Not Till the Nineteenth Century DidAudiences Ever See Anything But

Perversions of Them

pro

Written for THS New Yox TIMYs

By George C. D. 0411,-.mor* of Enllish, Columbia Unlverslty.

ONLY Within comParatively recentyears has the theatre manifestedanything like complete fidelnty tothe letter and the spirit of Shake.

speare. Shortly after the reopening ofthe playhouses at the Restoration, theprocess began of altering his works tosuit the taste of the public, and the mutila-lion wrought in the time of Charles I t..persisted even, through the age of John

Philip Kemble, who retired In 181T. Theperiod 160W-.100 saw all the importantchanges in Shakespeare that continued onthe stage for a century and a half. It isthe object of the present discussion totrace some of this theatrical history forour generation, which has come to exactin such affairs the last degree of textualaccuraey.

One of the earliest adaptations wasDavenant's "Law Against Lovers," pro-duced at Lincoln's Inn Fields,, In 16.This is " Measure for Mesure." with modi-ficatioll ot the story; the Mariana episodeis omitted, and Claudio does not beg Isa-.bella to buy his life with her honor. Thecharacter of Julletta is much expanded.and the love of Angelo for Isabella issomewhat purged of its Shakespeareanoffensiveness. In the end, Isabella marrieshim, not the Duke. But the really aston-ishing thing is that Beatrice and Benedickare Introduced from "Much Ado AboutNothing," indulging for a few scenes Inthe original badinage from Shakespeare,and toward the end of the play becoming-chlet conspirators In a plot to effect theescape of Claudio and Jnuletta from prison.

In order to make plausible their con-. nectton with this situatlion. Beneditk ls

made the brother of Agelo and BaticAngelo'1 ward. Beatritce 4 also gener-usy provided with a very young iter,

Viola, who stop thhe ationa ccsionally, Inorder to lindulge I a song. If one ouldf o0 t ShIae .rand ludge Daai-t'swork «otn ts mts, it would not 5o 1

h bentL tLe ater of tragoP Ybe.freB 160 It wa so fa as IknOwi only in 1l62. Pepys s.w Itanden-oed viola's s ing Im.ensly. I men-ti ia culrsty Gl"Me rB for eaosre; or, Beuty th t,Adeei." came fIn .1700

aenlylp t, who, lte most iatpa

eratio .for the p. habeen hel. re-i onsible fot ar BdeitoI<n "lmawct,'!

th e*pte thl stage t hiet toi,. iSn«.Ato 4a'e lUgd for *attl th t in.T'hi versilon.pd in 1t674 and agatP.in

name o-*:n * the ti pas. thu t Iit isexrsl att r.ibuted by .Downes I;. wu

ed at Dorset arden n 10iJ72 but t myha ve "e "M^ obeth" thata Pelpyu saS:: . :s; 1zUU: Ts SAt.ld thttnE seciliY :in

oth.in'mat

en still [in 1100! a

to the music and apectacli

LASry Macduff, for lpianc(niAg of the play te gut; she worried bout he

oL. to r1 4 her prlouw let

p a teris .i 1 suppo, it,

the murder of Duncan, Lady Macduff fleesMacbeth's castle and meets her lord onlonely heath; the witches appear andprophesy Macbeth's death at the hands ofMacduff, as well as lady Macduff's ap-proahbing doom. She tI not terrified;

lrady Macbeth, on the other hand, is, In .,Act IV., troubled by constant apparitions t

tof the murdered Duncan. She begs Mac-beth to resign the crown. Macbeth, seeing |no ghost, refuses, and his wife Boes offraving. These Interpolated passages per.

sisted till 1744, when Garrick revived theplay as Shakespeare wrote It, though withthe retention of some of the singing and ldancing In the witch scenes. So little didthe actors kpow of the authorship that,when Garrick announced his Intention ofrestoring Shakespeare's text, Quin, theturgid old actor, whose glory withered asGarrick's flowered, cried out, with an airof surprise:

What does he mean? Don't I playMacbeth' as written by Shakespeare? "Before leaving Davenant, I must refer

to his and Dryden's perversion of"The Tempest," in which many non-Shakespearean characters are Introduced.Miranda has a sister, Dorinda, who also hasnever seen a young man, but for whomHippolyto, who has never beheld a woman,is conveniently provided. He iives in anelghboring cave, a ward of Prospero; why,dwelling just around the corner, as It were,he and the girls have never met, I cannotnay. Everything goes in couples In thisplay; Ariel has a soul-mate, Milcha, Callbpna lumpy sister, Sycorax. Songs and dancesabound; also all kinds of " macinery,"Strangely enough, the DQrinda-lHppolytosituatlon is found In John Philip Kembtleprompt-hook of the play as produce at

oyvent Gaen In 1815, Mantie thrgughthe igbtenth cntury, "The T empet"had been ftreueatly produced, soimetme

by Grrc in 176); but always with

etaclesong Wad da , iandjakmany miles.away.omo and Juliet" wasae w dat the

Thetre in Linco ln' In Fields, n 11aSxd wI, accordin to poxne, .fte.sometimne, lered by an Hwa ito atragi. dy, "he prnrvg Rom t andJulet aive; so t£at when the %raywau revlv'd galn, 'twa played alt.natly, trgially one da.r tr!igcoBthe neb t for sverll ys toether."

But the fate of tbh ona of the greatlove traedie ot the world, was deld foryear to come In li0. when Otays" CausMuar u" wasacted at £Dort oarden and b lhed f "omeo and Juliet"

Ifrom thee staxe till 14ItIInt A stately, r*ther dealsl trg-edy of the tre ot arliuM and Oty-. O-way W hainjted aBilderale a nt of

kespare' play. YoQug Mai s loY.ni S a.th daugit of a tol-

lowe rofyll; Cabin Menus had previous-liy tated . un ... beteeb .isn..adLani. O cour, It Jnow "fft, and

1theclvil war *lsetau to. resolve..to11 jon her. to ylla, we by s lde with Ot-

way's polical saenes weAfind the Nstte

g going abrotd with the Uron substi-

t theed. Her Bliae ,Ba pra sutsodd enough Rom, but not mo.eo th.n

t by e jolly tribun Sultiu. The haIl.r eny, scene, the s etwn La lf and the Nru, the bedroom se, (trBe

f. 1er to the gaden,) the potion scene. ther sne with the ppter, sandt e tombt. scene to a reat extnt in 8h

it ias a - W ei'ia c atlo, but

a. en mor ia I te cnt

0iI

I

V

I I

od

booth

Clolledieon ~

vogue. Genest records performance* asate as 1.IT. but not one of "Romeo andullet" until Sept. 11, 17I44 when The-philus Cibber made a version for the Hay-mrarket Theatre. Cibber's play harks backiu some degree to " Caiu Marlus," Thereis no reference to Romeo's love for Rosa-ine; rather, like young Marius with LA-

vinls, he is in love with Juliet at thestart, his father nsisting that he shall

give up his love. Hence the ballroomscene at the end of Act I. Is omittedi

onmeo and Juliet have met before, Linesfrom. Otway are found in the bedroomscene. At the end. Juliet wakes before

Romeo dies, and we have a passionatelove duo between the two, as In Otway's' Marius." Garrick (in his original tombocene) also follows Otway In having Julietawake before Romeo's death, and he gives

up the Roaline theme. In 7IT0 CoventGarden and Drury Lane ran rival produc-tions for twelve nights, beginning Sept 28.The Kemble version of the play differed

but slightly from Garrick's; even French'sacting version today retains the awaken-

ing of Julet before the death of her lover.This would Indicate a continuance of thecustom far into the nineteenth century;Gounod's opera follows the same practice.

In t1*1 Nahum Tate's "King Lear"was shown at Dorset Garden, Tate's dedl-cation to his "esteem'd friend, ThomasBoteler,-Eq ," says that In Shakespeare's"Lear" he had found "a heap of jewelsunstrung and unpolish'd: yet so dazalingin their disorder that I soon percelv'd Ihad sei)'d a treasure." The three moststriking alterations were (1) an "expedi-ent to rectify what was wanting in theregularity and probability of the tale," by

:isj

r%fr

from 6h{ WK/sgUll Collsctionmaking Edgar and Cordelia (who nevermeet in the original play) lovers from theatart; (2) the omissilon of the Fool; apd(8) "making the tale conclude In a Sc-cess to the Innocent distreat persons," inother words, with a "happy" ending-Lear restored to his throne, the wickedsisters dying of poison, and Edgar and Cor-delia married. "Yet," says Tate, " was Iwrack'd with no small fear for so beld achange, till I found It was well reeeYt'd bymy audience."

