Part 2 (2/2)
”Here Shakespeare, as if the vigorous exertion of his faculties in the preceding scene required relaxation, has given us a most trifling, superfluous dialogue between Lady Macduff, Rosse, and her son, merely that another murder may be committed on the stage. We heartily concur in and approve of striking out the greater part of it....”
”There are about eighty lines of this scene (Macduff's) omitted, which, retained, would render it painfully tedious, and, indeed, we think them as little deserving of the closet as of the stage,” etc.
It does not seem to have struck Garrick that the scenes he ”pruned” might have some significance in the scheme of the author's drama independently of their individual characteristics.
To take another instance. In Garrick's version of ”Romeo and Juliet,”
reprinted in Dolby's ”British Theatre” (1823), the following paragraph is inserted underneath the list of characters:
”The scenery in 'Romeo and Juliet' at Covent Garden this season (1823) is very grand. That of the 'Funeral of Juliet' is truly solemn and impressive. The architectural arrangement of the interior of the church is most chaste and appropriate: the slow approach of the funeral procession, the tolling of the bell, and the heart-saddening tones of the choristers, swelling in all the sublime richness of the minor key, make an impression on the feelings of the auditory which can never be forgotten.”
Here, then, are ill.u.s.trations, in two plays, of methods adopted by actors--methods still in use--which are a direct interference with the poet's dramatic intentions. They are methods, moreover, which Elizabethan actors would have regarded as unintelligent, because they turned good drama into bad drama, and created inconsistencies between character and situation. The earliest acting-version of ”Romeo and Juliet” (1597) has some eight hundred lines less than the unshortened play (1599), and yet there is no entire scene omitted, nor any of the characters; and those scenes which have dropped out of the play, on the modern stage, are those least curtailed in the 1597 version. In the first acting-version of ”Hamlet,” published in 1603, there is still more striking evidence of the Elizabethan actor's skill in compressing a play of Shakespeare's when it was necessary. Not only was the play considerably shortened, without the omission of scenes and characters, but it was slightly reconstructed. Herr Emile Devrient, the greatest exponent of the part of Hamlet in Germany, contended that this first quarto was a better constructed play than either the 1604 version or that of the folio. In fact, with the faulty dialogue amended from the perfect text, this 1603 actor's copy, which has 1,757 fewer lines than in the full play, and 557 lines less than in the modern acting edition, would be the best model from which to shorten the play so as to bring it within the limit of a two hours' representation. That Shakespeare sanctioned either the compression or the reconstruction for use in the Globe is not likely. But that he tolerated the alterations is possible, since he would recognize that his own less regular plot, though more artistically suited as the framework for Hamlet's irregular mind, was too subtle and elaborate to be effective on the public stage.
With regard to acting-versions, therefore, it may be contended that the interests of the author are more often than not opposed to those of the modern actor in so far as the latter considers the author's drama to be tedious whenever it fails to enhance the acting merits of some particular character or characters in the play. Thus it is questionable whether, in the absence of the author, the actors are the persons best qualified to make stage-versions of his dramas. Their point of view is rarely the same as that of the author, and if it is necessary to shorten a play they can hardly be expected to undertake the work entirely to the satisfaction of the author, nor yet in the interests of the public, since the value of the fable may or may not be a matter of moment to an actor. If, then, Shakespeare's plays are a valuable a.s.set to the artistic wealth of the nation, the amount of ”pruning” they require for the stage should be determined by competent experts. Unfortunately, actors believe that a scholar is not qualified to advise on the matter, owing to his lack of what they call ”a sense of the theatre.” This ”sense” would no doubt be differently interpreted by different actors. Broadly speaking, it may be taken to mean the ability to forecast what degree of emotion or sympathy certain incidents can arouse in an audience when they are seen represented on the stage. Pope rejected the Gonzalo dialogue in the second act of ”The Tempest,” a.s.serting that it was not Shakespeare's because courtiers who had been just s.h.i.+pwrecked on a desert island would not indulge in idle gossip! Here Pope missed the theatre point of view. The audience see in the first act an old man who once had been a King, but who was cruelly and unjustly thrust out of his kingdom, and exposed with his baby daughter in a frail and rotten bark to the mercy of the perilous ocean. Moreover, it hears that the very men who did this wrong are now themselves s.h.i.+pwrecked on this enchanted island, where Prospero is living. What the audience is curious to see, then, in the second act, is not n.o.blemen who are suffering from s.h.i.+pwreck, but ign.o.ble men, who merit the contempt of those who look upon them, and who deserve the just rebuke they receive from the man who is once more restored to his rights. The question as to what these n.o.blemen have themselves suffered in the course of being s.h.i.+pwrecked, Shakespeare rightly judged was not one that an audience, under the circ.u.mstances, could be interested in. Then, again, to take a textual ill.u.s.tration from ”King Lear” quoted by Steevens, the commentator. He writes in his ”Advertis.e.m.e.nt to the Reader”:
”The dialogue might, indeed, sometimes be lengthened by yet other insertions than have been made (from the quartos), without advantage either to its spirit or beauty, as in the following instance:
”'LEAR. No.
