BY G. CONNOR SALTER
Dr. Sarah Waters teaches English Literature at the University of Buckingham, and has a unique role in Inklings studies. She has presented and written about Tolkien, Barfield, and Lewis, but her specialty is how C.S. Lewis intersects with Shakespeare studies. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Inklings Studies, Foundation, Shakespeare, and Sehnsucht. She has presented at many conferences and events, including the International Interdisciplinary C. S. Lewis Conference at Alexandru Ioan Cuza University and the Annual C.S. Lewis Symposium at Ulster University.
She was kind enough to answer a few questions.
Interview Questions
What was your first exposure to Shakespeare?
My first memory of encountering Shakespeare was when I was about 11 years old. My mum asked me to sit down and read a retelling of The Tempest, in an illustrated Lamb’s Tale of Shakespeare. I put it off most of the afternoon, but with much encouragement (and cajoling) I was told, when I still hadn’t some hours later even started it, that if I did there would be a connected reward that evening of seeing the play in question live. As an avid reader, I shouldn’t have needed persuading but I was, I suppose, feeling especially lazy that day.
In any case, I read the story and went with my parents to see a student production of The Tempest in a college chapel over in Cambridge. I remember the “strobe lighting” warning sign, Prospero’s banging of his staff to enact sparks and magic, but, I confess, little else, well besides thoroughly enjoying it I mean. A few years later, I would study that same play in school. Then Macbeth. Then Othello. I really had a hard time understanding, let along liking, Othello. Seems strange to say now, I suppose. But, truthfully, it wasn’t really until I was a final year undergraduate when I really started to get properly excited about Shakespeare. So, it was a slow-burn journey in, I suppose.
What was your first exposure to C.S. Lewis?
Like many, I suppose, my first encounter with Lewis was through Narnia. I was read certainly The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as a child. And I think others in the series too. We didn’t own all the Narnia books though, and it was until I was a grad student when I finally sat down to read the whole series through. I remember somewhat precociously arguing with my dad that I had been read them in the wrong order when an acquaintance told me Magician’s Nephew was first and I found the “1” marker on the spine in a local bookshop. I would later borrow it from the public library and be glad I was read them in the order I was.
Around the same time, the same “correcting” acquaintance made me feel even more ignorant than usual when she mentioned that it was all an attempt of Lewis to convert his readers and couldn’t believe me when I somewhat shamefacedly said I had had no idea up until that point that that was even a part of the story. As a teen, my dad said he tried to get me to read The Screwtape Letters, but I didn’t take him off on the offer. I wish I had, but sadly I don’t even remember turning down the offer. I then reencountered Lewis only later, as an undergraduate, when I was studying Milton and we looked at a brief excerpt of Lewis on Satan (and why he gets all the best lines) from Preface to Paradise Lost.
As you’ve said multiple times in your research, not everyone thinks of Shakespeare when they think of C.S. Lewis. How did you become interested in this connection?
I came (back) to Lewis via Shakespeare really. I was interested in Shakespeare’s afterlives and the way his plays are adapted and appropriated today. I knew some work had been done on Tolkien and Shakespeare (and yes, the walking trees) but I had a kind of hunch that maybe there might be something to do on Lewis and Shakespeare. I pitched a research project on Narnia and Shakespeare and (luckily for me) turns out there are plenty of links to be drawn there and this then led to a whole series of rabbit holes (which I love), archive trips (which I love at least as much as the former) and discoveries which opened up the much bigger area in which I now work on Lewis and Shakespeare.
Many people probably aren’t aware that Lewis even wrote about Shakespeare. Where are some places we see him discussing Shakespeare?
That’s true. “Hamlet: The Prince or the Poem,” his lecture for the British Academy, is the most extended in terms of single focus on Shakespeare. But there’s also his essay “Variation in Shakespeare and Others” and his section on Shakespeare’s Narrative Poems and Sonnets in the Oxford History of English Literature volume.
What are some benefits and challenges of writing in an under-explored section of Lewis studies?
There’s a real chance to say something new, make new discoveries, be the first to see or tentatively date (with the help of Charlie Starr’s excellent charts and expertise) as yet unpublished matter, reassess previous judgements, and shed new light on Lewis and his writings. And importantly, it is great fun both making discoveries and sharing them. I know not everyone is going to be as excited as I am about Lewis and Shakespeare, but it doesn’t mean I don’t get excited telling people about them. And sometimes, happily, that excitement is returned. I love the digging, excavating, and exploring that comes from both archival work and adding more nuance to our impression of Lewis and his writings.
Have you found support from other scholars as you explored this topic?
