Notes and References CHAPTER 1: INTRODUO'ION: RE-INTERPRETING SHAKESPEARE 1. Stanley Wells, Literature and Drama, with special Reference to Shakespeare and his Contemporaries (London, 1970) pp. 10~9. For a recent critique of play-text looked at 'as novel', 'as play' or 'as poem' see Terence Hawkes, That Shakespeherian Rag: essays on a critical process (London, 1986) pp. 7>-91. Another interesting discussion is that of Erving Coffman, 'The Theatrical Frame', Frame Analysis (Harmondsworth, 1975) pp. 124--55. 2. Adolphe Appia, Music and the Art of Theatre, trans. Robert W. Corrigan and Mary Douglas Dirks, ed. B. Hewitt (Coral Gables, Florida 1962) p. 10. 3. See David L. Hirst, Edward Bond (London and Basingstoke, 1985) p. 132. 4. William Shakespeare, The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet Prince of Denmarke 1603, in Elizabethan and jacobean Quartos edited by G. B. Harrison (Edinburgh, 1966) p. 28. (Reproduced from the Bodley Head Quartos published between 1922 and 1926, London). See The New Penguin Hamlet edited by T. J. B. Spencer, introduction Anne Barton (Har­ mondsworth, 1980). 5. Op. cit., pp. 37-8. Notice also the differences in this speech as printed in two modern editions: the Penguin here and Professor Alexander's text for Collins as quoted in Chapter 2. 6. A survey of Shakespearean production is found in George C. D. Odell, Shakespeare from Betterton to Irving, 2 vols, 1920 (Dover edition, New York, 1966). 7. From George Granville, Lord Lansdowne, The ]eu.> of Venice extracted in Shakespeare. The Critical Heritage, vol. 2, 169>-1733, ed. Brian Vickers (London, 1974) p. 152. 8. Nineteenth Century Shakespeare Burlesques, selected by Stanley Wells, (London, 1978) vol. IV, p. 57. 9 See Thomas R. Whittaker, Tom Stoppard (London and Basingstoke, 1983) pp. 48f; Tim Brassell, Tom Stoppard: an Assessment (London and Basingstoke, 1985) pp. 36f. 10. A. C. Sprague, Shakespearean Players and Performances (1953 Greenwood edn, New York, 1969) pp. 11>-14 drawing on contemporary theatre reviews in The Theatre, 1 December 1879, and Saturday Review, 8 November 1879. 11. See Chapter 4. 137 138 Notes and References 12. Keir Elam, The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama (London and New York, 1980) p. 93. 13. Antonin Artaud, The Theatre and Its Double, trans Victor Corti (London, 1970) p. 60. 14. Ronald Hayman, Artaud and After (Oxford, 1977) p. 160. 15. Artaud, pp. 55, 58. 16. From John Willett, The Theatre of Bertolt Brecht (rev. pbk edn, London, 1977) pp. 120...1. 17. For a discussion of Brecht's reading of Shakespeare see Margot Heinemann 'How Brecht read Shakespeare' in Political Shakespeare New Essays in Cultural Materialism, edited by Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield (Manchester, 1985) pp. 202-30. It has been suggested that John Osborne's adaptation of Coriolanus, A Place Calling Itself Rome (London, 1973) may have been written in reply to Brecht's adaptation. Osborne's secretary, however, has denied that this is so. See Ruby Cohn, Modern Shakespeare Offshoots (Princeton, 1976) p. 22. Ruby Cohn's book is the best available survey of Shakespearean 'offshoots' and 'adaptations'. In kindly reading through my typescript Arnold Hinchliffe notes in a letter to me 'I'm sorry there is no place for Osborne's version of Coriolanus which - I think - has never been produced anywhere. It does require a tank and a helicopter but what's a National Theatre for? It is an interesting adaptation and Coriolanus (or a view of him) suits Osborne well.' I agree but I am afraid space has not allowed its inclusion. 18. Bertolt Brecht, A Short Organum for the Theatre in John Willett, trans & ed., Brecht on Theatre (London 1965) pp. 182-3. 19. Adaptations and offshoots abound this century from Jarry's Ubu Roi to work by C. P. Taylor, Howard Brenton, Snoo Wilson and others. Friedrich Durrenmatt in particular has written two major adaptations, Konig Johann (1968), Titus Andronicus (1970). For a checklist of many of these plays see Cohn, 1976, pp. 411-16. 20. Tom Stoppard, 'Is It True What They Say About Shakespeare?' International Shakespeare Association Occasional Paper No 2 (Oxford, 1982) p. 13. 21. Guido Almansi, 'The Thumb-Screwers and the Tongue-Twisters: on Shakespearean Avatars', Poetics Today, voi. 3, no. 3 (Summer 1982) pp. 87-100 divides the adapters into two camps: 'the thumb-screwers ... tend to reestablish a Shakespeare who is more Elizabethan than the Elizabethan age could allow, a truculent and schizophrenic Shakespeare whose language is in chaotic upheaval and whose characters rant and rage' and the 'tongue-twisters' who 'are much less violent and severe, and insist on the element of "theatre within the theatre", already present in Shakespeare himself but emphasised and played upon by the new masters of dramatic acrobatics'. In the former category Almansi includes Bond, Ionesco, Durrenmatt, Testori, in the latter, Stoppard, Marowitz, Manganelli. His categorisations can perhaps be challenged. Bond would not relish being compared with Ionesco for example, or vice versa. I am grateful to Guido Almansi for sending me an off print of this article. Notes and References 139 22. John Marston, Preface to The Fawn (1604). CHAPTER 2: PARASITIC COMEDY 1. Tom Stoppard interviewed by Ronald Hayman in Ronald Hayman, Tom Stoppard (London, 1977) p. 7. 