Activity 4 - Adaptation

GONERIL Come, sir, I would you would make use of that good wisdom Whereof I know you are fraught, and put away These dispositions that of late transform you From what you rightly are. [King Lear, 1.iv]

For economic, social and cultural reasons, Shakespeare rose to prominence in the course of the eighteenth century. The works performed, at Drury Lane and other theatres in the period were not, however, quite those that you can see in London or Stratford-upon-Avon in the twenty-first century. Rather, Shakespeare's plays were often adapted. Even if people read printed versions of the original texts at home, those they saw on the stage were often quite different.

These adaptations did, however, contribute to Shakespeare's fame. Above all, they presented Shakespeare in a way that was not too unfamiliar to eighteenth-century audiences. This meant that these adaptations allowed parts of Shakespeare's works to be performed even when prevailing cultural opinions would not have suffered the full text to appear on the stage. We may criticise them for their rewriting now, and indeed some eighteenth-century critics and actors were already doing this, but we should not forget that such rewritings also kept Shakespeare on the stage, particularly in the early decades of the period.

Several famous authors rewrote Shakespeare for the stage in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. John Dryden (1631-1700) contributed to a new version of The Tempest, called The Enchanted Island in 1667, which added a sister for Caliban, and a man, Hippolita, living on Prospero's island but who, as the direct opposite of Miranda, had never seen a woman. Garrick, as well as performing Shakespeare, also adapted his plays: he turned The Winter's Tale into Florizel and Perdita by removing much of the first few acts; similarly, The Taming of the Shrew became Catharine and Petruchio, reducing the play from five acts to three. Garrick even dared to edit Hamlet, and spoke about his audacity in a letter to the French translator of Shakespeare, Pierre-Antoine de la Place in January 1773:

I must tell You that I have ventur'd to alter Hamlet, & have greatly Succeeded; I have destroy'd ye Grave diggers, (those favourites of the people) & almost all of ye 5th Act – it was a bold Deed, but ye Event has answer'd my most sanguine expectation: if you correspond with any of the Journalists, this circumstance will be worth telling, as it is a great Anecdote in our theatrical history –

As well as removing the gravediggers, Garrick also drastically changed the end of the play. Ophelia still goes mad, but does not die; instead her exit provokes a violent argument between Hamlet and Laertes. In the course of their argument, Hamlet becomes enraged and stabs Claudius, which causes Gertrude to flee in terror; Hamlet then “runs upon Laertes' sword” and dies in Horatio's arms, living just long enough to hear that Gertrude has died of grief off-stage. What do you make of these changes? Why do you think Garrick removed the gravediggers, Osric, the fencing match, and the on-stage deaths of Gertrude and Laertes? Think about dramatic effect, about the fact that Garrick himself played Hamlet, and the concern, already discussed, that Shakespeare's plays be moral.

Although Garrick's version of Hamlet was popular during the actor's life, it did not long survive his retirement from the stage. In contrast to this, the most famous adaptation of all Shakespeare's plays, Nahum Tate's King Lear, held the stage from its first performance in 1681 through the entire eighteenth century until the 1820s, when Shakespeare's original version was finally resurrected. Even then, Tate's King Lear continued to be performed, with a staging in New York as late as 1985.

You can read Tate's version of King Lear here: http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/tatelear.html

Tasks

- What does Tate change? Why do you think he changes it? How would you characterise the ensemble of his modifications?

- Compare a scene of Tate's adaptation with Shakespeare's original. Discuss specific changes Tate makes to Shakespeare's language.

- How would you adapt a Shakespeare play? Take any work by Shakespeare and propose changes to its plot, giving your reasoning. Modifications can be made in terms of setting (Thomas Otway transported Romeo and Juliet to imperial Rome in 1680), language (William Davenant greatly simplified the language of Macbeth for an operatic version in 1674), structure (Garrick removed acts and scenes; Tate added them); character (Dryden, as we have seen added characters to The Tempest); and much else besides.