The first change Involved the doingaway with Cordelia's suitor, the King ofFrance, and an Implication that her coldanswer to Lear was due to hatred pf Bur-gundy and love for Edgar; It necelsstatedkeeping her In England and compelling herto wander about on the heath in the fear-ful storm, accompanied by an interpolatedconfidant, Arante, useful for sending onerrands. Heaven knows where they sleptlThe omission of 'the Fool removed fromthe.play one of the most fascinating, un-earthly characters In Shakespeare; he wanot restored to the English stag till 188.The third alteration took from (he Suffer-Ings of Lear all their bleak, elementaltragedy, and reduced the play to melodra-matic limits, Finally, the Edmund-Gonerli-Regan episode was unpleasantlyamplified,

Tate's mangling was castigated for a cen-tury and a half, but persisted; Shake-speare's "Lear" was never once acted inall that time. Yet efforts wore made tobreak the " Tatefication," as it was called.Colman, In 17T8, removed the excrescenceof the love of Edgar and Cordelia, but re-talned the " happy " Tate ending, still elim-inating the Fool, He also gave up the"absurdity" of Gloater's fqll from thecliffs of Dover. The attempt failed atCovent Garden, actors and ,public pre-ferring the non-Shakespearean love affair.Garrick, in 1766, produced a version atDrury Lane with much of Tate replacedby the original Shakespeare; nevertheless,Cordelia and Edgar still love, and the catas-trophe is Tate's. This version was usedthroughout the rest of the century; Kem-ble's, printed In 18J14, hardly differed fromit.

Not until 1828 was the tragic ending ofShakespeare restored by Ejdmund Kean;his version otherwise was Tate's, Edgarand Cordelia still lovers. In 18. when

~rwz~ ClctI~ y L' Zveit J7rwep W--Uxd-ell

manager at Covent Garden, Macready re-stored to the stage Shakespeare's entireplay, Fool and all.

The second Shakespearean play to live onIn mangled form was Colley Clbber's" Richard II.," played first by the authorat Drury Lane, In 1700. This version hasreally never been driven from the stage;It Is probably a more effective actingvehicle than Shakespeare's. It simplystrings together bits of " Henry VI.," part3; " Richard II." and "Richard III.," In-terpolating even a speech from " Henry IV.,"part 2. It omits many passages of Shake-speare's "Richard III.," Clarence's dreamand Margaret's curse, for Instance, and itInterpolates one by Clbber himself, that inwhich Richard informs his wife-LadyAnne-that he is weary of her, and meansto marry her successor. The aim is tomake the leading character, as Hazlitt says,more villainous and dlsgustlng; hence, theplay opens with several scenes from theend of "Henry VI.," part 8, showing themurder of the King by Gloster. It has al-ways been a thriller, and, as Shakespeare'splay is not highly regarded, perhaps nogreat harm is done.

At any rate, Tate's '" Lear " and Clibber's"Richard" for upward of two centurieskept Shakespeare's greater creations fromthe tg Another mangling l Garricek's

farce, "Katharine and aetruchio," actedat Drury Lane in 1756. and peralitng asa permanently successful after-piece till1887, when Augutln Daly was the firstto revive "The Taming of the Shrew"in Its entrety,

In 175. also, Garrick produced an oper-atie "Tmpet" and a "Winlter's Tale;"shorn of Its first three acts, and givingonly the Flonrtze-Peirda itory, with Aiul.sa's trick of the statue, at the end. Oar-rick had at this time a passion for hewingaway great bloi from the Shakepereancomedies. In 1T75 he produced an opera,the "Fairies," with splendid scenery and

songs and dancing, This was "A Mid-summer Nilght's Dream," with the hard-handed men left out; conversely, in 1768,after a one-night trial of the "Dream,"with thirty-three song, Colman, In Gar-rick's absenee from town, reduced theoffering to a musical farce with only thehard-handed men and the fairies; thefour lovers and Hippolyta are gone. YetGarrick was constantly prating of hisveneration for the poet.

Perhaps his most high-handed proceed-ing was with "Hamlet," which, with"Othello," had hitherto escaped seriousalteration. Voltaire had animadverted onthe "barbarous" character of "Hamlet,"and Garrick, In 1772, to obviate thesestrictures, decided to leave out much thatwas concerned with the madness anddeath of Ophelia, and entirely eliminatethe grave-diggers and Osric! The versionheld the stage till 1780. but was neverprinted.