Absolutely. I feel very privileged to work in a field where there is a genuine sense of community. I fear naming names for fear I will neglect someone, but I have particularly benefited from the support and encouragement (and genuine excitement about my work) from many in the Inkling Folk Fellowship community. Its Director, Dr. Joe Ricke, was just about the first person I had ever heard from (back when I submitted an abstract in 2019 for the 2020 Colloquium he was then organizing) who had also thought seriously about the importance of working on Lewis and Shakespeare. My first encounter with Lewis scholars was through the Oxford CS Lewis society which, in truth, I found rather unfriendly to non-University of Oxford and/or non-American members. With a few happy exceptions. But when I braved beginning to touch base with other scholars in the field on the other side of the Atlantic I found to my happy surprise a much more welcoming crowd, early on in my career and consistently thereafter Dr. Don King (Montreat College) has been very supportive, and, connectedly, the Inklings Fellowship and the PHC over in Montreat, as well as regular attendee of and fellow Lewis scholar and encourager, Dr. Crystal Hurd. Just before Covid hit, I was awarded the Young Scholars Shuster Grant from the Wade Center whose Directors and Bob Shuster himself, have also taken a keen interest in my work, alongside encouragement from Wheaton College’s Batson Shakespeare Society (who invited me to speak on Lewis and Shakespeare last year).
You’ve reviewed a stage adaptation of Lewis’ work as well as written about his books. Does his work translate well to the stage?
I have seen a couple of stage versions of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe the first as a child at the Bexhill-on-Sea Theatre, and then, the more recent production (in London) I reviewed. They made some changes which I think worked really well and, yes, while there are clearly limitations with the theatre form when it comes to, for instance, talking animals, I think it can translate really well on stage. Like hearing the book aloud, seeing a production on stage can reveal different emphases or aspects of the work that might otherwise slip our notice. For me, at least one aspect of Sally Cookson’s adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was the inclusion of the accented Professor and his cat Schrödinger and the way this made me see Lewis’s wardrobe in a new light (read the review for more on that).
Tolkien makes some interesting comments in “On Fairy Stories” about whether fantasy stories translate well to drama. For example, he talks about being disappointed after seeing a children’s pantomime production of “Puss-in-Boots” and wonders whether fantasy can ever work on stage. What are some obstacles you see to making fantasy work on stage?
I suspect he would not have enjoyed the puppetry or costumes of that most recent production, given his view that “Fantastic forms are not to be counterfeited. Men dressed up as talking animals may achieve buffoonery or mimicry, but they do not achieve Fantasy.” But I think we ought to remind ourselves that Tolkien means something very specific when he says fantasy and had a particularly nineteenth-century view of theater. He means, as he goes on to say, something that is of the secondary not the primary world. As such when it is depicted in any form of art aside from literature (visual art, drama etc.), it is only a shadow of the terror or beauty of what it would be in the imagined reality of the secondary world. It is butchered by attempts to depict it to visualize it to articulate it in our primary world. At least that’s what Tolkien thinks. I could suggest some reasons to disagree.
You’ve also written about an understudied Inklings scholar—Owen Barfield. Specifically, about an early poem Lewis co-wrote with Barfield. How did you come across this work?
Charlie Starr had been asked to date a series of undated (and largely unpublished) Lewis works at the Wade, “De Arca Noe” among them. He got in touch to ask if I would be able to check the Bodleian for the original. And so began many months of digging, leading to the final article in the Journal of Inklings Studies (2023), which publishes the poem for the first time along with the whole story of what I found and the back story and contexts of the poem and a series of connected manuscripts too.
You’ve also discussed Lewis’s science fiction in your essay on The Tempest and Out of the Silent Planet. You mentioned in that essay that Lewis’ science fiction hasn’t become as well-known as Narnia. Are there any books of the Ransom trilogy you’d especially like to see scholars explore in the future?
I think there is plenty more to say about all three. I’d like to see more on That Hideous Strength perhaps especially. But Out of the Silent Planet is my favorite of them, so I’d certainly welcome more scholarship on that one too.
You co-edited a volume of An Unexpected Journal with Joe Ricke that explored Shakespeare in various ways. How did that opportunity come about?
Good question. I had been made aware by William O’Flaherty that Unexpected Journal were doing a special issue on Shakespeare and Cultural Apologetics, and encouraged to submit an article. About a week later, Joe Ricke, who had already been in touch with the editors of the journal, and who knew of my work on Lewis and Shakespeare, wrote to ask me if I would be interested in co-guest editing the issue with him. Lots of long nights of reading and re-reading submissions and painstaking editing many times over, but Joe was fantastic to work with, as were all our contributors, and I enjoyed exploring the idea of cultural apologetics and Shakespeare from each of our contributors’ different angles as we wrestled the issue into shape.
What can you tell us about your upcoming book on Lewis and Shakespeare?
My monograph on Lewis and Shakespeare is under contract with Kent State University Press, and I am very much looking forward to sharing different aspects of Lewis’s engagements with Shakespeare.
Any other projects you’re currently working on?
I’m working on a chapter for the new Routledge Companion to C.S. Lewis, a collaborative book project, and a whole host of articles on a series of side projects on Lewis, Shakespeare, and both.
More information about Waters’ work can be found on her Academia.edu page and on her University of Buckingham directory page.
