213 Richard III

[skweeker]

Hmmm....thanks for the reply: we all have to make up our own minds as to what counts (or should count) as being "Shakespeare". For me Shakespeare is a poison most effective when administered by ear; but to achieve its full effects, it ought to be simultaneously applied to the eyes. This is difficult to do without a mirror, or by having its place supplied by others via a helpful "doubling" of oneself by means of a play (like Hamlet so thoughtfully provided for his step-father) .
I certainly don't mean to run wild with my "This Is Not Shakespeare" stencil, but I might take some poison, get some spray bombs late tonight and hit the dumpsters and walls downtown.

[Mr Sausage]

For what it's worth, that's also the position of Harold Bloom--which clearly has something to do with his praise for Throne of Blood and Ran as the best Shakespeare screen adaptations.

Bloom's point, an echo of other's, is that modern audiences haven't the same aural training that Renaissance audiences did. The latter had poetry recitations, attended the stage more frequently--and what's most important--would listen to the prose of the Bible in church each week. They were more attuned to verbal nuance and rhetorical artifice, where modern audiences, not having many equivalents, have to read the text if they're going to pick up everything.

Anyway, here's an account Bloom gives in an interview that touches on the larger dicsussion in this thread:

I still remember being onstage a number of years ago, having a debate with probably the most distinguished living British critic, Sir Frank Kermode. He's not someone who's terribly fond of me, and I cannot say that I'm enormously fond of him. At one point, someone in the audience asked, "Professor Bloom, what do you think is the best film of Shakespeare you ever saw?"

I said, "Actually, the two Kurosawa movies—Ran, his version of King Lear, and Throne of Blood, his version of Macbeth." At which Sir Frank said triumphantly, "It's the usual thing with Harold. Shakespeare's language doesn't matter at all. Kurosawa doesn't know a word of English." I said, "That doubtless is true. But I felt that Kurosawa captured a sense of what I believe Lear and Macbeth are up to."

Also, if Shakespeare was not meant to be read, why were so many of his plays published in his own lifetime - and his complete works published shortly after his death? Though again this 'the plays were not meant to be read' thing is something I hear a lot from people who ought to know better.

There's no evidence, tho', that Shakespeare approved these quarto versions, and even the first folio (published seven years after his death by a couple of the King's men, and of which we do not know if Shakespeare approved) refers disparagingly to the early quartos as stolen and illegitimate. As you've pointed out, publishing one's own works wasn't an accepted practise at the time (was ungentlemanly), and guys like Ben Jonson caught a lot of flak for it, so it's not a foregone conclusion that Shakespeare would have wanted them published.

As for the argument that Shakespeare published his plays so that others could perform them, you're right to be suspicious. This would be the equivalent of one major movie company publishing its scripts so that every other major movie company could produce them. The Globe theater was a business, one that had competition (from places like Black Friars); for Shakespeare to give his plays to any and every other theater company would be a remarkably dumb business decision for someone who makes his living on the Globe's profits.

Anyway, Shakespeare’s metre really isn’t all that regular. Try reading the plays, and you’ll see. Compare him with something like Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, which tends to be regular as clockwork.

Tho' I'm pretty much with you in your arguments, I should note that the regularity of Shakespeare's iambs is a bit off point. Whatever the regularity, clearly Shakespeare was trying for certain metrical effects (why else vary the metre), and those effects are important to the verse. Any translation then is sadly and unavoidably imperfect (tho' I'd be the first to say Shakespeare is large enough to overcome it). Odd thing about English rhythms is that they're apprehended in two ways: in terms of the abstract (what is identified generally as the metre, ie. iambic pentametre) and in terms of the actual (what is the specific ordering and variation of the stresses within the individual line).

[skweeker]

Oh, please, stop. It's a perfectly reasonable position.

Is this only Shakespeare (i e Jannings' Othello, Nielsen's Hamlet also are not "performances of Shakespeare"?), or does this apply for you to all performances in silent films?

