Shakespeare in performance
Thousands of performances of William Shakespeare's plays have been staged since the end of the 16th century. While Shakespeare was alive, many of his greatest plays were performed by the Lord Chamberlain's Men and King's Men acting companies at the Globe and Blackfriars Theatres.[1][2] Among the actors of these original performances were Richard Burbage (who played the title role in the first performances of Hamlet, Othello, Richard III and King Lear),[3] Richard Cowley, and William Kempe.
Shakespeare's plays continued to be staged after his death until the
Victorian productions of Shakespeare often sought pictorial effects in "authentic" historical costumes and sets. The staging of the reported sea fights and barge scene in Antony and Cleopatra was one spectacular example.[4] Such elaborate scenery for the frequently changing locations in Shakespeare's plays often led to a loss of pace. Towards the end of the 19th century, William Poel led a reaction against this heavy style. In a series of "Elizabethan" productions on a thrust stage, he paid fresh attention to the structure of the drama. In the early 20th century, Harley Granville-Barker directed quarto and folio texts with few cuts,[5] while Edward Gordon Craig and others called for abstract staging. Both approaches have influenced the variety of Shakespearean production styles seen today.[6]
Performances during Shakespeare's lifetime
The troupe for which Shakespeare wrote his earliest plays is not known with certainty; the title page of the 1594 edition of Titus Andronicus reveals that it had been acted by three different companies.
The Globe, like London's other open-roofed public theatres, employed a thrust-stage, covered by a cloth canopy. A two-storey facade at the rear of the stage hid the tiring house and, through windows near the top of the facade, opportunities for balcony scenes such as the one in Romeo and Juliet. Doors at the bottom of the facade may have been used for discovery scenes like that at the end of The Tempest. A trap door in the stage itself could be used for stage business, like some of that involving the ghost in Hamlet. This trapdoor area was called "hell", as the canopy above was called "heaven"
Less is known about other features of staging and production. Stage props seem to have been minimal, although costuming was as elaborate as was feasible. The "two hours' traffic" mentioned in the prologue to Romeo and Juliet was not fanciful; the city government's hostility meant that performances were officially limited to that length of time. Though it is not known how seriously companies took such injunctions, it seems likely either that plays were performed at near-breakneck speed or that the play-texts now extant were cut for performance, or both.
The other main theatre where Shakespeare's original plays were performed was the second
A fragment of the naval captain William Keeling's diary survives, in which he details his crew's shipboard performances of Hamlet (off the coast of Sierra Leone, 5 September 1607, and at Socotra, 31 March 1608),[15] and Richard II (Sierra Leone, 30 September 1607).[15] For a time after its discovery, the fragment was suspected of being a forgery, but is now generally accepted as genuine.[16] These are the first recorded amateur performances of any Shakespeare plays.[15]
On 29 June 1613, the Globe Theatre went up in flames during a performance of Henry VIII. A theatrical cannon, set off during the performance, misfired, igniting the wooden beams and thatching. According to one of the few surviving documents of the event, no one was hurt except a man who put out his burning breeches with a bottle of ale.
The actors in Shakespeare's company included Richard Burbage, Will Kempe, Henry Condell and John Heminges. Burbage played the leading role in the first performances of many of Shakespeare's plays, including Richard III, Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear.[19] The popular comic actor Will Kempe played Peter in Romeo and Juliet and Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing, among other parts. He was replaced around the turn of the 16th century by Robert Armin, who played roles such as Touchstone in As You Like It and the fool in King Lear.[20] Little is certainly known about acting styles. Critics praised the best actors for their naturalness. Scorn was heaped on ranters and on those who "tore a passion to tatters", as Hamlet has it. Also with Hamlet, playwrights complain of clowns who improvise on stage (modern critics often blame Kemp in particular in this regard). In the older tradition of comedy which reached its apex with Richard Tarlton, clowns, often the main draw of a troupe, were responsible for creating comic by-play. By the Jacobean era, that type of humor had been supplanted by verbal wit.
Interregnum and Restoration performances
Shakespeare's plays continued to be staged after his death until the
At the
On the whole, though, innovation was the order of the day for Restoration companies.
