The Herbal Bed
Was Shakespeare's daughter a slapper?
By Jason Catlett
Peter Whelan's 1997 play The Herbal Bed imagines the effect on Susanna Hall, née Shakespeare, of her absentee father fibbing to her mother about his adulteries. We can only speculate how the most imaginative storyteller in history would have explained his painfully obvious STDs to his wife; Whelan gives Susanna and her husband, Dr John Hall, the task of administering herbal remedies to her poxy, dying daddy. In the New Theatre's production, Keith Agius delivers an impressive portrait of Hall as a nobleman with all sexual appeal either absent or suppressed.
William himself never quite makes it onto the stage, but his influence is constantly felt by the audience, who are asked how a daughter of the author of those 154 sonnets could possibly not inherit a broad appreciation of love and sex. The plot is based on events known from court records: in 1613 Susanna Hall was slandered as an adulteress by Jack Lane (played with libidinous energy by Rick Cosnett); she sued him for defamation. Whelan draws her as neither completely innocent nor entirely guilty, which makes for an exciting courtroom drama.
Director Sarah Giles shows how fine dramatic results can be obtained from a small budget and a lot of grossly underpaid talent. All seven actors look their parts and play them well, on a set of such austere simplicity it seems natural, even though we see through non-existent walls to the faces and attitudes of characters absent from the scene. Fiona Pepper brings Susanna alive out of the footnotes of literary history as neither slut nor saint, but a credible adult grown from her neglectful father, the Bard of Avon.
The Herbal Bed is at New Theatre until 11 Apr
