‘Unfailingly big-hearted and generous': Beloved Herald cartoonist John Shakespeare dies after cancer battle
Shakespeare was born in Brisbane and grew up devouring the cartoons in Mad and Cracked magazines – a fascination that later made Tony Abbott, in whom he saw Mad 's Alfred E. Neuman, one of his favourite prime ministers to draw. 'Probably the greatest political cartoon character of all time,' he once said of Abbott, 'from his ears to his Speedos.'
A gig fixing photocopiers at the Courier Mail led to a job in the art room, despite no formal training. He moved south to work at Fairfax's Sydney Sun in 1985, hoping to become a political cartoonist, and when it closed was transferred to The Sydney Morning Herald. The paper didn't need a political cartoonist, so he was told to draw caricatures instead.
Wilcox started a few years later. 'He was cool but not too cool, he always had his shoulder-length hair, and he liked to ride a motorbike,' she recalls.
Letch says the always-affable Shakes transformed when he climbed onto two wheels (he gave up when his son was young, given the dangers of motorbikes): 'He's like an athlete, he can do wheelies, change gears – on a pushbike, he can go through the gears on one wheel,' he said.
Shakespeare was prolific. His work ranged from intricate front-page budget illustrations to pocket cartoons on the letters page and a caricature of nearly every departing Herald staffer over decades. He and Letch both hated drawing the cryptic racing tip for the form guide and, as the number of artists on staff dwindled, Letch recalls refusing to do it any more, but Shakespeare 'did it up until the end,' he says. 'He put the same amount of love into that as he would into anything else.'
A little while ago, Letch helped move some drawings into Shakespeare's attic. 'There must have been about 6000 there,' he says. Shakespeare estimated he worked on 15,000 to 20,000 drawings in his career. 'He had a massive output, and no job was too small,' Letch says. 'He gave everything the same attention.'
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Wilcox said his willingness to say 'yes' and do his work graciously, with good humour, was part of what helped him leave 'such a big mark on the paper,' she says. 'You do it with grace and good heart, and that's him – that's the way he rolls. It's made him extremely beloved.'
To the end, Shakespeare agonised over the creative process. 'I always say cartooning is fun when it's done,' Shakespeare once told the Queensland Law Society newsletter Proctor, for which he drew early in his career in Brisbane. 'The process of creating a funny cartoon can be quite excruciating – I actually don't enjoy that part. Once I have the idea, I can relax a bit and draw it, which I enjoy.'
His political favourites grew, although it took time for him to develop an affinity. 'When Scott Morrison first gained prominence, I struggled with his likeness; he just didn't strike me as good cartoon material,' he once said. 'Now he's one of my favourites.' His top five, he told Proctor in 2023, were Morrison, John Howard, Dan Andrews, Gladys Berejiklian (his personal favourite) and, of course, Abbott.
They loved him too. The warmth with which he approached his work meant many famous Australians are proud to have been his subjects. Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce has a cartoon of himself and wife Vicky Campion hanging in their living room, while there is a Shakespeare of Albanese walking Toto the dog on the wall at The Lodge.
The country's richest person, Gina Rinehart, also has a Shakespeare in Hancock Prospecting's office. It's a portrait of Margaret Thatcher wearing a Joh (Bjelke-Petersen) for PM badge, with the famous Thatcher quote, 'There can be no liberty unless there is economic liberty'. The portrait combines 'two brave and sensible leaders', says Rinehart's spokesman.
In a recent Five Minutes with Fitz interview, Shakespeare was pragmatic about his cancer diagnosis, saying his mantra was 'accept, adjust, adapt'. 'Once I know that something is irreversible, I have no choice but to accept it. There is a certain sense of peace that comes from acceptance. It eliminates the need to ask 'why me?' and 'if only',' he told FitzSimons.
Shields said Shakespeare's 'trademark positivity, optimism and ability to see the humour in everything – including his own health battle – was with him until the end'.
