From page to stage:

Restorations and adaptations

With the confrontation of a huge volume of restoration adaptations on Shakespeare’s works during my recent visit to the Shakespeare Centre’s workshops, my guilt of demolishing him in stages, looked mild and gentle. When I was assigned to look into negatives of Shakespeare’s 38 plays and sonnets, I freaked out not knowing from where to start. It was an arduous task where I had to drink, eat and sleep Shakespeare for a length of time that got my priorities rolling...... and strangely I did discover many a slip, irregularities etc. It was from the point of scholar and not a critic little things that may have made his plays more profound and in keeping with times.

Historically? Yes, but, then Shakespeare had his own way of looking at times; past, present or future, to suit his needs to fit into his plays and not in the least concerned what the history books said. I probed into all his 38 plays minutely after they had gathered dust since college days and what I discovered among many, were amazing about which I wrote and still write to the Artscope, followed by his many complexed characters.

Was he right? Yes.

Was he wrong? Yes.

Arguably in both.

Unlike Shakespeare’s Richard II who was misshapen in body and mind but facially handsome, sinister, Cibber’s adaptation made him all perfect. After Hamlet, the longest part in Shakespeare play (1.164 lines) spoken by male character.

It was during his time that playwrights rose to the challenges presented by texts and Shakespeare was already experiencing its effects, of course, he regarded adaptation as a creative process and a matter of expediency. However, it was to be the history of Shakespearean adaptation more in the post-restoration period. I believe the cultural status of Shakespeare is very much up for review. When the London theatre reopened around 1660 after a lengthy period of closure because of Civil War and the Commonwealth, many playwrights opted for adapting others’ work to further enhance their own works.

And how did Shakespeare achieve the status of ‘classics’?

Because there is a paradox that Shakespeare was called the divine Bard who often was represented by a small proportion of his works in contensed form. Even at that stages he needed no classification on what he had already written. More long lasting adaptations were subjected to increasing criticism in the eighteenth century that Shakespeare was able to over-ride.

This came into light when not long after Tate’s King Lear appeared on the London stage by a contrary version of Shakespeare’s and staged by Macready in 1834 which was sort of a vilification of Tate and as late as 1848, the play was referred to as ‘a shameless execrable piece of dimentation. However, the twentieth century critics have been very hard on this adaptation and assumed Shakespeare’s as sacrosanct and a modification and also as act of perversion. But the modern literary scholars vehemently disagree on this attitude. Have we got all these wrong? I will be the first to disagree because restoration attitude towards revision and versions had been muddled up to create ‘classicism’. In this context, I think that such collaborators had with intention set out to destroy Shakespeare’s reputation. I also think this is an aftermath reaction to what the so-called ‘University wits’ of his time, tried to drag Shakespeare through.

Large number of men with a standing reputation in the literary and cultural scenes of their days with whatever motives they entertained towards the adaptors, seem significant to us now among other things. But they have undergone many changes since Shakespeare’s. Tried hard as they did, no one was able to stop the endearing magic in his works. However some plays such as The Tempest, King Lear and Richard III have had considerable influence on the production of Shakespearean plays and covered a generic range in comedy, tragedy, history and romance.

Revising Shakespeare for a new era had different ways of handling his texts. Take for example Dryden’s All For Love which has none of Shakespeare’s dialogue in it but in rewriting, it became a loosely structured Antony and Cleopatra that turned into a new-classical tragedy. Next, take a look at Cibber in Richard III which not only quotes directly from Shakespeare’s play.

It incorporates all the major scenes and incidents but retain textual material from number of his other plays that are not detected when such plays are boarded. Taming of the Shrew has been turned into contemporary prose in the plot-lines, introducing new material in the last Act.

But none of the adaptators dared touch his original dialogue. Though later, many of such adaptations fell by with time, Richard III lives on, in line and spirit.

The cultural appropriations of Shakespeare is none the less worth bearing in mind not because of their stage history but because of the originality that Shakespeare put into his plays.

He has come off unscathed and left behind centuries of scholars and adaptations frozen on their tracks. No one can redefine Shakespeare text nor even simplify his language.

Post Reaction

Richard III when boarded at the Theatre Royal all appeared wrong with an unusual disadvantage when the first Act was left out in the presentation. Sadly it is the best Act in the play and though there was no great danger of the readers and the audiences mistaking any of Shakespeare’s lines, some how it did not fall in line with what Cibber intended.

Next to follow suit was Tate with King Lear and though his intentions were less politically well defined and contrary to the thinking of the time, it became a theatrical success. Otway set Romeo And Juliet in Republican Rome of the first century BC. It was the period of violent civil war but that did not prevent Otway making was between Caius Marius and Lucious Sulla who became the dictator. Caius Marius’s two sons, the eldest who was Marius Junior represented the House of Montagues and Metelles who was a former commander with his daughter Lavinia being the Juliet in the play.

A becoming adaptation that ruined the youthful essence and romance of the world’s greatest tragedy. The troubled London of 1696 rife with fears of Catholic plots along with the unrest caused by rival elements blocking succession of Charles, raised the important question about the government and its handling certain important issues in the opening lines of the play. Naturally, it would have caused embarrassment. Otway’s lovers appear more helpless and caught in their own web of no escape than in Shakespeare’s version that makes Marius Junior contribute less than what Romeo does for his own downfall.

Caius Marius fetching him food and water, recalls the scene when he discovers Lavinia in the tomb with his dead son at the end of the play. He renders an epitaph as he is led away to political defeat.

‘Be warn’d by me, ye great ones, how h’embroil

Your country’s peace, and dip your hands in slaughter

Ambition is a lust that’s never quencht

Grows more inflam’d and madder by enjoyment’.....

So poor literally for want of good words like the Shakespeare dialogue, falls flat on its face compared to the Bard’s ending of Romeo and Juliet. Otway let himself down badly in his adaptation.

There were many others like him that ended in disaster by their listless attempts.