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Startling Shakespeare on the Restoration stage or, “A dozen Shakespears here interr'd do lie”

2010; Routledge; Volume: 6; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/17450911003790208

1745-0926

Barbara Murray,

Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism

Abstract This paper aims to demonstrate what it was about Shakespeare's dramaturgy that was manifestly important to the practising playwrights who took his plays up to re-model for the newly opened London theatres at the Restoration. In showing how Shakespearean moments were transferred from page to stage at this time the paper offers another angle on very recent critical debate about Shakespeare as a playwright for both readers and audiences in the seventeenth century; the adapters must have read their Shakespeare with an imaginative eye as to how their new version could, or would, look on the developing stages. Whatever these Restoration adapters of Shakespeare may have said about their purposes, and whatever literary assessment they may have made of him, it was clearly the sheer visual theatricality of certain Shakespearean episodes and characters that they knew and prized. Keywords: ShakespeareRestorationstage history Notes 1. This paper represents a development of the arguments laid out in Restoration Shakespeare which explores "what became of half of Shakespeare's Shakespeare William The Norton Shakespeare . Gen . Stephen Greenblatt New York and London Norton 1997 [Google Scholar] plays on the stage in these early [post-Restoration] years, and how an operation on them that began as a political measure of moral containment met artistic and psychological theories that responded vividly to contemporary theatrical innovation and the emotive power of the visually metaphorical" (Murray Murray Barbara A. "Performance and Publication of Shakespeare, 1660–1682: 'Go see them playd, then read them as before.'" Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 4 2001 435 49 [Google Scholar], Restoration Shakespeare 11). It is not this paper's intention to pursue the adapters' political agenda: critical writing on these plays, including their historical and social aspects, is summarized in the endnotes to Murray (Restoration Shakespeare, Shakespeare Adaptations). 2. The New Shakespere Society published collections of seventeenth-century allusions to Shakespeare between 1874 and 1879, edited by C.M. Ingleby; their publication details are noted below. F.J. Furnivall Furnivall Frederick. J Fresh Allusions to Shakespere . New Shakespere Society Publications, Ser. 4.3. London N. Trübner 1886 [Google Scholar] edited Fresh Allusions to Shakespere for the New Shakespere Society (Ser. 4.3, London: N. Trübner) in 1886. 3. That Shakespeare intended his plays to be both performed and read is an issue opened up and debated by Lukas Erne Erne Lukas Shakespeare as a Literary Dramatist Cambridge, , UK Cambridge UP 2003 [Google Scholar] and others, including: Patrick Cheney Cheney Patrick Shakespeare, National Poet-Playwright Cambridge, , UK Cambridge UP 2004 [Google Scholar] (Poet-Playwright, Shakespeare's Literary Authorship); Cyndia Susan Clegg Clegg Cyndia Susan "Renaissance Play-Readers, Ordinary and Extraordinary" . The Book of the Play: Playwrights, Stationers, and Readers in Early Modern England Marta Straznicky Amherst, MA U of Massachusetts P 2006 23 38 [Google Scholar]; Alan B. Farmer and Zachary Lesser Farmer Alan B. Zachary Lesser "Canons and Classics: Publishing Drama in Caroline England" . Localizing Caroline Drama: Politics and Economics of the Early Modern English Stages . Adam Zucker Alan B. Farmer New York and Basingstoke, , UK Palgrave Macmillan 2006 17 41 [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]; David Frost Frost David "Shakespeare in the Seventeenth Century" . Shakespeare Quarterly 16 1965 81 89 [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]; John Jowett Jowett John Shakespeare and Text Oxford, , UK Oxford UP 2007 [Google Scholar]; Andrew Murphy Murphy Andrew , A Concise Companion to Shakespeare and the Text Malden, MA Blackwell 2007 [Crossref] , [Google Scholar] (Shakespeare in Print, A Concise Companion to Shakespeare); Charlotte Scott Scott Charlotte Shakespeare and the Idea of the Book Oxford, , UK Oxford UP 2007 [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]; Peter Stallybrass and Roger Chartier Stallybrass Peter Roger Chartier "Reading and Authorship: The Circulation of Shakespeare 1590–1619" Murphy, Concise Companion 35 56 [Google Scholar]. Looking forwards from 1660 the subject of reading versus witnessing Shakespeare's plays in the following two decades has been explored by Murray ("Performance and Publication"), and looking backwards from 1660 Wright Wright Louis B. "The Reading of Plays during the Puritan Revolution" . Huntington Library Bulletin 6 November 1934 73 108 [Crossref] , [Google Scholar] called "attention to the circulation and reading of both old and new plays "with royalistic, anti-Puritan sentiment" during the period between 1642 and 1660. 