Cartoonist Lindsay Foyle said Shakespeare would be remembered as a talented cartoonist and as a lovely person. 'One of the nice things about John's caricatures is they nearly always have a touch of whimsy about them, not like some caricatures where they make the person grotesque and ugly,' he said. 'Even when he didn't like the person, it was always humorous.'
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Sydney Morning Herald
a day ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
The most demanding role Hazem Shammas has ever played
When Shakespeare wrote his tragedy Coriolanus he was coming off the back of an outrageous run of successes. In just a few years he'd penned Othello, King Lear, Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra. This was a writer at the peak of his powers, and with Coriolanus he pushed himself into even more daring territory. And yet the coming Bell Shakespeare production of Coriolanus is the first that Australia's pre-eminent adapters of the Bard have mounted in almost 30 years, and only the second time Bell has tackled the play at all. The last time around, the title role was played by company founder John Bell. This time, the fearsome Coriolanus will be incarnated by Hazem Shammas, who both wowed audiences and divided critics as Macbeth in Bell's 2023 production. 'I am working the hardest I ever have. A marathon is an understatement. I thought Macbeth was a marathon but this way surpasses it,' he says. Why is this play performed more rarely than Shakespeare's more obvious crowd-pleasers? Shammas says it's a more complex and ambitious work. 'It's a big block of granite and it is like Michelangelo carving his forms out of this rock. That's hard work. Maybe we're not liking hard work any more.' The rewards are many, though: 'the depth and complexity of his poetry, the writing and the insights, and the way he expresses psychological and dramatic states'. Bell's Coriolanus gives audiences the rare chance to see a Shakespeare play they might know nothing about. The story is surprisingly simple, Shammas says. After defeating his enemies in the Italian town of Corioli, the Roman general Caius Marcius is given the nickname Coriolanus. As he ascends the ranks of Rome's political power structures, however, he grows angry at the democracy that gives non-military citizens any form of power and eventually defects to the side of his former foes, to team up and try to take on Rome itself. 'It's either Rome's destruction or his destruction. He's a highly decorated war hero with not much political nous,' says Hammas. The machinations of war hawks and power-hungry despots certainly aren't alien to our lives today but Shammas says this is because they've always been with us. 'It's a study on power and its tentacles. However they're playing out now, it's not new. It's cyclical, and it keeps happening and happening.' For that reason he thinks of Coriolanus as a kind of morality play. It's provocative but he hopes audiences will engage with what they see. 'If they're willing to bring themselves to it as political humans with ethics and morals and ask themselves questions honestly about what comes up in the play, they're going to have a great night out. They're going to take something away.' Not that a night at the theatre is any kind of cure-all. 'It makes me sad because we keep telling these stories, and we keep having these rituals together to share these stories, and we don't seem to learn, or we don't even see it around us.' Coriolanus himself is a monster, Shammas says: 'There should be absolutely no sympathy for him.' At the same time, you don't have to look far to see monsters these days. 'I guess we all have capacity to be monsters. That's perhaps what it's about. Temptations of power … maybe being a monster is not that hard. This guy, it doesn't seem like there's much effort in his blood-lust because society allows it. Or society worships it, actually.' Shammas is keen to emphasise that the production doesn't treat a play by one of the great masters of theatre as a vehicle for any particular politics of today. It doesn't need to. 'What's fascinating is that Shakespeare can sit and have these meditations and write this for us to ponder 420 years later. It's all in the text. It's all in the script.' It's one of those roles that requires its performer to have the sort of life experience a young actor probably can't claim. Like King Lear, you don't give Coriolanus to a 20-year-old. Now 50, Hammas is confident he has the goods: 'the wisdom … well, at least, experience'. He's certainly enjoying a long streak of success. For his turn in 2018's TV thriller Safe Harbour he won a Silver Logie for most outstanding supporting actor. He was nominated for an Audience Choice Award for The Twelve at the 2022 AACTAs and has had recurring roles in Bump, Ladies in Black and other film and TV productions. I am working the hardest I ever have. A marathon is an understatement. Live theatre is a different beast, of course. You'd think the challenge of such a demanding role, night after night, would be heightened even further given Coriolanus' wife Virgilia will be played by his real-life partner Suzannah McDonald. The last time they played opposite each other was in Bell's 2013 production of The Comedy of Errors. The tone of that play couldn't be further from this tragedy. The creative bug runs in Shammas' extended family, too. His cousin Hanna is one of Haifa's leading satirical comics; his uncle and godfather Anton is a novelist and professor in Michigan; another cousin has made his name as a cinematographer. 