Shakespearean performance history

Shakespeare’s plays have been adapted for the cinema since 1899 in multiple film genres, including silent film, film noire, Western, theatrical film, and Hollywood films.
    This course examines Shakespeare’s  romance play, histories, tragedies, and comedies, including the lesser-known plays, and their adaptations on screen, with a focus on the themes of race, gender, sexuality, and colonialism.

PLAYS & FILMS

• Love’s Labour’s Lost (comedy; Branagh)
• King John (history; Dickson & Dando, 1899)
• Henry V (history; Olivier; Branagh)
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream (comedy;
Hoffman; Reinhaardt; Taymor)
• Titus Andronicus (tragedy; Taymor)
• Othello (tragedy; Oliver Parker; Pier Paolo
Pasolini)
• Richard III (history; Richard Loncraine)
• Winter’s Tale (romance; Howell; Rohmer)

Throughout the decades, the efforts of making Shakespeare's plays more accessible through translation have often met with significant opposition. Translating plays from Elizabethan-era English to a more contemporary English is not without controversy and sometimes leads to heated debate flare-ups. This paper attempts to explore the ongoing debate through the lens of both education and performance, analyze both sides of the debate for their legitimacy, and offer possible approaches to Shakespeare's text in the realm of educating students and entertaining audiences.

1919 steht für einen politischen Neuanfang und gleichzeitig für ein krisenhaftes, immer wieder scheiterndes Ringen um Demokratie und eine liberale Gesellschaft. Vor diesem
Horizont entsteht ein politisches Theater, das sich einmischt und sich als Reflexionsraum von Machverhältnissen versteht.
Macht| Spiele beschreibt anhand markanter Stationen die Geschichte dieses politischen Theaters von 1919 bis in die Gegenwart. Dabei werden so unterschiedliche Formen beleuchtet wie die Shakespeare’schen Königsdramen, etwa am Beispiel der Inszenierungen von Leopold Jessner, Jürgen Fehling, Saladin Schmitt, Peter Palitzsch oder Peter Zadek, Schillers »Räuber« (in ikonischen Inszenierungen von Erwin Piscator und Hansgünter Heyme) oder die Orestie-Inszenierung von Peter Stein.
Mit Arbeiten von Karin Beier, William Kentridge, Brigitte Maria Mayer, Luk Perceval, Maya Krishna Rao und Robert Wilson zieht sich die Perspektive bis in die Gegenwart.

Hotspur was once the most popular character in Henry IV, the focus for actor-managers and a hero for the audience. This paper looks at how the introduction of the history cycle to the English stage in the twentieth century completely reversed the fortunes of Henry Percy as the focus was pushed instead onto his rival Henry Monmouth. The 1951 production by Anthony Quayle is marked as a key turning point in Hotspur's fortunes, and Michael Redgrave's portrayal is contrasted with Laurence Olivier's at the Old Vic just six years before to show how far Hotspur has fallen. After a brief review of subsequent productions, the paper concludes by showing how the structure of the play is all about the contrast between the two Harrys, and not the court and tavern as so often thought.

See also:  http://www.academia.edu/770456/Rewriting_History_Exploring_the_Individuality_of_Shakespeares_history_plays

http://www.academia.edu/688988/The_Ladys_Percy_Challenging_Expectations_of_Structure_and_Gender_in_Henry_the_Fourth

This essay examines "The Tempest" as a fully materialized instance of metatheater. Taking seriously the idea of Prospero as a playwright figure, it untangles various correspondences between the structures of Shakespeare's late romance and the private theater in which it was primarily staged. Special attention is paid to Ariel's relation to the boy actor, Caliban's similarities to the boisterous tradition of clowning that Shakespeare had earlier criticized, and Miranda's doubling of audience functionality.

In As You Like It, Rosalind makes a passing comment in response to Orlando's questioning which seems, in all innocence, to refer to rabbits gambolling contentedly in Arden's idyllic forest. Assuring him that she is native to the place, Rosalind invokes the image of the “coney” that dwells near where it is kindled as proof of her local heritage. Twenty-first-century actors delivering this line regularly use a pronunciation for “coney” that would, for any early modern audience, seem particularly alien. This article traces the history of the word “coney”, its banishment from later editions of Bowdler's Family Shakspeare, as well as its reinstatement following alteration by a nineteenth-century lexicographer who sought to make it sound acceptable for family reading. In doing so, it highlights the overtly sexual meaning of the word, linked as it appears to slang terminology for the female pudenda and thus the commodification of the female body, so restoring its potential as Rosalind's cryptic pun about the hidden truth of her “Ganymede” disguise.

