Events, dear boys, and girls, events!

Sorry to trot out a variation on that old quotational chestnut, it breaks a promise I made to myself never to use it again despite its elegant utility.  It sums up my excuse for the lack of posting recently.  I have been struggling with two mighty projects.

First, I mentioned in an earlier post that I have taken on the job of directing that play about the grumpiest of grumpy old men, King Lear, and the first job, as always with these Shakespearean 'biggies' is to cut the damn thing down to a length that will allow our audience to catch the last bus home!  Once again I prostrate myself in front of the demi-gods of Microsoft and call blessings on their heads for inventing 'Word'.  Oh, the ineffable joy of cutting and pasting compared to running a pencil through various lines in a book, then trying to rub them out because it was a mistake, and then trying to join up two pieces of text . . .  never again . . .  thanks to that nice Mr. Gates.

I would like to say that cutting Shakespeare is a fine and delicate task that entails the sort of careful scholastic skills that are entailed in, say, restoring an old master painting.  Well, as regular readers will guess, I am not much of a scholar.  However, I do seem to have a feel for theatrical production.  Beneath all the poetry, the philosophy and the great truths of human nature with which Shakespeare's plays are filled, there is a simple, old-fashioned story to be told.  My job in planning an amateur production in a provincial town is to tell the story!  Sometimes it is relatively easy, as in Hamlet which is, in essence, the first great thriller ever written; not so much a 'who dunnit', more of a 'will he do it?'  But Lear is trickier.  Just consider the heath scenes in which we have an old man who is really mad, a young man who is pretending to be mad and a Fool whose humour makes Monty Python seem sensible!  Hidden in this tangle of apparently nonsensical non-sequitors there are meanings, references and hints that well-up from the subconscious minds of all three participants.  What to cut?  How much to cut?  As always when cutting I offer up an apology to the playwright and rely on his benevolence as a practical man of the theatre who knew that the main priority was to get the show on!  Actually, with Lear there is some help to be had from the man himself because he returned to the play later in life and altered it substantially.  Even so the mystery of the numbers continues to vex me like a pebble in a shoe.  Why does he keep returning over and over again to 'quantities' and 'numbers'?  It's a mystery!

The other great event in my life is my bewildered shuffle into the 21st century as I grapple with the sophistications of PowerPoint and apply them to my talks on military history.  However, before I could even reach for the computer I had to 'go back to school', as it were, and remind myself of Napoleon's incredible campaign along the Danube in which he completely encircled an Austrian army, and then followed up with the stunning battle of Austerlitz.  Even if you are not that interested in military history, that particular campaign is fascinating, not least in the way it demonstrates the falsity of the Marxist notion that personality in history has no effect.  The way in which Napoleon played on the psychological weaknesses of his adversaries, tricking them into thinking he was at the end of his tether and there for the taking, was genius of the highest order.  Anyway, I think I now have a slick presentation with which I can wow my audiences.  Step up, step up, all the fun of the circus . . .

Comments

[dearieme]

Cutting out the "comic" bits would improve much of Shakespeare. But do you dare do little bits of detailed editing to make the meaning clearer - perhaps replace an obsolete usage by a modern one? Or would that always go "clunk"?

[David Duff]

Aha, that is my little secret, 'DM', but you won't tell anyone, will you? I often use a modern word to replace an archaic one, or one in which the meaning has changed over the years, eg:

Gon: This admiration, Sir, is much of the savour / Of other your new pranks.

I have replaced "admiration" with 'affectation' (with a little help from the editor of the Arden!) Now I look at it in detail I might consider replacing "savour" with 'flavour' - what do you think? It's not always easy because the change must not disturb the pentameter.

On that subject I do think it is time Arden, or someone reputable, produced a text with such individual word changes. It is going to happen at some time as the change in language and meaning accelerates, otherwise Shakespeare will become even more obscure than he already is to many people.