'You know, Palestinians – we're storytellers,' he says. Not that any of that was enough to have the young Hazem's parents unreservedly encourage his acting career. 'I had a first-gen ethnic father who said I had to get a proper job before I became an actor. So I did a degree and worked in construction and probably should have flown to Dubai and built towers when all my other graduate friends were travelling over there.' He maintained his interest in the arts while studying for that more practical degree, and the skills he learnt have proven surprisingly helpful since. 'Dabbling in the arts and creative thinking was a nice balance to dabbling in engineering and constructive thinking. That's such an amazing skillset that I have that I can apply to all processes. To acquit projects is a skill that everyone should be able to learn.' He did finally study acting – a one-year course at Sydney's Actors Centre led to a three-year degree at the prestigious Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA). He'd satisfied his parents' pragmatic expectations and was free to pursue his dream. 'The most beautiful success story about my parents is that they came out here with nothing and, yes, they're poor, but they did give us education and freedom. That's the most perfect legacy.' Loading Hammas has three young sons of his own now and, with two actors as parents, they're growing up around film sets and theatres. The nature of the business means periods working long days and nights alternate with more hands-on stretches with the kids. 'If I'm not working I'm looking after three boys. They're my buddies and we meet the world together every day. We bushwalk, we ride bikes, we make stuff. We paint, we draw, we read, write.' His eldest has even started sharing the stage with his dad during poetry readings recently. Would he give his own children a free pass if they wanted to follow in his creative footsteps? He laughs. 'Not unless they do something proper first.'
The Age
a day ago
- The Age
The most demanding role Hazem Shammas has ever played
When Shakespeare wrote his tragedy Coriolanus he was coming off the back of an outrageous run of successes. In just a few years he'd penned Othello, King Lear, Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra. This was a writer at the peak of his powers, and with Coriolanus he pushed himself into even more daring territory. And yet the coming Bell Shakespeare production of Coriolanus is the first that Australia's pre-eminent adapters of the Bard have mounted in almost 30 years, and only the second time Bell has tackled the play at all. The last time around, the title role was played by company founder John Bell. This time, the fearsome Coriolanus will be incarnated by Hazem Shammas, who both wowed audiences and divided critics as Macbeth in Bell's 2023 production. 'I am working the hardest I ever have. A marathon is an understatement. I thought Macbeth was a marathon but this way surpasses it,' he says. Why is this play performed more rarely than Shakespeare's more obvious crowd-pleasers? Shammas says it's a more complex and ambitious work. 'It's a big block of granite and it is like Michelangelo carving his forms out of this rock. That's hard work. Maybe we're not liking hard work any more.' The rewards are many, though: 'the depth and complexity of his poetry, the writing and the insights, and the way he expresses psychological and dramatic states'. Bell's Coriolanus gives audiences the rare chance to see a Shakespeare play they might know nothing about. The story is surprisingly simple, Shammas says. After defeating his enemies in the Italian town of Corioli, the Roman general Caius Marcius is given the nickname Coriolanus. As he ascends the ranks of Rome's political power structures, however, he grows angry at the democracy that gives non-military citizens any form of power and eventually defects to the side of his former foes, to team up and try to take on Rome itself. 'It's either Rome's destruction or his destruction. He's a highly decorated war hero with not much political nous,' says Hammas. The machinations of war hawks and power-hungry despots certainly aren't alien to our lives today but Shammas says this is because they've always been with us. 