Shakespeare Night at the Supreme Court

Barbara Flowers reports on last night's ALLG(Q) social outing: Shakespeare’s briefs : or let’s kill all the lawyers

Last night the Supreme Court Library hosted an evening of Shakespeare performed by the Queensland Shakespeare Ensemble along with Judge Nase. It was a kind of short scrutiny of Shakespearean views of justice and the law. We were very taken with the opening sequence, a man engaged in some detailed housework involving a vacuum cleaner, while one of his colleagues wielded a bottle of spray’n’wipe among the balustrades. They were surprisingly thorough. The ‘Court functionary’ who disregarded us while displaying her legs along the bench was more disturbing. Some of us couldn’t help but comment on the poor showing it made, but in the end we did cotton on. It was all part of the show, and an interesting lead-in by the Actors to a trial scene from The Winter’s Tale, the trial of Hermione, accused of adultery by her husband.

Curiously, the last evening at the Supreme Court I attended, when QUT Law Library formally transferred its Pacific collection to the Court Library, the ABC journalist Sean Dorney also discussed the topic of adultery. He made the observation that under customary law in the Pacific Islands, adultery is viewed as of far greater criminal importance than murder, because of the problems it introduces into a tribal society. Plus ca change, and all that. But I digress.

The great Shakespearian set piece for lawyers (and actors) is of course the trial scene from The Merchant of Venice, which was the second of the two segments performed last night. As a nod to the fact that we were sitting in an actual Court room, some part of the play was screened as video evidence and was convincingly hard to see and understand. I thought this a clever idea not executed with a proper sense of the audience, as so much of the crucial language was hastily and inaudibly spoken. There are certain protocols required of Shakespearian actors and intelligibility must surely be among them. But Portia did her stuff and came up trumps, and it was all very satisfying.

It was an evening which combined an interweaving of the real work of a Court, as we ‘rose’ for each of Judge Nase’s entrances, alongside the other work of theatre and good drama. I enjoyed it a lot.