Poor Naked Wretches

Winner - Best Book, Publication or Recording * Falstaff Awards 2022 (PlayShakespeare.com) *
The book is a judicious balance of social history, theatre and literary study, and yields many well-earned insights . . . His enjoyment of Shakespeare is palpable and engaging throughout . . . His highly readable account is both compassionate and appreciative of nuance, detail and the ways in which dramatic poetry enlarges our ability to empathise. * BBC History magazine *
This study comes from Unwin’s work as a theatre director, and his frustration with the way the industry traditionally treats Shakespeare’s working-class characters. As an introduction to the characters themselves . . . Poor Naked Wretches usefully and enjoyably allows us to focus on roles that are not usually placed centre stage. -- Molly Clark * Times Literary Supplement *
Unwin's book, his title recalling Lear's anguish at his long neglect of the poor, is as crisp as those productions, and beautifully illustrated with sixteenth-century engravings . . . This is a wonderful subject: these figures of everyday life and the everyday struggle to survive give to almost every play not "colour" or "comic relief", but weight, density and three-dimensional reality . . . This is a fresh, moving, richly rewarding book by an old Shakespeare hand whose knowledge of the plays is deep and humane. * The Tablet *
Working-class characters are just as crucial to The Bard’s work as "the rich and powerful" according to this sharp study from theater director Unwin (The Well Read Play). Aiming to upend the notion that Shakespeare was a snobbish playwright with contempt for the poor, Unwin makes a case that his depictions of the lower classes are "bursting with life and independence of mind . . . [and] make a vital contribution to the drama and its underlying purposes." . . . Unwin’s arguments are enlivened by vivid historical context . . . This original spin on Shakespearean studies delivers. * Publishers Weekly *
Poor Naked Wretches is a compelling read for a general audience of Shakespeare and theater practitioners and enthusiasts . . . Unwin’s approach, which includes equal consideration of all of the figures on the stage, demonstrates the value of reading Shakespeare in terms of performance. In doing so, Unwin argues that Shakespeare creates a vast world of individualized characters from across society. Highly recommended. * Choice *
Unwin's strength is that he comes from a theatrical background, and has spent years working to bring these people to life on the stage. This first-hand, practical experience informs every chapter of this well-considered and detailed text. Throughout its pages, the reader gets the sense that each example, each paragraph, is based on decades of discussions, trials and errors. It is obvious that Unwin knows the plays inside-out, not just as texts to be examined but as living, breathing entities that, when performed, represent all of the varying shades of humanity. * Get History *
All who relish the Bard will be delighted by stage director Stephen Unwin’s terrific book Poor Naked Wretches. For my money, the volume should be made required reading for all the directors (in Boston and elsewhere) who routinely patronize Shakespeare’s proletarian characters, treating them as dumb clowns, only fit for “comic relief.” This study makes a convincing case that the Bard’s concern for the lower classes is essential to how he sees the world, and that his radical sensitivity to political injustice is closer in spirit to the iconoclasm of Bertolt Brecht and Karl Marx than many critics will admit. * The Arts Fuse *
Fuelled by curiosity rather than ideology, Unwin examines the characters in the plays who are all too often ignored or patronised by academics, actors and directors – the characters whom, as King Lear says, we have taken too little care of. It’s an engaging, persuasive and very well-researched book from a director who has extensive first-hand experience of Shakespeare’s plays. His book confirms the claim of the universality of the plays, their embrace of the individuality of each human being. * Sir Richard Eyre *
Stephen Unwin has written an effervescent, fresh and necessary book. There is no room for favourites in Shakespeare’s world, and Unwin has related this to the neglected question of class in a manner that all directors, actors and lovers of Shakespeare should recognise and relish. * Dominic Dromgoole, former artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe *
In Poor Naked Wretches Unwin patiently accumulates the empirical evidence for a proper understanding of the voices of the poor and working people and their crucial role in any true, dynamic reading of Shakespeare’s plays. He reminds us to pay attention to the detail of the scenes, until we see that nothing in Shakespeare is merely jovial “comic relief” or charming “local colour”, that the marginalised are in constant dialogue with centre stage, and that the restlessness, eloquence and suffering of the common people should play a more central role in our understanding of Shakespeare’s achievement. * Sir Michael Boyd, former artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company *
Now here is a book that will make you see Shakespeare’s plays in a whole new light . . . What reading Stephen Unwin’s book teaches us is that there lies a whole new dynamic of the great man’s plays. It is the poor and the working class, the common people that go to make up his plays that really are missed. Together with a series of images in the book they go to understand about the lives of the ordinary people that actually mirrored Shakespeare’s own life . . . An outstanding book. Even if you are not an avid Shakespeare reader or watcher of his plays, it gives a voice to the poor and the working people . . . I have to say just how well the book is laid out, and the research Stephen has done to make this such a fascinating read. -- John Fish * The Last Word *