”'KENT. Yes.
”'LEAR. No, I say.
”'KENT. I say, yea.'
”Here the quartos add:
”'LEAR. No, no; they would not.
”'KENT. Yes; they have.'
”By the admission of the negation and affirmation, would any new idea be gained?”
The answer given by the actor is, ”Certainly! The added words from the quartos give the idea of reality and character.” It is inconceivable that Shakespeare, himself an actor, omitted the additional lines. Without this reiteration, the expression of Lear's amazement at the indignity put upon his servant cannot be adequately tuned by the actor, nor yet be consistent with his character. This, then, is the dilemma with regard to stage-versions; scholars are hampered in their judgment by want of knowledge of the art of the theatre; and actors by their bias for good acting parts, or, in other words, for parts which are always in view of the audience.
As to elocution, it may be well to recall what an Antwerp merchant who had for many years resided in London said of the English people, about the year 1588. He then observed that ”they do not speak from the chest like the Germans, but prattle only with the tongue.” The word ”prattle” is used in the same sense by Shakespeare in his play of ”Richard the Second.”[6]
In the ”Stage Player's Complaint,” we find an actor making use of the expression, ”Oh, the times when my tongue hath ranne as fast upon the Sceane as a Windebanke's pen over the ocean.” Added to this, there is the celebrated speech to the players, in which Hamlet directs the actors to speak ”trippingly on the tongue.” There can be no doubt, therefore, that Shakespeare's verse was spoken on the stage of the Globe easily and rapidly. And the actor had the advantage of standing well within the building in a position now occupied by the stalls, nor were audiences then stowed away under deep projecting galleries. But unless English actors can recover the art of speaking Shakespeare's verse, his plays will never again enjoy the favour they once had. Poetry may require a greater elevation of style in its elocution than prose, but in either case the fundamental condition is that of representing life, and as George Lewes ably puts it, ”all obvious violations of the truths of life are errors in art.” In the delivery of verse, therefore, on the stage, the audience should never be made to feel that the tones are unusual. They should still follow the laws of speaking, and not those of singing. But our actors, who excel in modern plays by the truth and force of their presentation of life, when they appear in Shakespeare make use of an elocution that no human being was ever known to indulge in. They employ, besides, a redundancy of emphasis which destroys all meaning of the words and all resemblance to natural speech. It is necessary to bear in mind that, when dramatic dialogue is written in verse, there are more words put into a sentence than are needed to convey the actual thought that is uppermost in the speaker's mind; in order, therefore, to give his delivery an appearance of spontaneity, the actor should arrest the attention of the listener by the accentuation of those words which convey the central idea or thought of the speech he is uttering, and should keep in the background, by means of modulation and deflection of voice, the words with which that thought is ornamented. Macbeth should say:
”That but this blow Might be the be-all and the end-all HERE, But HERE, upon this bank and shoal of time, We'd jump the life to COME.--But in these cases We still have judgment HERE; that we but teach b.l.o.o.d.y instructions, which, being taught, RETURN To plague the INVENTOR.”
If the emphasis fall upon the words marked, then these and no others should be the words inflected; but modern actors, if they inflect the right words, inflect the wrong ones too, until it becomes impossible for the listener to identify the sense by the sound. This artificial way of speaking verse seems traditional to the eighteenth century. David Garrick and Edmund Kean no doubt used a more natural delivery, and also Mrs.
Siddons, though some of her exaggerations of emphasis probably were never heard at the Globe. Shakespeare would hardly have endorsed her reading of Lady Macbeth's words, ”Give me the daggers!” There was n.o.body else to whom Macbeth could give them. At moments of tension, speech is always direct. A lady, _tete a tete_ with her husband at the breakfast-table, enjoying an altercation over the contents of the newspaper, would surely indicate the natural emphasis by exclaiming, ”GIVE me the newspaper!”
words that can, in this way, be spoken in half the time that Mrs. Siddons took to speak hers. The two and a half hours in which a play in Shakespeare's time was often acted would not be possible to-day, even without delays for acts and scenes, with the methods of elocution now in vogue. It is legitimate for Romeo to exclaim in his farewell to Juliet:
”EYES, look your last!
ARMS, take your last embrace!”
or he may say:
”Eyes, look your LAST!
Arms, take your last EMBRACE!”
<script>