I'm somewhat confused as to why you would even think to make this extrapolation. What would it even be, that it's impossible to give a performance without spoken dialogue? Of course that's absurd. The notion that it's impossible to give a silent performance of Shakespeare because it eliminates the critical element which denotes a thing as Shakespeare, his words, is at the very least understandable. One could of course argue that it's still his story being told and thus it's still Shakespeare, but that's just another subjective but equally logical position.

First off there's no need for the "Oh please stop".

On the meat and potatoes here, I'm not entirely clear on what you mean because of the construction of your reply, it's a little confusing. I never said that it's impossible to give a performance without spoken dialog-- nobody ever said such a thing and this was never the thrust of our discussion.

What I was doing was probing the ideas behind skweeker's assertions regarding what I guess we could regard "authorial authenticity". He alleges that a performance of Richard III filmed during the silent era, where the actors are reciting the play, etc, as received by the cognitive senses today in a theatre, on disc, is "not" "Shakespeare".

My questions to him are quite logical-- for him there is some form of reduction going on via the presentation of silent film... reduction away from authenticity, into something else... something else "not shakespeare". What is it then? While what the men on the set in 1912 performed and saw was Shakespeare, for skweeker, we today see something that is not SHakespeare because the words being spoken on the screen in the celluloid record of the 1912 event do not tickle the air molecules to create an audio reception...

So my questions were primarily two: is it Shakespeare, or is it silent film? Is there something "special" in Shakespeare only than can't come across via the medium of silent film, but can in other scripts, plays, scenarios, no matter how good the writing, no matter how profound the wisdom, no matter how great the talent? OR is there something inherent in all writing-- a script by Gouvernier Morris, Henrik Galeen, a scenario by Carl Mayer, Thea von Harbou, etc-- that does not "transmit" sufficiently via the medium of silent film whereby we can say we are "watching Mayer". "Harbou", "Morris", "Galeen", etc.

In other words the problem either is in the greatness of Shakespeare, or it is in the medium of silent film, which requires you to hear the words in your mind instead of in your speakers.

Skweekers assertion is that the problem is in the greatness of Shakespeare, that there is something there in the play that is lost when the sound of the actors voices is lost. But that this something is NOT lost when other writer's work is being transmitted-- their work comes across fully wholesale and with complete fidelity... the imagination attaching a hypothetical voice to the speaker (along with intertitles) is quite satisfactory to the process of Authorial Authentication in all other cases, but in Shakespeares case, if we can't hear the voice of the actor, it is not.

Which I think is completely wrong. If Shakespeare isn't Shakespeare in silents, then nobody gets across intact. Not Mayer, not Harbou and not Galeen. Nobody. There can be no qualitative exceptions, not even based on one's opinion of the greatness of the words.

yeah...the difference, I think lies in what is being written for, by the author. That is, where her ultimate aim lies: the stage or the screen.
Shakespeare is one of the very few authors yet widely used in the making of popular entertainments whose original works were created prior to the invention not just of film but of photography itself.
Prior to say 1850 (appox. date of invention of photography), was it common, or did it ever happen at all, that novels were adapted into plays?
With film, it's clear that plays were adapted to film, from the outset: stories and novels, too, quickly were adapted.
I suppose this whole question of whether a silent film may be called "Shakespeare", rather than an "adaptation of Shakespeare", hinges on how far the materials (in this instance, Shakespeare's text, amorphous though that 'definition' is) may be changed, before the identity can be said no longer to hold.
But "complete fidelity" of film to text is IMO simply not technically possible - words are not made of moving patches of light and shadow: it is physically and psychologically a different medium of expression. All film will in a purely physical sense forever be an adaptation of whatever text (if any) may be said to have underlain its creation.
That is to say, prior to the advent of sound films, that the only way a film could be in complete fidelity with the text would be to project the text itself. After sound perfect fidelity could be achieved by reading the text - but this listening, too, is fundamentally different than reading a writing, in physcho-physical terms.
But - aha - Shakespeare's works were meant and intended always by the author to be a work of the spoken and performed word. Thus, in the case of Shakespeare (and indeed for all playwrights, uniquely amongst authors), the coming of sound made actual fidelity possible, to a greater degree than ever before. A silent film of any play is by necessity an adaptation, with the new and added interposition of intertitles between the audience and the work: with sound, that no longer remains physically the case.
One is returned to the immediacy of the spoken text of the play.