4. Michael Dobson Dobson Michael The Making of the National Poet: Shakespeare, Adaptation and Authorship, 1660–1769 Oxford, , UK Clarendon P 1992 [Google Scholar], for instance, sees Shakespeare used as a stalking-horse by John Dryden and Nahum Tate at the time of the Popish Plot and Exclusion Crisis (82). 5. The documents are contained in James Wright's Historia Histrionica (1699), but are reproduced by Robert Dodsley Dodsley Robert Select Collection of Old Plays 12 London Septimus Prowett 1825 27 [Google Scholar] (1:clxxvi) and Allardyce Nicoll Nicoll Allardyce A History of English Drama, 1660–1900 6 Cambridge, , UK Cambridge UP 1952 [Google Scholar] (1:352–54). 6. Peter Holland Holland Peter The Ornament of Action Cambridge, , UK Cambridge UP 1979 [Google Scholar] explores the theatrical creation of pictorial effects in this period, albeit not with reference to staged Shakespeare. 7. Laura J. Rosenthal Rosenthal Laura J. Playwrights and Plagiarists in Early Modern England Ithaca, NY, and London Cornell UP 1996 [Google Scholar] (33–37) writes of Gerard Langbaine's attitude to several of these adapters, and Paulina Kewes Kewes Paulina "Gerard Langbaine's 'View of Plagiaries': The Rhetoric of Dramatic Appropriation in the Restoration" . Review of English Studies ns. 48.189 1997 2 18 [Google Scholar] explores Langbaine's conception of plagiarism from Momus Triumphans (1688) to An Account of the English Dramatick Poets (1691). 8. For "heightening" the OED gives augmentation and intensification as mid-seventeenth-century usage, as well as the specifically artistic effect of rendering colour more luminous. 9. For fuller discussion of the adapters' views of their work at this time see Murray ("Performance and Publication"). 10. See Note 1. 11. Bibliographies of the adaptations and of work on them are contained in Murray (Restoration Shakespeare, Shakespeare Adaptations). 12. References hereafter are to act and page as in the Cornmarket Facsimile editions of the adaptations. 13. The Prologue and Epilogue to The Injured Princess need approaching with caution; the former had already been published in 1672 and 1676, and the latter had been printed in the Covent Garden Drollery of 1672. 14. Adapters were most likely to be working from F3, published in 1663 and re-issued in 1664. Massai Massai Sonia Shakespeare and the Rise of the Editor Cambridge, , UK Cambridge UP 2007 [Google Scholar] ("Tate's Critical 'Editing'" 501–22) reckons that Tate himself probably owned a copy, and for the possibility of Tate as actual annotator of F4 Coriolanus see also Massai (Shakespeare and the Rise of the Editor 185–89). 15. Of five references to King Lear in the old allusion-books before this time, one (c.1618–19) mentions "kind Leer … that lived in" Burbage – this is in the lines on Burbage's death (Ingleby, Centurie 131). 16. Derek Hughes notices the "overt" resemblance to King Lear (271) and J. Douglas Canfield Canfield J. Douglas Heroes and States Lexington, KY UP of Kentucky 2000 [Google Scholar] notes that Timon is given "a kind of Cordelia" (95). 17. Tate has "between". 18. Beatrice and Benedick appear again, with changed names, in The Universal Passion of 1737 by James Miller. Falstaff as good-hearted wastrel was translated into a new play by William Kenrick, Falstaff's Wedding of 1760, and also appeared in versions of Shakespeare's own plays by Betterton (1700 and 1704), John Dennis (1702) and ?Charles Molloy (1720). These plays were reproduced in facsimile by the Cornmarket Press, 1969–70. 19. Unlike the innocents of The Tempest and King Lear, Beatrice and Benedick are apparently better known in the preceding years; three out of five references to Much Ado About Nothing in the old allusion-books are to them (Ingleby, Centurie 161, 233; Furnivall 48). 20. Furnivall (372). Adding in allusions from the companion volume (Ingleby Centurie) and using Falstaff (uniquely) as a "work", the editor calculates 64 references, followed by 63 to Hamlet/Hamlet. Of the references before 1681, however, only 10 refer actually to Falstaff's physical presence – his fatness (and six of these fall in the period when Lacy would have been playing him); many of the others are more "literary" allusions, particularly to his view of honour. The theatricality of Falstaff's role in the Henry IV plays and in The Merry Wives of Windsor is closely discussed by Meredith Anne Skura Skura Meredith Anne Shakespeare, the Actor and the Purposes of Playing Chicago and London U of Chicago P 1993 [Google Scholar] (115–40). 