'It's a study on power and its tentacles. However they're playing out now, it's not new. It's cyclical, and it keeps happening and happening.' For that reason he thinks of Coriolanus as a kind of morality play. It's provocative but he hopes audiences will engage with what they see. 'If they're willing to bring themselves to it as political humans with ethics and morals and ask themselves questions honestly about what comes up in the play, they're going to have a great night out. They're going to take something away.' Not that a night at the theatre is any kind of cure-all. 'It makes me sad because we keep telling these stories, and we keep having these rituals together to share these stories, and we don't seem to learn, or we don't even see it around us.' Coriolanus himself is a monster, Shammas says: 'There should be absolutely no sympathy for him.' At the same time, you don't have to look far to see monsters these days. 'I guess we all have capacity to be monsters. That's perhaps what it's about. Temptations of power … maybe being a monster is not that hard. This guy, it doesn't seem like there's much effort in his blood-lust because society allows it. Or society worships it, actually.' Shammas is keen to emphasise that the production doesn't treat a play by one of the great masters of theatre as a vehicle for any particular politics of today. It doesn't need to. 'What's fascinating is that Shakespeare can sit and have these meditations and write this for us to ponder 420 years later. It's all in the text. It's all in the script.' It's one of those roles that requires its performer to have the sort of life experience a young actor probably can't claim. Like King Lear, you don't give Coriolanus to a 20-year-old. Now 50, Hammas is confident he has the goods: 'the wisdom … well, at least, experience'. He's certainly enjoying a long streak of success. For his turn in 2018's TV thriller Safe Harbour he won a Silver Logie for most outstanding supporting actor. He was nominated for an Audience Choice Award for The Twelve at the 2022 AACTAs and has had recurring roles in Bump, Ladies in Black and other film and TV productions. I am working the hardest I ever have. A marathon is an understatement. Live theatre is a different beast, of course. You'd think the challenge of such a demanding role, night after night, would be heightened even further given Coriolanus' wife Virgilia will be played by his real-life partner Suzannah McDonald. The last time they played opposite each other was in Bell's 2013 production of The Comedy of Errors. The tone of that play couldn't be further from this tragedy. The creative bug runs in Shammas' extended family, too. His cousin Hanna is one of Haifa's leading satirical comics; his uncle and godfather Anton is a novelist and professor in Michigan; another cousin has made his name as a cinematographer. 'You know, Palestinians – we're storytellers,' he says. Not that any of that was enough to have the young Hazem's parents unreservedly encourage his acting career. 'I had a first-gen ethnic father who said I had to get a proper job before I became an actor. So I did a degree and worked in construction and probably should have flown to Dubai and built towers when all my other graduate friends were travelling over there.' He maintained his interest in the arts while studying for that more practical degree, and the skills he learnt have proven surprisingly helpful since. 'Dabbling in the arts and creative thinking was a nice balance to dabbling in engineering and constructive thinking. That's such an amazing skillset that I have that I can apply to all processes. To acquit projects is a skill that everyone should be able to learn.' He did finally study acting – a one-year course at Sydney's Actors Centre led to a three-year degree at the prestigious Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA). He'd satisfied his parents' pragmatic expectations and was free to pursue his dream. 'The most beautiful success story about my parents is that they came out here with nothing and, yes, they're poor, but they did give us education and freedom. That's the most perfect legacy.' Loading Hammas has three young sons of his own now and, with two actors as parents, they're growing up around film sets and theatres. The nature of the business means periods working long days and nights alternate with more hands-on stretches with the kids. 'If I'm not working I'm looking after three boys. They're my buddies and we meet the world together every day. We bushwalk, we ride bikes, we make stuff. We paint, we draw, we read, write.' His eldest has even started sharing the stage with his dad during poetry readings recently. Would he give his own children a free pass if they wanted to follow in his creative footsteps? He laughs. 'Not unless they do something proper first.'
Sydney Morning Herald
4 days ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
This modern homage to Jane Austen is genuinely charming, but it's no Clueless
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