Restoration writers obliged them by adapting Shakespeare's plays freely. Writers such as
Tate's Lear remains famous as an example of an ill-conceived adaptation arising from insensitivity to Shakespeare's tragic vision. Tate's genius was not in language – many of his interpolated lines don't even scan – but in structure; his Lear begins brilliantly with the Edmund the Bastard's first attention-grabbing speech, and ends with Lear's heroic saving of Cordelia in the prison and a restoration of justice to the throne. Tate's worldview, and that of the theatrical world that embraced (and demanded) his "happy ending" versions of the Bard's tragic works (such as King Lear and Romeo and Juliet) for over a century, arose from a profoundly different sense of morality in society and of the role that theatre and art should play within that society. Tate's versions of Shakespeare see the responsibility of theatre as a transformative agent for positive change by holding a moral mirror up to our baser instincts. Tate's versions of what we now consider some of the Bard's greatest works dominated the stage throughout the 18th century precisely because the Ages of Enlightenment and Reason found Shakespeare's "tragic vision" immoral, and his tragic works unstageable. Tate is seldom performed today, though in 1985, the Riverside Shakespeare Company mounted a successful production of The History of King Lear at The Shakespeare Center, heralded by some as a "Lear for the Age of Ronald Reagan."[27]
Perhaps a more typical example of the purpose of Restoration revisions is Davenant's The Law Against Lovers, a 1662 comedy combining the main plot of Measure for Measure with subplot of Much Ado About Nothing. The result is a snapshot of Restoration comic tastes. Beatrice and Benedick are brought in to parallel Claudio and Hero; the emphasis throughout is on witty conversation, and Shakespeare's thematic focus on lust is steadily downplayed. The play ends with three marriages: Benedick's to Beatrice, Claudio's to Hero, and Isabella's to an Angelo whose attempt on Isabella's virtue was a ploy. Davenant wrote many of the bridging scenes and recast much of Shakespeare's verse as heroic couplets.
A final feature of Restoration stagecraft impacted productions of Shakespeare. The taste for
However ill-guided such revisions may seem now, they made sense to the period's dramatists and audiences. The dramatists approached Shakespeare not as bardolators, but as theater professionals. Unlike Beaumont and Fletcher, whose "plays are now the most pleasant and frequent entertainments of the stage", according to Dryden in 1668, "two of theirs being acted through the year for one of Shakespeare's or Jonson's",[28] Shakespeare appeared to them to have become dated. Yet almost universally, they saw him as worth updating. Though most of these revised pieces failed on stage, many remained current on stage for decades; Thomas Otway's Roman adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, for example, seems to have driven Shakespeare's original from the stage between 1680 and 1744. It was in large part the revised Shakespeare that took the lead place in the repertory in the early 18th century, while Beaumont and Fletcher's share steadily declined.[29]
18th century
The 18th century witnessed three major changes in the production of Shakespeare's plays. In England, the development of the star system transformed both acting and production; at the end of the century, the Romantic revolution touched acting as it touched all the arts. At the same time, actors and producers began to return to Shakespeare's texts, slowly weeding out the Restoration revisions. Finally, by the end of the century Shakespeare's plays had been established as part of the repertory outside of Great Britain: not only in the United States but in many European countries.
Britain
In the 18th century, Shakespeare dominated the London stage, while Shakespeare productions turned increasingly into the creation of star turns for star actors. After the Licensing Act of 1737, one fourth of the plays performed were by Shakespeare, and on at least two occasions rival London playhouses staged the very same Shakespeare play at the same time (Romeo and Juliet in 1755 and King Lear the next year) and still commanded audiences. This occasion was a striking example of the growing prominence of Shakespeare stars in the theatrical culture, the big attraction being the competition and rivalry between the male leads at Covent Garden and Drury Lane, Spranger Barry and David Garrick. In the 1740s, Charles Macklin, in roles such as Malvolio and Shylock, and David Garrick, who won fame as Richard III in 1741, helped make Shakespeare truly popular.[30] Garrick went on to produce 26 of the plays at Drury Lane Theatre between 1747 and 1776, and he held a great Shakespeare Jubilee at Stratford in 1769.[31] He freely adapted Shakespeare's work, however, saying of Hamlet: "I had sworn I would not leave the stage till I had rescued that noble play from all the rubbish of the fifth act. I have brought it forth without the grave-digger's trick, Osrick, & the fencing match."[32] Apparently no incongruity was perceived in having Barry and Garrick, in their late thirties, play adolescent Romeo one season and geriatric King Lear the next. 18th century notions of verisimilitude did not usually require an actor to be physically appropriate for a role, a fact epitomized by a 1744 production of Romeo and Juliet in which Theophilus Cibber, then forty, played Romeo to the Juliet of his teenaged daughter Jennie.
Elsewhere in Europe
Some of Shakespeare's work was performed in continental Europe even during his lifetime;
19th century
Victorian productions of Shakespeare often sought pictorial effects in "authentic" historical costumes and sets. The staging of the reported sea fights and barge scene in Antony and Cleopatra was one spectacular example.[4] Too often, the result was a loss of pace. Towards the end of the century, William Poel led a reaction against this heavy style. In a series of "Elizabethan" productions on a thrust stage, he paid fresh attention to the structure of the drama.