21. Van Lennep (122) follows the contemporary prompter and stage historian, John Downes (7), in assigning the part to the versatile actor George Cartwright for a performance in November 1667. Walter Clun may also have played the part for the King's Company at Vere Street as early as November 1660 (19); Pepys was disappointed several times by The Merry Wives of Windsor, and particularly by the playing of Falstaff at Vere Street in December 1660. Clun may have had an appropriate bearing for the part – John Aubrey speculates as to whether he might have been Ben Jonson's son (338). According to Highfill (9:102) Lacy may not have been very active on the stage after 1674; he was suing the King's Company for his share of the profits in February 1681, and died in September. 22. It was acted as The Tyrant of Sicily by the King's Company at Drury Lane in January 1681 and, in these politically interesting times, banned as subversive after two performances. 23. Summers (Restoration Theatre 282) says that it "is true that … Falstaff, and some few other personages were distinguished by their traditional attire", although he does not indicate a source for this. Odell Odell George C.D. Shakespeare from Betterton to Irving 2 London Constable 1920 Repr. 1963 [Google Scholar] (1.205) also comments on Falstaff's distinctive "Shakespearean" attire. 24. It was originally conceived of as a clown's part: J. Dover Wilson Wilson J. Dover The Fortunes of Falstaff Cambridge, , UK Cambridge UP 1943 Repr 1979 [Google Scholar] mentions "Will Kempe or some other comedian" as originally playing it (47); Joseph Allen Bryant Bryant J.A., Jr "Shakespeare's Falstaff and the Mantle of Dick Tarlton" . Studies in Philology 51 1954 149 62 [Google Scholar] demonstrates more fully how Shakespeare's role of Falstaff "assimilated and perpetuated" the memory of Dick Tarlton, "the greatest clown of them all" (149–62); by contrast David Wiles Wiles David Shakespeare's Clown Cambridge, , UK Cambridge UP 1987 Print [Crossref] , [Google Scholar] examined the "externals" of a role created for Robert Armin, including Falstaff's "incommensurable girth", his sweaty, melting greasiness and overheated countenance (chap. 9). Robert Weiman Weiman Robert Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition in the Theater . Robert Schwartz Baltimore and London Johns Hopkins UP 1978 [Google Scholar] notes that Bryant had overlooked Falstaff's size, derived from the Lord of Misrule, the Vice figure, and the classical miles gloriosus (287 n.53). 25. Further performances in 1669, 1675 and 1676 are noted by van Lennep. Othello was the fourth most named Shakespearean work in the seventeenth century according to Furnivall (372). None of the allusions to Othello/Othello before 1660 refers to the colour of his skin. Vaughan Vaughan Virginia M. Performing Blackness on English Stages, 1500–1800 New York Cambridge UP 2005 [Google Scholar] explores Othello's Restoration acting history and its context in contemporary imitations ("Politics and Plagiarism" 1–21), and also explores the subject of blackness on early stages (Performing Blackness). Along with those of Hamlet (1676) and Julius Caesar (undated, but possibly 1684), a quarto of Othello was published in 1681; these represent the unadapted Restoration quartos. 26. Actors wore make-up at this time, of course: Pepys noted how disappointed he was with the close-up sight of it on 5 October 1667, "to see how they were both painted would make a man mad". Montague Summers (Restoration Theatre facing page 282) reproduces an illustration of William Harris blacked up as the eponymous Empress of Morocco in Duffett's (1673) farce (van Lennep in fact lists Joseph Harris as Morena). Anne Bracegirdle (white) is nevertheless attended by little black boys in the Smith mezzotint of her as Semernia, the Indian Queen, in Behn's The Widow Ranter of 1689 (reproduced in the illustration between pages 400 and 401). In the engraving to the 1673 edition of Settle's The Empress of Morocco, the Moorish Dance in 2.1, the foreground dancers have dark skin (van Lennep between pages 64 and 65). 27. Dorothy Nameri Nameri Dorothy Three Versions of the Story of King Lear 2 Salzburg, , Austria Institut für Englische Sprache und Literatur, Universität Salzburg 1976 [Google Scholar] (2:85–86) finds Nigridius "strongly reminiscent" of Shakespeare's "coal-black" Aaron who may also have inspired his name. 28. This topic is developed by Murray ("Transgressing"). 29. The wit of Beatrice and Benedick is played up in James Miller's The Universal Passion of 1737; a different ending is created for Falstaff in Kenrick's Falstaff's Wedding of 1760 (and he is also elaborated in 1720) (see Note 18). A number of eighteenth-century adaptations – including some by Garrick – are re-designed to focus on Katharina and Petruchio (1735, 1756), Leontes (1756, 1758) or Jaques (1723, 1739); these plays were reproduced in facsimile by the Cornmarket Press, 1969–70.