From this thread, it looks like the category of things that "are Shakespeare" may be very broad indeed. Broader than I had thought, at any rate.

How about a different tack?
Is a silent version of "The Pirates of Penzance" really Gilbert & Sullivan? I would say no, and for the same reasons.

[Binker]

First off there's no need for the "Oh please stop".

You’re right. That was in response to what seemed like a rising chorus at the absurdity of his position.

is it Shakespeare, or is it silent film?

I think you’re skipping over the most sensible cutoff point; plays. Consistency would require him to hold the same beliefs re other playwrights being adapted, as presumably their words are their essential contributions the same as Shakespeare, but I don’t see any reason to extend his argument further than that. Silent screenwriters and scenarists, working specifically for the medium, would lose nothing in translation because the only translation occurring is one in which they were anticipating and in fact designing their work for.

[skweeker]

Yes Binker: it's actually a rather dry technical/technological point which I was attempting to make. Not of aesthetic identity or worthiness, so much as of authorial identity and its permissible attribution, as conditioned by the extent of the technical adaptation of the source play, and which may have been required in its expression by the medium of film, all the while taking into account the playwright's own intentions, as revealed by the text itself.

The coming of sound may not have completely removed the necessity of some adaptation of plays for the screen, but it certainly lessened the extent of adaptation technically required to substantially fulfill the playwright's intent. Sufficiently so, upon the coming of sound, as to be permissibly called, for the first time in the history of the medium of film, the playwright's own work.

In contrast to an avowed and confessed adaptation of the playwright's work by others. Which, I hasten to add, may result in an even better work of art, than the original play. Even in the case of Shakespeare himself.

[Tommaso]

I suppose this whole question of whether a silent film may be called "Shakespeare", rather than an "adaptation of Shakespeare", hinges on how far the materials (in this instance, Shakespeare's text, amorphous though that 'definition' is) may be changed, before the identity can be said no longer to hold.

Exactly. But by that definition, any Shakespeare film or stage performance which displaces the text into a different setting, into a different time, and uses different cultural signifiers such as modern music or clothing, might change the identity of the play into something almost unrecognizable, even if the original text is used. I believe this happens for instance in that Leonardo di Caprio version of "Romeo and Juliet", and you could even to a degree say that about Branagh's "Hamlet", which is textually the most faithful of all film versions, as it for once uses the whole of the text, without any abbreviations.

The coming of sound may not have completely removed the necessity of some adaptation of plays for the screen, but it certainly lessened the extent of adaptation technically required to substantially fulfill the playwright's intent. Sufficiently so, upon the coming of sound, as to be permissibly called, for the first time in the history of the medium of film, the playwright's own work.

I don't agree with this at all. 'Shakespeare', understood as 'literally' as you seem to do, would not only include the original text, but also the Elizabethan stage (completely different from our modern proscenium stage), interactions with the audience, performance in broad daylight etc. etc.. What appears to us as a faithful staging of Shakespeare, e.g. the famous BBC productions, is actually quite far away from what Shakespeare himself would have seen and performed. Performance at his time was not necessarily just a faithful rendering of the text, as good as that text may be. The text would have been adapted to different occasions, different stages, different audiences. It wasn't regarded as 'sacred' in any way.

Shakespeare, of course, had important points to make, and he phrased them in an incomparable manner. Thus, any film version worthy of the text must try to find its own, incomparable, individual means to adapt it into what is surely a different medium. That's why my favourite 'Shakespeare' films include films like "Ran", Gade's "Hamlet", Jarman's "Tempest" or Greenaway's "Prospero's Books". These films are exceptional because they are, in their different ways, not afraid to stray from the original text but are able to bring out hidden layers and meanings that are often central to Shakespeare's text, but probably not so apparent in a conventional staging/filming. And here, to return to the beginning of this discussion, is where my doubts about Olivier's "Richard III." start. I simply find it utterly conventional in the way it is performed and especially filmed (though certainly in a 'classic' and solid way). His acting is top-notch, but still is unengaging for me. Thus for me it is not 'closer' to Shakespeare than other films, even though it may make use of the original text (though certainly shortened, and adding the silent role of Jane Shore or the initial ceremony, as has already been mentioned).