Through the 19th century, a roll call of legendary actors' names all but drown out the plays in which they appear: Sarah Siddons (1755–1831), John Philip Kemble (1757–1823), Henry Irving (1838–1905), and Ellen Terry (1847–1928). To be a star of the legitimate drama came to mean being first and foremost a "great Shakespeare actor", with a famous interpretation of, for men, Hamlet, and for women, Lady Macbeth, and especially with a striking delivery of the great soliloquies. The acme of spectacle, star, and soliloquy of Shakespeare performance came with the reign of actor-manager Henry Irving and his co-star Ellen Terry in their elaborately staged productions, often with orchestral incidental music, at the Lyceum Theatre, London from 1878 to 1902. At the same time, a revolutionary return to the roots of Shakespeare's original texts, and to the platform stage, absence of scenery, and fluid scene changes of the Elizabethan theatre, was being effected by William Poel's Elizabethan Stage Society.[38]
20th century
In the early 20th century, Harley Granville-Barker directed quarto and folio texts with few cuts,[5] while Edward Gordon Craig and others called for abstract staging. Both approaches have influenced the variety of Shakespearean production styles seen today.[6]
The 20th century also saw a multiplicity of visual interpretations of
Gordon Craig's design for Hamlet in 1911 was groundbreaking in its Cubist influence. Craig defined space with simple flats: monochrome canvases stretched on wooden frames, which were hinged together to be self-supporting. Though the construction of these flats was not original, its application to Shakespeare was completely new. The flats could be aligned in many configurations and provided a technique of simulating architectural or abstract lithic structures out of supplies and methods common to any theater in Europe or the Americas.
The second major shift of 20th-century scenography of Shakespeare was in
In 1936,
Other notable productions of the 20th century that follow this trend of relocating Shakespeare's plays are
In 1978, a
21st century
The
In May 2009,
The Propeller company have taken all-male cast productions around the world.[49] Phyllida Lloyd has continually staged all-female cast versions of Shakespeare in London.[50][51][52]
Shakespeare on screen
More than 420 feature-length film versions of Shakespeare's plays have been produced since the early 20th century, making Shakespeare the most filmed author ever.[53] Some of the film adaptations, especially Hollywood movies marketed to teenage audiences, use his plots rather than his dialogue, while others are simply filmed versions of his plays.
Dress and design
For centuries there had been an accepted style of how Shakespeare was to be performed which was erroneously labeled "Elizabethan" but actually reflected a trend of design from a period shortly after Shakespeare's death. Shakespeare's performances were originally performed in contemporary dress. Actors were costumed in clothes that they might wear off the stage. This continued into the 18th century, the Georgian period, where costumes were the current fashionable dress. It was not until centuries after his death, primarily the 19th Century, that productions started looking back and tried to be "authentic" to a Shakespearean style. The Victorian era had a fascination with historical accuracy and this was adapted to the stage in order to appeal to the educated middle class. Charles Kean was particularly interested in historical context and spent many hours researching historical dress and setting for his productions. This faux-Shakespearean style was fixed until the 20th century. As of the twenty-first century, there are very few productions of Shakespeare, both on stage and on film, which are still performed in "authentic" period dress, while as late as 1990, virtually every true film version of a Shakespeare play was performed in correct period costume.
See also
Notes
- ^ Editor's Preface to A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare, Simon and Schuster, 2004, p. xl
- ISBN 0-300-02689-7.
• Shapiro, 131–32. - ISBN 0-521-10721-0)
- ^ ISBN 0-8014-8418-9.
- ^ ISBN 0-521-57565-6.
• Halpern, 64. - ^ ISBN 0-415-21984-1.
- ^ Wells, Oxford Shakespeare, xx.
- ^ Wells, Oxford Shakespeare, xxi.
- ^ Shapiro, 16.
- ISBN 0-521-38662-4.
• Shapiro, 125–31. - ISBN 0-674-80490-2.
- ^ Wells, Oxford Shakespeare, xxii.
- ^ Foakes, 33.
- ISBN 0-14-071472-3.
- ^ a b c Alan & Veronica Palmer, Who's Who in Shakespeare's England. Retrieved 29 May 2015
- ^ Halliday, F.E. A Shakespeare Companion 1564–1964. Baltimore, Penguin, 1964; pp. 262, 426–27.
- ^ Globe Theatre Fire.
- ^ Wells, Oxford Shakespeare, 1247.
- ISBN 0-8386-3690-X.
- ^ Chambers, Vol 1: 341.
