ABSTRACT
In a little book, which I published in 1905,1 I ventured to agree with those who hold the opinion that Shakespeare’s plays were written for the Reader and not for the Stage. It seems many hold this opinion. Yet it was a satisfaction to me to come later across the following and other sentences in Goethe’s writings-2
“Shakespeare belongs by rights to the history of poetry; in the history of the Theatre he only appears casually.” “Shakespeare’s whole method of proceeding is one which encounters a
certain amount of impracticability upon the actual stage.” “The very contractedness of the stage forces him to circumscribe
himself.” Goethe comes to this conclusion, not at the beginning of his life but at
the end of it, after his experience in the theatre has shown him that literature and the stage are, and must be, independent one of the other. I still remain of the same opinion-that Shakespeare’s plays are not for representation, more especially because I am myself now working on several Shakespearean representations, and therefore have occasion for passing in review the many different “editions,” as they are called, of Shakespeare, especially the stage editions, and I am struck by one fact, and it is this: that the people who hold that Shakespeare was a master of theatrical art cut away from these plays lines, passages-nay, whole scenes: these words, passages and scenes which, they say, were written for the stage. To say a thing is perfect and then to mutilate it, is most peculiar. If a
manager wishes to cut a play, saying it will be better understood by the public if he does so, it is permissible provided he does not at the same time say that Shakespeare was a perfect master of dramatic art. Drama is for the people if ever an art was for the people, and if Shakespeare has not made himself clear to the people of all time, the actor-manager is not going to improve matters by cutting out large portions of the text. In Hamlet it is usual for that long passage commencing, “Now all occa-
sions do inform against me,”3 to be removed by the manager, who says that it does not “help the play.” Now this is a most extraordinary state of affairs,
that managers should be permitted to say what does or does not “help the plays” of Shakespeare, after Shakespeare has himself decided. Other passages in the play are removed because the managers hold that they are indelicate or they hold that the audience would consider them indelicate. Cut the passage between Ophelia and Hamlet in Act III, scene ii, when he is lying at her feet, and you rob the character of Hamlet of very much of its force. Ophelia, instead of being a woman of intelligence, becomes an early Victorian débutante; and Hamlet, instead of being a man of his time and suggesting a period which was more than a period of manners, becomes a kind of preaching curate. Of course the Censor4 would object to this and other passages in
Shakespeare, and he would be perfectly right, for the plays were not written for the stage; they were written to be read. If you wish to act them act them in their entirety or do not act them at all.5 It is as ridiculous to say that the omission of a small passage is not going to harm such a work as to say that the omission of so small a portion of the body as the eye does not injure the whole. This liberty with great plays is no sign of civilization; it is barbarous in
the extreme. Another argument advanced for acting in this way is that the performance must not last longer than a certain time. Time has nothing to do with a performance. If it is good we do not mind how long it takes: if it is bad it must be cut short, and therefore to advocate a short time is to imply a fear on the part of the manager that the play is going to be badly represented. Can one have too much of a good thing? Then, too, it is quite possible to perform a play of Shakespeare in its entirety in an evening provided the appliance for shifting the scenery is not so absurdly elaborate that it takes twenty minutes to change each act, and provided that the actors do not pause too long over each syllable, but exercise their brains to think a trifler faster. It is this slow delivery of Shakespeare’s lines which has made Shakespeare a bore to so many people. Here in the plays of Shakespeare we have passionate scenes of an amazing description, more passionate than in the Italian plays, and yet we drawl them and crawl them and are surprised when a Grasso comes to England and shows us how we should speak, act and reveal the suddenness and madness of passion. We seem to forget this fact, that passion is a kind of madness. We bring it to a logical attitude and we deliver it with the voice of the judge or the mathematician. It seems to have something to do with the totting up of accounts; thus with us it is a shopman, not Othello, who is throttling Desdemona. The emotional actors in England ought not to be content with themselves for not waking up and sweeping all these too deliberate and stodgy actors off the stage and out of the theatres. Would the plays of Shakespeare be then interpreted as they should be?
No, not even then. Not if the finest and most passionate actors in the world were to come together and attempt to perform Hamlet could the right
representation of Hamlet be given, for I fear to represent Hamlet rightly is an impossibility.