This paper focuses on an all-female production of Henry the Fourth Part One performed in Hull and York in 2008. It uses the production and the author's previous work to explore the issue of how a history play can be performed successfully on its own without incurring anticipation of Part Two. It looks at how the director Simon Benson tackled the theoretical arguments of the author in a practical scenario, and how in particular his decision to make the cast all-female enlightened the play, allowed a freer approach to structure and provided new (and forgotten) readings of the characters.

See also:

http://www.academia.edu/770456/Rewriting_History_Exploring_the_Individuality_of_Shakespeares_history_plays

http://www.academia.edu/1684505/The_Rise_and_Fall_of_Hotspur_in_Henry_IV_Part_One

It has long been an open question as to where the early modern prompter sat—or, indeed, stood—in the early modern theatre. From his position, was he visible to the audience? Could he watch and hear the play? And could he be seen and heard by the actors? This paper argues that the prompter was situated behind a curtain between tiring-room and stage; from here his commands and prompts could easily be heard; from here he was also able, when necessary, to peep out at the action.

This article is an overview of the development of English verse from its beginnings to the end of the twentieth century. It discusses the origins and structure of the major traditional forms of ballads, blank verse, sonnets, odes, elegies and modern free-verse. Examples referred to are taken from The Norton Anthology of Poetry 4th Edition (1996)

Conversing with the Audience in the Restoration Theatre.

Summary
This article argues that the Restoration theatre audience were partners in an ongoing conversation, using conversation in the way that Thompson suggests when writing of Wycherley’s plays.
He emphasises the importance of conversation at the time and says,

We need to understand Restoration concepts of discourse in their terms, not ours, for though we judge characters by their words, the criteria for what can or ought to be done with words are too often those of the twentieth century and not those of the seventeenth.

He points out that at this time conversation still had the meaning of ‘living amongst people’ or ‘mode of life’ and not its more specific modern sense of ‘talk’.

This article explores this idea, and suggests that the dramatists at the time exploited varying styles of dialogue with other signifiers of meaning, particularly social connotations, and thus deliberately changed the aural and spatial dynamics of the total theatrical experience, making the audience as much a part of the performance as the action on stage, and causing the audience to react to, or perceive, the play in ways particular to the period 1660-c 1700.


Key words. Conversation. Wit. Repartee. Aside. Soliloquy. Perception. Confidant. Participant.

In the early seventeenth century, the London stage often portrayed a ruler covertly spying on his subjects. Traditionally deemed 'Jacobean disguised ruler plays', these works include Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, Marston's The Malcontent and The Fawn, Middleton's The Phoenix, and Sharpham's The Fleer. Commonly dated to the arrival of James I, these plays are typically viewed as synchronic commentaries on the Jacobean regime.

Kevin A. Quarmby demonstrates that the disguised ruler motif actually evolved in the 1580s. It emerged from medieval folklore and balladry, Tudor Chronicle history and European tragicomedy. Familiar on the Elizabethan stage, these incognito rulers initially offered light-hearted, romantic entertainment, only to suffer a sinister transformation as England awaited its ageing queen's demise. The disguised royal had become a dangerously voyeuristic political entity by the time James assumed the throne.

Traditional critical perspectives also disregard contemporary theatrical competition. Market demands shaped the repertories. Rivalry among playing companies guaranteed the motif's ongoing vitality. The disguised ruler's presence in a play reassured audiences; it also facilitated a subversive exploration of contemporary social and political issues. Gradually, the disguised ruler's dramatic currency faded, but the figure remained vibrant as an object of parody until the playhouses closed in the 1640s.

This paper intends to stablish connections between Plutarch's Ancient Rome and Shakespeare's Rome as seen in one particular play, Coriolanus. From then on, it shows what are the imaginaries associated to the theatrical representation of the play.

El presente ensayo busca explorar las principales tradiciones
interpretativas con las que se ha entendido el final de Hamlet, especialmente, el arribo de Fortinbras. ¿Debería consolarnos en alguna medida la llegada de Fortinbras, al que Hamlet le otorga
su beneplácito con su “dying voice”? ¿Amortigua este fenómeno la tragicidad de la historia o por el contrario la potencia? ¿Podemos decir que “la casa está en orden”? ¿Se trata simplemente de la puesta en escena de aquel viejo supuesto/mecanismo por el cual Shakespeare, siempre restituye el orden al finalizar las tragedias? ¿Es acaso un futuro venturoso lo que aguarda a Dinamarca, ahora en proceso de ser absorbida bajo la égida del imperio Noruego? ¿O capaz el hecho de que el invasor extranjero, que acechaba desde el comienzo
la obra y por el cual -y contra el cual- las defensas eran preparadas febrilmente, finalmente termine quedándose con todo sin disparar un sólo tiro nos está mostrando una suerte de “historia con moraleja” respecto a lo que puede suceder cuando proliferan las luchas intestinas2? ¿Será que Hamlet y Fortinbras, trabajando en conjunto sin
saberlo, ayudaron a purgar a Dinamarca de sus males y venenos? ¿O capaz debamos entender más bien que Hamlet junior no ha hecho más que deshacer todo lo que su padre lograra, ayudando a entregar el reino llave en mano al histórico enemigo de su reino al asesinar a un gobernante que, si bien de indudable arribo ilegítimo, la obra nos da algunas pistas que, en una de esas, no estaba gobernando tan mal (otro dilema político clásico)?  Posiblemente, veremos, no se trate de elegir excluyendo, sino de ver cómo todas ellas conviven, y que Shakespeare, más que ser un “bajalínea”, era un gran presentador de problemáticas que le interesaban. Y como en un juego de roles, era capaz de dar voz y verdad a varias de esas posiciones.mostrar sus distancias, sus acentos y posicionamientos, sus consolaciones optimistas y sus enconadas diatribas pesimistas.