It will be seen, then, trom the Restorp-

3Irs. Siddcons, t€e most fanmous of S9hakespeaer.nActresses (1755-1631) aited by rthomayf2 s Gvnrsboroih

All theis was changed with the final pass-ing of the great actors whose line extendedfrom Betterton to Kemble and Kean. WhenMacready assumed the management ofCovent Garden In 1887 the reign of thescholarly actor-manager began. Publictaste also probably had begun to demandShakespeare, not the century-old perver-sions of him. At any rate, Macready re-stored much of Shakespeare to the stage.His term of management was brief, butSamuel Phelps at Sadler's Wells (1844-62)and Charles Kean at the Princess's (1850-50) brought out most of Shakespeare'splays on a scale of liberality with historicalcorrectness and pertect taste hitherto un-known; they aimed at producing them aswritten, curtailing, perhaps, or even run-ning together scenes, but never adding.Charles Kean's published editions of his act-ing versions are scholarly works. CharlesCalvert, In Manchester In the '60S, andHenry Irving at the Lyceum, In the '70sandl '80s, were legitimate successors ofMacready, Phelps, and Charles Kean. Allfive were "sch o larly" players and carefulproducers; they restored Shakespeare tothe stage, and inaugurated the habit ofoorrect detail in scenery, dress, accessor-Pee, AC,

In this country, actors lagged far be-hind, . B. Booth and Forrest used modi-fications of the Tate "Lear," the ColleyCibber "Richard III," &c. Managers ofthe mideentury like J. W. Wallack andW. EB.Burton, In New York, and ThomasBarry, at the Boston Theatre, made reallyconscientious and beautiful attempts-probably inspired by Phelps and CharlesKean In London-to PUt on the comedieswith reverence for the text and with com-pletenese and correctness of Investiture.They met with generous public response.But traveling stars wandered about withhaphazard prompt-books and performedIn provincial theatres with resident stock-actors and stock-scenery. Forrest andCharlotte Cushman were giants and could"get away" with pigmy support. EdwinBooth, In his few years of managementat Booth's Theatre, (18(19.78,) Improvedall this and met lasting renown and finan-cial bankruptcy. It was not. however, till18IS that he finally discarded the Clbber" ichard" and the Tate "Lear"; aboutthis time he new-studied Shakespeare andproduced him in the versions still pub-li4hed under the name of "Edwin Booth'sPromPt-Books, edited by William Winter."

The foregoing facts I have put forwardwithout comment. Davenant. Dryden,Tate, Cibber, and Garrick have been an-athematized from their own day to ours;my condemnation is unnecessary. In theirdefense I would say that they, like Shake-speare, worked to please the taste of theirpublic; a man who so liberally helped him.self as did Shakespeare to the work ofothers could with but bad grace revilethose who helped themselves to his.opyright, 19)1». by The New York Times Company

I)

II

tion until 1830, or. roughly s peaking, uthe retirement of Keleble and EdmunKean, the stage cared but little for waw e today should call textual or even drmatic accuracy in the pres entationShakespeare The tragedies suffered much,but they were still treated as s erious plays;the comedies were mostly reg arded-that c entury of comedie of manners, fromWycherley to Sheridan-as fantastic con-

ceptions eminently fitted for conversion

pretty entertainment.At the very end of the period, fro m

t1815 to 1830, Frederic k Reynolds, some-times with the aid of Bishop, musical di-rector at Covent Garden, made such showsof the Midsummer Nigh t' Dream,"-Twelfth Night," "Taming of the Shrew,"," Merry Wives of Windsor," " Comedy ofErrors," and "Two Gentlemen of Verona,"Genest breaks out wrathfully againstReynolds for his violation of "TwelfthNight ": "In the Devil's name, why doen ot Reynolds turn his own plays intooperas?-does the think them so bad thateven wit h such music as he put into

Twelfth Night' they would not provesuccessful?-or has he such a fatherlyaffection for his own offspring. that hecannot find It in his heart to manglethem?"

In Reynolds's time these operatic perver-itone made their way across the Atlantic

and the Park Theatre In New York, onNov. 8 , 182(, offered the first pertormancein America of the "operatic com edy, 'AMidsummer Night's Dream,"' with thescenery, dancing and songs, "Incidental tothe piece," In the same season the "Com.edy of Errors" and the "Merry Wives ofWindsor" were staged In the same way,

It

I

vromv VI