Inspired cultural and funding pressures, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre are asking – what may we be?

The Royal Shakespeare Company is one of the few theatrical institutions named for and aimed at a single dramatist. But, the ghost of its dedicatee – if he were to visit the latest RSC production – might be surprised that Born With Teeth depicts Will Shakespeare as a treacherous mediocrity who, as Salieri does with Mozart in Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus, plots to enhance his own career at the cost of a superior talent. In this case, that talent is in the form of Christopher Marlowe, whose youthful death, American playwright Liz Duffy Adams suggests, proved very convenient for the middle initial of the RSC.

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