"Magda Romanska argues that with the rise of nationalism in late nineteenth-century Europe, the pattern of the patriarchal covenant in Hamlet paralleled the process of nation-building. Hamlet’s filial loyalty toward his Father’s ghost was perceived as a symbol of
patriotic loyalty towards one’s nation/Father-land. Conversely, as a “gift of death” that cements the patriarchal contract, Ophelia became a model of the nineteenth-century feminine ideal." - Editor, Ghost Stories and Alternative Histories, 2007

Shakespeare’s representation of Julius Caesar differs notably from those of his contemporaries, as well as from the picture of Caesar that emerges from his most obvious classical source, Plutarch’s Lives. Plutarch’s Caesar is shrewd, resilient, and relatively dignified; Shakespeare’s, in contrast, is physically weak and surprisingly obtuse, prey to laughable grandiosity. Other early modern authors such as Marc-Antoine Muret and William Alexander model their versions of Caesar on Seneca’s Hercules as well as Plutarch’s biography. Shakespeare, however, seems to draw inspiration for his departure from Plutarch from the conventional depiction of Julius Caesar’s successor Augustus, as well as other tyrants such as Herod the Great, in medieval English mystery plays. Over the course of these pageants depicting Christian salvation history, protagonists such as Moses and Isaac set up a typology of Christ. Meanwhile, however, secular antagonists such as the Pharaoh of Egypt establish a contrary pattern: a typology of Antichrist. Like Lucifer, as well as Antichrist himself, “Caesar” in the mystery plays is typecast as a blustering, comically inadequate parody of Godhead. Vaunting speeches proclaiming his supreme worldly might echo the language of God the Father. These boasts are then belied, however, by his inability to forestall the coming of Christ, whom he fears as a potential political rival. Mystery plays, naturally enough, tend to focus on Augustus Caesar, emperor of Rome at the time of Christ’s Nativity. Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, however, stands in the same medieval tradition. As a type of Antichrist, he is a foil for the future Christ. His failure sets the stage for a different and paradoxically more powerful Messiah.

Este estudio surge a raíz de la puesta en escena de una de las últimas versiones de ​ Hamlet exhibidas en Buenos Aires, en que el director presentó al fantasma del Rey Hamlet suspendido en lo alto de unos rieles, con una actuación en extremo estilizada y una expresión vocal propia de otros géneros teatrales que le quitaron profundidad al personaje del Espectro, que es quien provoca en Hamlet la tan contemporánea duda del "Ser o no ser". Las risas de la audiencia al ver al actor simulando ser un fantasma, evidenciaron el desacierto de la elección. Es decir, el hecho de mostrar de forma inverosímil y cómica las escenas que dan origen a la peripecia del protagonista, debilitaron la puesta en escena completa, haciendo surgir la pregunta acerca de si el montaje fue concebido como una tragedia realmente. Si atendemos a las referencias bibliográficas, cinematográficas y teóricas de la obra ​ Hamlet, el denominador común y fuerza temática más significativa en todas ellas, es la venganza que debe emprender el príncipe para restituir el honor de su padre, el Rey Hamlet. Asimismo, se debe entender que el factor desequilibrante del orden inicial, es la aparición de La Sombra o El Espectro, puesto que es quien induce a Hamlet a la venganza. Lo fascinante del texto dramático ​ Hamlet ​ está en que se estructura (luego del acontecimiento que precede) en las formas confusas que pueden asumir los valores que dan cuenta de ​ las relaciones de poder en una familia (que es la que gobierna Dinamarca), como lo son, el amor de pareja y el amor filial, la lealtad y la sinceridad; valores que son trastocados por la primacía de inclinaciones y deseos egoístas, y por la futilidad de las acciones resultantes. Esta futilidad pretende dejar la impresión global de que, en definitiva, los valores ideales en que dichas acciones se basan, son aparentes y su realización es fallida.

