Shades of Grey in Shakespeare Behind Bars

One of the first lessons we learn as children is the difference between good and evil. We’re taught these concepts from very young ages with Disney movies and fairytales that present us with characters that fit easily into categories of either “good” or “evil.” Some people never get out of this frame of thought. Some people always view good and evil as a black and white concept, when this is not typically the case in the real world. The character of people in the world cannot be defined by black and white ideas of good and evil, but by shades of grey. This is a hard thing to understand or to accept, especially when regarding people who have committed heinous crimes. But I think what makes Shakespeare so enduring is that he understood these shades of grey. Shakespeare understood and explored human nature so extensively in his plays, and that’s what makes them so resilient with time.

Shakespeare Behind Bars was a fantastic exploration of this aspect of Shakespeare’s writing. The film, while documenting a prison’s production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, also served as an intensive character study of modern prison inmates who have found resonance in Shakespeare’s plays. I thought it was really interesting how the documentary wasn’t so much an account of the production of the play, but an account of the inmates’ experiences with the play and with Shakespeare’s characters. Criminals are regarded in our society as the lowest of the low, but this documentary made the bold assertion that though Shakespeare is typically considered a high-brow form of art for the educated and elite parts of society, prisoners and criminals have the most tangible understanding of Shakespeare’s plays.

I also thought it was really telling that the focus of the documentary wasn’t on the inmates struggling to understand Shakespeare. Actually, from the point of view of the audience, these inmates seem to thoroughly understand and connect with Shakespeare’s characters very rapidly. This emphasizes that though Shakespeare’s plays are associated with high-brow culture, at the time Shakespeare wrote them he geared them toward the lower classes. One of the prisoners even says that a prison production of Shakespeare is especially fitting since actors during Shakespeare’s time were considered thieves.

I was also really affected by the documentary’s broaching the inmates’ crimes, and the subsequent treatment of these crimes. Most of the crimes committed by these inmates, inmates who the audience is consistently rooting for, are really serious and disturbing crimes. The documentary doesn’t downplay their seriousness in any way, and it doesn’t try to hide their crimes either. But somehow you still feel for these people, and you find it hard to believe that they ever did these heinous things that they’ve been convicted of. That’s where the shades of grey come in. The audience is able to see these people as real people with potential to do good in the future. Though they have done evil in the past, they are not entirely consumed by evil. Shakespeare’s characters reflect these qualities in the inmates in this film, which is why this documentary is such an effective character study of these inmates. The prisoners are forced to face their own demons as they learn about the characters and roles they are taking on for the play.