• Shapiro, 247–49. - ^ Nettleton, 16.
- ^ Arrowsmith, 72.
- ISBN 0-226-30923-1.
- ^ Stanley Wells, "Introduction" from King Lear, Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 63.
- ^ Wells, p. 69.
- ISBN 0-521-81587-8.
- ^ See Riverside Shakespeare Company.
- ^ Dryden, Essay of Dramatick Poesie, The Critical and Miscellaneous Prose Works of John Dryden, Edmond Malone, ed. (London: Baldwin, 1800): 101.
- ^ Sprague, 121.
- ISBN 0-571-19376-5.
- ISBN 0-521-46030-1.
- ^ Letter to Sir William Young, 10 January 1773. Quoted by Uglow, 473.
- ^ Tieck, xiii.
- ^ Pfister 49.
- ^ Düntzer, 111.
- ^ Cappon, 65.
- ^ See, for example, the 19th century playwright W. S. Gilbert's essay, Unappreciated Shakespeare Archived 16 December 2008 at the Wayback Machine, from Foggerty's Fairy and Other Tales
- ^ Glick, 15.
- Trewin, J.C.Shakespeare on the English Stage, 1900–1064. London, 1964.
- ISBN 9780195385854.
- ^ Hill, 106.
- ^ Jackson 345.
- ^ a b Looking at Shakespeare: A Visual History of Twentieth-Century Performance by Dennis Kennedy, Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 1–3.
- ^ Cahiers Elisabéthains: A Biannual Journal of English Renaissance Studies, Special Issue 2007: The Royal Shakespeare Company Complete Works Festival, 2006–2007, Stratford-upon-Avon, Edited by Peter J. Smith and Janice Valls-Russell with Kath Bradley
- ^ "About the World Shakespeare Festival | World Shakespeare Festival 2012". Archived from the original on 28 November 2011. Retrieved 14 October 2012.
- ^ Mark Shenton, "Jude Law to Star in Donmar's Hamlet." The Stage. 10 September 2007. Retrieved 19 November 2007.
- ^ "Cook, Eyre, Lee And More Join Jude Law In Grandage's HAMLET." broadwayworld.com. 4 February 2009. Retrieved 18 February 2009.
- ^ "Jude Law to play Hamlet at 'home' Kronborg Castle." The Daily Mirror. 10 July 2009. Retrieved 14 July 2009.
- ^ Theatre programme, Everyman Cheltenham, June 2009.
- ^ Michael Billington (10 January 2012). "Julius Caesar – review". The Guardian. Retrieved 5 July 2016.
- ^ "Henry IV". St Ann's Warehouse. Retrieved 5 July 2016.
- ^ Katie Van-Syckle (24 May 2016). "Phyllida Lloyd Reveals Challenges of Bringing All-Female 'Taming of the Shrew' to Central Park". Variety. Retrieved 5 July 2016.
- ^ Young, Mark (ed.). The Guinness Book of Records 1999, Bantam Books, 358; Voigts-Virchow, Eckart (2004), Janespotting and Beyond: British Heritage Retrovisions Since the Mid-1990s, Gunter Narr Verlag, 92.
Bibliography
- Arrowsmith, William Robson. Shakespeare's Editors and Commentators. London: J. Russell Smith, 1865.
- Cappon, Edward. Victor Hugo: A Memoir and a Study. Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1885.
- Dryden, John. The Critical and Miscellaneous Prose Works of John Dryden. Edmond Malone, editor. London: Baldwin, 1800.
- Düntzer, J.H.J., Life of Goethe. Thomas Lyster, translator. New York: Macmillan, 1884.
- Glick, Claris. "William Poel: His Theories and Influence." Shakespeare Quarterly 15 (1964).
- Hill, Erroll. Shakespeare in Sable. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1984.
- Houseman, John. Run-through: A Memoir. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972.
- Jackson, Russell. "Shakespeare at Stratford-upon-Avon, 1994–5." Shakespeare Quarterly 46 (1995).
- Nettleton, George Henry. English Drama of the Restoration and Eighteenth Century (1642–1780). London: Macmillan, 1914.
- Pfister, Manfred. "Shakespeare and the European Canon." Shifting the Scene: Shakespeare in European Culture. Balz Engler and Ledina Lambert, eds. Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2004.
- Sprague, A.C. Beaumont and Fletcher on the Restoration Stage. New York: Benjamin Blom, 1954.
- Tieck, Ludwig. Alt-englisches Theater oder Supplemente zum Shakspear. Berlin, 1811.
External links
- Shakespeare at the National Theatre, 1967–2012, compiled by Daniel Rosenthal, on Google Arts & Culture