As for the argument that Shakespeare published his plays so that others could perform them, you're right to be suspicious. This would be the equivalent of one major movie company publishing its scripts so that every other major movie company could produce them. The Globe theater was a business, one that had competition (from places like Black Friars); for Shakespeare to give his plays to any and every other theater company would be a remarkably dumb business decision for someone who makes his living on the Globe's profits.

Yes, those editions published during his lifetimes were the equivalents of bootlegs today. They came into being often from the memories of actors, performance sheets and the like. That's why these early editions are often so different from each other and sometimes misread Shakespeare's words. Shakespeare most likely would have been opposed to these printings, and mostly because of financial reasons indeed.

[skweeker]

Yes Tommaso I do agree about how different from Shakespeare's own productions all of these films are, but after all we are about film, on these threads.

To paraphrase Napoleon (the pig) : Some Shakespeare films are more Shakespeare than others. While the viewpoint of equality would be: they are all equally, or all equally not, Shakespeare.

Like questions about Platonic forms: what is the true form of, what is essential to, the Archetype, and what is in contrast only accidental to the particular instantiation - only instead of triangles or the good, MacBeth and Hamlet now provides the forms. I'd say that on the whole, the exercise is somewhat easier with the triangles.

As to O's Richard III, I stick by my earlier assessment: it's boombastic (ie bombastic with an extra 'O'), for the reasons I mentioned. Come to think on it, it may even be getting a little campy. But O's Henry V, I like better.

And I think they are both Shakespeare. Olivier's Shakespeare, to be precise.

PS About Herr Shreck's 1912 silent version: are you sure that there may not be, or have been in existence, a wax cylinder or early gramophone record issued contemporaneously, which may have been meant to be played as a soundtrack to the film?

[Sloper]

I should note that the regularity of Shakespeare's iambs is a bit off point. Whatever the regularity, clearly Shakespeare was trying for certain metrical effects (why else vary the metre), and those effects are important to the verse. Any translation then is sadly and unavoidably imperfect (tho' I'd be the first to say Shakespeare is large enough to overcome it).

Absolutely - Shakespeare's very rewarding to study in this respect, because he does so many interesting things with metre. I was just taking issue with skweeker's claim that we need to 'hear' the iambic pentameters, in the first place because it isn't as simple as iambic pentameters, and in the second place because there are lots of different ways of stressing the lines. You say Shakespeare is striving for 'certain metrical effects', but I'm not sure there's anything certain about them. The great Tony Howard once said (in a lecture I attended) that, to his mind, Shakespeare is the 'greatest' of all playwrights because he 'writes the way actors think'; he allows for individual interpretations and readings. Far more so than any other dramatist I can think of, Shakespeare is a master at creating ambiguous, real human beings, and this idea applies, of course, to the way the verse is spoken as well. As you say, Shakespeare is big enough to withstand metrical 'mis-readings', and I'd go as far as to say that an actor doesn't necessarily have to know what an iambic pentameter is in order to speak the dialogue well. From what little I've seen of the Almereyda Hamlet, the actors seem to take considerable liberties not only with the metre, but even with the words. Which is fine, if the talent is there to pull it off.

As for the issue about published editions - I didn't mean to suggest it was a 'foregone conclusion' that Shakespeare wanted his plays published, I just see no reason to discount the possibility that he wanted them to be read. Especially given the scorn he sometimes pours on actors, and their tendency to ruin the text...

There was a theory at one time that bootleggers sat in the audiences writing down the dialogue in shorthand, but I think that's just one of those myths invented by literary critics to make their job seem more exciting. It should also be mentioned that not all the quarto editions (released prior to the Folio) were inferior; some of them contain good bits which are missing from the folio. But whatever I used to know about all this has seeped out of my brain with time, and in any case it's a massive grey area.

