asking and just be with it. After all, what do we learn from the Complete Works of Shakespeare if not the simple proposition that in human affairs, some things resist explanation? The rational world has its limits. Isn’t that Shakespeare’s big idea? There’s another level at which things operate, and sometimes living as a human on this planet places us in proximity to experiences that defy understanding, that don’t make a simple kind of sense, that trigger not clarity but mystery, that deal not in the material but the ephemeral. At these moments what we feel is astonishment, awe, amazement. In the end, as Shakespeare counsels us, surrendering to wonder is the more beautiful course. 

My life in Shakespeare has been precisely that: a wonder, a marvel, inexplicable and unlikely, staggering and stunning. This project is all of the above too. That over a thousand San Diegans have volunteered their time and energy to be part of Henry 6: a wonder. That the brilliant staff of this great theatre company has embraced this crazy, audacious project: a marvel. That designers and craftspeople and actors have lent their talents so generously to a new idea of what theatre can mean in the 21st century: an astonishment. That Roy Cockrum has led the way with a visionary philanthropic gift: a stunner.

Shakespeare reminds us that some forces in this universe are simply so overwhelming that the only right thing to do is to look at them and let our jaws slacken and our eyes widen and just say, “O.” That’s what I do tonight, as Henry 6 takes our stage and takes our theatre in a bold new direction. I’m so grateful to be part of it.

Thanks for coming. Enjoy the show.

Barry Edelstein is the Erna Finci Viterbi Artistic Director of The Old Globe.

Any feedback on tonight's show or any of the Globe's work?

Email Barry at HiBarry@TheOldGlobe.org and he'll get back to you!