In the final scene of Shakespeare's Love's Labor's Lost, two simultaneous but unequal games are played, one by the Navarrese lords and one by the ladies of France they are wooing. The King of Navarre and his three lords, who have sworn to seclude themselves from society, disguise themselves as Muscovites, aiming to visit the ladies unrecognized so as not to be scorned for breaking their oath. The ladies of France, tipped off, put on masks and trade love tokens so that each of the men unwittingly swears devotion to the wrong woman. The lords are players in the masquing tradition in which men wearing fantastical costumes would court their beloveds in disguise. The ladies, too, become players when they “change […] favors,” a phrase referring simultaneously to exchanging physical badges or markers and to altering their faces by wearing vizards. The men's game of deception is outdone by the women, whose counter-game of misdirection one-ups theirs. At the end of the interlude, after all is revealed, the lords, suitably humiliated, bring on the clownish pageant of the Nine Worthies, for “’tis some policy/ To have one show worse than the King's and his company” (5.2.512–513).

This episode captures some of the myriad fascinations and challenges that lie at the intersection of games and theatre. In Shakespeare's stageplay, the masque of Russians and the ladies’ counteraction are imagined as a kind of competitive recreation.

Wonder is a key emotion to Shakespeare’s work as a whole, from first to last. Three principal sites of the evocation of wonder are discussed: in narrative, in character, and in language. Discussion of the first focuses on Shakespeare’s career-long interest in romance narratives of marvel, drawing on both ancient and popular traditions. These traditions inform Shakespeare’s writing from The Comedy of Errors through the last plays. In them marvellous events – especially involving recoveries and reunions – reveal a world unexpected in its amplitude, larger than human knowledge can easily understand. Audiences are encouraged to share this perception of the world-opening possibilities of poetry. Wonder experienced by characters provides an opportunity for audiences to examine closely the mechanics of the affect, and the attempts of persons to negotiate and emerge from it into knowledge. Wonder in language touches on Shakespeare’s characteristic extremity of rhetorical style, particularly his use of figures such as paradox, hyperbole, and catachresis. Altogether, this commitment to wonder reveals Shakespeare as a poet of an unclosed universe – one ever rich in possibility and the unexpected.

tom bishop: Which of the plays of Samuel Beckett have you directed?

roger blin: All of his first plays, Godot in 1953 and Fin de partie [Endgame] in 1957. Then, later, I directed La Dernière Bande [Krapp's Last Tape]; Jean Vilar was the producer, when he was at the Recamier. It was with an actor called R. J. Chauffard, who was extremely good. Unfortunately, Beckett didn't like it very much—perhaps because he would have preferred me to play Krapp myself. I was probably too tired at the time to do it.…Then I directed Oh les beaux jours [Happy Days] with Barrault producing.

bishop: How did you first meet Sam? Was it to do Waiting for Godot?

blin: Well, we first met in 1948. He had recently finished writing Godot and had just sent off the play. His wife, Suzanne, was taking care of all this. At that time I was director at the Gaité Montparnasse. I'd just directed Strindberg's Ghost Sonata. Without knowing me at all, Beckett had been to see the play. In fact, he'd been twice. After that, he sent me his play Waiting for Godot, together with his first play, Eleuthéria, which I'm just about the only person to know.