2. Tim Brassell, pp. 66-7. Brassell narrows the influence even further to Eliot's lines from Prufrock: No! I am not Prince Hamlet nor was meant to be: Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two, Advise the prince, no doubt an easy tool. T. S. Eliot, Collected Poems, 1909-62, p. 17 Thomas R. Whitaker, pp. 37-67 sees the drama in the context of Beckett's plays, and makes reference also to James Saunders, Next Time I'll Sing to You (not regarded as a major influence by Brassell). He also suggests a parallel with Sartre's No Exit (sometimes called In Camera, sometimes Vicious Circle, originally titled Huis Clos). Both Brassell and Whitaker acknowledge W. S. Gilbert's burlesque Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: a Tragic Episode, in Three Tableux (1891) as a previous playlet placing the same two characters at its centre. This playlet can be found in Stanley Wells, Shakespeare Burlesques- Vol IV (London, 1978), also in Plays by W. S. Gilbert, ed. George Rowell (Cambridge, 1982). Jim Hunter, Tom Stoppard's Plays (London, 1982) p. 137, comments: 'The title of Stoppard's play is important. A single dismissive line from the end of Hamlet, it hangs over the modem play like a memento mori. One fundamental difference between Rosencrantz and Beckett's Waiting for Godot is indicated by their titles: in one play, the protagonists dead from the start, in the other, always waiting'. C. W. E. Bigsby Tom Stoppard (Harlow, Essex, 1976) p. 10 sees in the play an attempt 'to combine the brittle wit of Oscar Wilde with the mordant humour of Samuel Beckett'. He also finds echoes of Edward Albee's Tiny Alice and Zoo Story, Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party and John Osborne's The Entertainer. Bigsby's is a brief but telling study in which he states: 'Niebur's comment that laughter is a king of no man's land between faith and despair is clearly applicable to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. For Rosencrantz and Guil­ denstern themselves, humour is a means of preserving sanity; for Stoppard it is a natural product of disjunction - of the gulf between cause and effect, aspiration and fulfilment, word and meaning, which is the root alike of all pain, absurdity and laughter, and a clue to the relativity of truth, itself a subject to which Stoppard has repeatedly returned' (pp. 15-16). 3. Arnold Hinchliffe, British Theatre 1950170 (Oxford, 1974) pp. 141-2. 4. In Giles Gordon, 'Tom Stoppard', Transatlantic Review, 29, 1968 quoted Brassell p. 38. 140 Notes and References 5. Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (London, 1968) pp. 7-8. All quotations are from this edition which is based on Stoppard's revisions. The ending of the play was changed and a few other alterations were made from the fust to the second performance. These have been detailed by Tim Brassell, Tom Stoppard: an Assessment, who also reproduces the original ending of the play, pp. 270-1. 6. For a discussion of the war of the theatres, see the seminal work of Alfred Harbage, Shakespeare and the Rival Traditions (1952; repr. Ontario, 1970). Some of Harbage's ideas have been challenged in recent years by in particular Ann Jennalie Cook, The Privileged Playgoers of Shakespeare's London 1576-1642 (Princeton, 1981). See also Andrew Gurr, Playgoing in Shakespeare's London (Cambridge, 1987). 7. Meyerhold on Theatre, trans and ed. with a critical commentary by Edward Braun (London, 1969) p. 30. 8 See Chapter 8 below. Some would argue of course that the Marowitz Shakespeare is similarly out of date. It reacts against certain historical readings of the play. I would contend, however, that Marowitz rather than acquiescing to a particular liberal line shows a foresight in his opposition which allows some of his experiments to retain their force through the inherent positivism of his interpretation. Stoppard's interpretation though amusing is negative. 9. See Chapter 9 below. CHAPTER 3: A DIVERGENT VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE 1. Quotations from The Fool are from Edward Bond The Fool and We Come to the River (London, 1976). 2. Bond, Introduction, The Fool and We Come to the River, p. xiii writes, ' ... we must learn how to look, and teaching about art is as important as creating it. The S.S. Commandant didn't read Goethe, he admired himself reading Goethe'.