Shakespeare's Globe: A Theatrical Experiment will appeal to all who have enjoyed performances at the Globe and who wish to understand more fully the way the theatre approaches its plays. It will, of course, also appeal to an academic audience, but this is certainly no cold, scholarly text. Sumptuous colour photographs of actors in period costume adorn its pages, reinvigorating memories of performances past. After reading this wonderful book, the true extent of the dedication and commitment of those who first saw, and continue to see, the potential of this Bankside resource comes shining through. A fitting tribute and one which should grace any theatre-lover's bookshelves.

The same story – of the murder of a king by poison – is presented three times in Hamlet: as the Ghost’s single-person blank verse narrative in 1.5.59-79; as the players’ dumb show between 3.2.137 and 3.2.138; and as the players’ rhymed playlet in 3.2.157-262.  Of these, the dumb show is seemingly the most unnecessary, as it presents in pantomime what will immediately be narrated in dialogue as The Murder of Gonzago, and enacts a wordless version of the tale already told by the Ghost in Act 1. The first half of this essay analyses, in performance terms, what the dumb show contributes to Hamlet, and why it is there; the second half looks at the words of the dumb show as found in two printed texts of Hamlet, Quarto 2 (Q2, 1604), and Folio (F, 1623) (the earliest Hamlet text, Quarto 1 [1603], seems to recall performance rather than dictate it, so its stage-directions are unlikely to be authorial). Since the text for the dumb show has been altered and, this essay will argue, authorially revised between Q2 and F, consideration will be given what the dumb show adds, textually, to a reading of Hamlet.

In the lead-up to the millennium several Australian productions of Shakespeare featured Aboriginal presence in ways that invited reflection on contemporary Reconciliation politics. These production raised important issues about the history of Aboriginal participation in Shakespeare production, and Reconciliation Shakespeare can be seen to be a completely unique Australian contribution to the stage history of Shakespeare.

En la historia del teatro y de la literatura, la “época isabelina”
o “del teatro isabelino” es el periodo que va de los años 1576
a 1642, donde floreció el género dramático en Inglaterra y
particularmente la obra de William Shakespeare. Sin embargo,
y como ocurre con toda periodificación histórica, se
trata de una convención: las fechas no coinciden exacta ni
enteramente con el reinado de quien debe su nombre, la
reina Isabel I Tudor (nacida en 1533; reinó entre 1558 y
1603, año de su muerte) y exceden con mucho la vida de
Shakespeare (1564-1616).
1576 es el año de la construcción del primer teatro público
propiamente tal en Londres1 desde los anfiteatros
romanos: el Theatre (“Teatro”); 1642 es el año en que el Parlamento
inglés, de mayoría puritana, clausuró todos los teatros
del país (se volverían a abrir veinte años después, tras
la restauración de la monarquía en 1660 con Carlos II).

The artistic and cultural changes, informed by the growing interest in classical literature, that occurred in Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth century, happened much later in England and even then not to the same extent. England’s political and cultural development had not followed the same pattern as most of the continental nations. This meant that as well as the later development of an appreciation of renaissance visual imagery, there was a cultural difference in attitudes towards humanism in general and drama in particular. This paper discusses this different cultural development and its effect on the resulting drama.

A new classicism was afoot in the second half of the eighteenth century. The rediscovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum  challenged European assumptions about ancient life; just as influential, if slower-acting, were the translations of Greek tragedy. Art of the mid-eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries dealt with the seemingly irrational violence of tragedy, be it ancient or Shakespearean,  as a means of understanding the habits and beliefs of alien cultures. This had aesthetic as well as political implications: in recognizing tragedy as an foreign cultural form, modern Europe recognized its own historical status as one culture among many.

The dramatists of Shakespeare are often characterized as being feminists because of the frankness of Cordelia in King Lear, the shrewdness or Portia in The Merchant of Venice, and the psychological manipulation of Volumnia in Coriolanus. For over four hundred years we have performed the incredible representations of men and women and their various roles and responsibilities in society during the latter Renaissance period, where male actors would have pretended to be the character of Viola in Twelfth Night, while pretending to be her brother Sebastian, as a male character. This seems to be quite a complex idea in the latter sixteenth century. Some scholars have suggested that feminism did not exist during this era. I will prove in this paper that these assertions are fatally flawed – feminism was alive and well during that era. However, the dramatists of Shakespeare were not feminists, per say, they were in fact Master Kabbalists teaching the gender complexities of the ancient Zohar and the Tree of Life, where one can allow ego to ruin one’s life, or shut down our reactive system and be transformed to the supernal (heavenly) realm of perfection beyond human perception and repair the world.