Supposing a Blackboard to be a Bear

Abstract

Denim was on its way to Wahroonga (a northern Sydney suburb) in 1958, but not everybody was ready for it. The problem was that the legs wriggling their way into contemporary black jeans belonged not to local teenagers but to actors playing Hamlet and Henry the Fifth. Expressing her reservations, the Principal of Abbotsleigh School argued that ‘I think children are much more interested in costume than in jeans, which they wear themselves … I always suspect people use these modern costumes because they’re not good enough to perform Shakespeare in the proper way’ (The Sun Herald, 2 April 1958). A Sydney schoolgirl, Jean Jacobs, was similarly doubtful: ‘Before entering Ye Olde School Hall, I had been a little dubious as to what a performance of Shakespeare would be like, with only a minimum of Dramatis Personae, and those few wearing jeans!’ (Jacobs, 1958, 1). Both commentators imagine a tension between jeans and a ‘proper’ Shakespeare, an author perhaps at home in the fusty ‘Ye Olde School Hall’ but certainly not in rebellious denim.