On Tidying-up Shakespeare
I'm on the prod staff for a college club's production of Julius Caesar this coming term (as master electrician---the non-design side of lights---though I intend to act as well), so today I received a copy of the script as the directors have cut it. Skimming through it, I paid particular attention to the Brutus-Cassius dialogues since a friend and I have been doing these for the past few months.
Now, although I don't usually endorse Brutus/Cassius myself (they were, after all, Roman, not Greek), I'm perfectly aware that there are numerous lines that can be read as extremely slashy. The directors were, apparently, painfully aware of this themselves, and cut or altered many of them. Notably, the exchange following their argument in IV.iii, which includes Cassius' line `I cannot drink too much of Brutus' love' is absent.
My personal favorite revision, however, is from V.i. To be sure, I have myself not had as much success as I would like in rendering Cassius' line
Now, most noble Brutus,
The gods today stand friendly that we may,
Lovers in peace, lead on our days to age
as non-slashy as possible. Granted, `lovers in peace' may be worth a few snickers, but at least by comparison the change to `true friends in peace' is outright hilarious.
Of course, all of this probably is well-done. It will, at least, keep the audience from getting side-tracked in asking themselves, `Wait, did he just say . . . ?' Nor am I one of those people who cringes in horror at the thought at the editing of the Shakespeare's work. Even aside from accommodating time constraints, sometimes the plays just need a bit of trimming; So-And-So doesn't really need all forty lines of that speech, especially when ten of them are redundant. The thing with Caesar, however, is that I have gotten so used to the language and world of that play as a place where `love' and its various cognates do not necessarily have romantic connotations, but applies more as an expression of friendship. Being, then, accustomed to this interpretation of the play, the alterations . . . seem to feel somewhat embarrassed about the original text. Really, though, it's mostly that they're just strange . . . something different I will have to get used to, whether or not I will be playing either of the characters principally affected.
Now, although I don't usually endorse Brutus/Cassius myself (they were, after all, Roman, not Greek), I'm perfectly aware that there are numerous lines that can be read as extremely slashy. The directors were, apparently, painfully aware of this themselves, and cut or altered many of them. Notably, the exchange following their argument in IV.iii, which includes Cassius' line `I cannot drink too much of Brutus' love' is absent.
My personal favorite revision, however, is from V.i. To be sure, I have myself not had as much success as I would like in rendering Cassius' line
Now, most noble Brutus,
The gods today stand friendly that we may,
Lovers in peace, lead on our days to age
as non-slashy as possible. Granted, `lovers in peace' may be worth a few snickers, but at least by comparison the change to `true friends in peace' is outright hilarious.
Of course, all of this probably is well-done. It will, at least, keep the audience from getting side-tracked in asking themselves, `Wait, did he just say . . . ?' Nor am I one of those people who cringes in horror at the thought at the editing of the Shakespeare's work. Even aside from accommodating time constraints, sometimes the plays just need a bit of trimming; So-And-So doesn't really need all forty lines of that speech, especially when ten of them are redundant. The thing with Caesar, however, is that I have gotten so used to the language and world of that play as a place where `love' and its various cognates do not necessarily have romantic connotations, but applies more as an expression of friendship. Being, then, accustomed to this interpretation of the play, the alterations . . . seem to feel somewhat embarrassed about the original text. Really, though, it's mostly that they're just strange . . . something different I will have to get used to, whether or not I will be playing either of the characters principally affected.