[Mr Sausage]

As you say, Shakespeare is big enough to withstand metrical 'mis-readings', and I'd go as far as to say that an actor doesn't necessarily have to know what an iambic pentameter is in order to speak the dialogue well. From what little I've seen of the Almereyda Hamlet, the actors seem to take considerable liberties not only with the metre, but even with the words. Which is fine, if the talent is there to pull it off.

Oh, no, I meant translation into other languages, which was partly at issue (via the Kurosawas). But, yes, part of the actor's art is knowing the different nuances that arise from stressing various words differently (and, of course, making a suitable choice).

You say Shakespeare is striving for 'certain metrical effects', but I'm not sure there's anything certain about them.

And you're right, that's the trouble with live performance, there are less certainties and more chances for variation. I was speaking from the perspective of a reader who can scan poetry, which, however subjective a practise, can often find agreement among other readers, and at the very least is usefully dialectical.

The whole problem with this discussion is that people are trying to argue for "what is Shakespeare" without really taking the trouble to define Shakespeareaness (which goes far beyond rigourless claims like "it's his exact words," a claim that, as you've done a good job of showing, is rife with complications and contraditions).

[skweeker]

Come to think of it, I've always kind of wanted to see the finished version of Richard III that Dreyfuss was rehearsing for in "The Goodbye Girl". Now that would be campy.

[Adam]

Well, I'm with Charles Lamb and think that Shakespeare should only be read, not performed. There, now all the heat's off everyone else in the thread. You're welcome.

Wasn't it Samuel Johnson who said something similar, although I don't think he argued as explicitly against performance.

I don't see why skweeker's comments are attracting so much heat. Shakespeare without the words isn't Shakespeare. That's not a mark against Welles, Kurosawa and others, but they are clearly adaptions of Shakespeare.

I think th heat is due to Monsieur Skweeker's tone -- in particular, his rather absolutist dismissal of other viewpoints -- and his "lecturing" of people who just might have as much (or more) familiarity with Shakespeare's work than he does.

I haven't "heard" that tone nor a dismissal of others. He is stating his view. It differs form others. He explains it. Others disagree. I hear no more lecturing than Herr Shrek or others in the thread.

Yes Binker: it's actually a rather dry technical/technological point which I was attempting to make. Not of aesthetic identity or worthiness, so much as of authorial identity and its permissible attribution, as conditioned by the extent of the technical adaptation of the source play, and which may have been required in its expression by the medium of film, all the while taking into account the playwright's own intentions, as revealed by the text itself.

The coming of sound may not have completely removed the necessity of some adaptation of plays for the screen, but it certainly lessened the extent of adaptation technically required to substantially fulfill the playwright's intent. Sufficiently so, upon the coming of sound, as to be permissibly called, for the first time in the history of the medium of film, the playwright's own work.

In contrast to an avowed and confessed adaptation of the playwright's work by others. Which, I hasten to add, may result in an even better work of art, than the original play. Even in the case of Shakespeare himself.

For me, for example, Olivier's is 'Shakespeare." Kurosawa's Ran and Throne of Blood are "adaptations of Shakespeare." And the 1913 Richard III is "Shakespeare that unfortunately we can't hear." 19th century theatrical productions are "Shakespeare that we didn't see."

[kaujot]

A little off-topic, but has anyone seen the 2001 version of Lear called My Kingdom, starring Richard Harris? It was his last leading performance, I believe.

[skweeker]

Richard Harris as Lear in his last performance?
Intriguing.

[Sloper]

Further to the discussion of published editions in Shakespeare's lifetime (not to drag this out, but I just remembered it), here's a quote from the preface to a 1609 quarto of Troilus and Cressida, publisher unknown:

'A Never Writer to an Ever Reader. News. Eternal reader, you have here a new play, never staled with the stage, never clapper-clawed with the palms of the vulgar...And were but the vain names of comedies changed for the titles of commodities, or of plays for pleas, you should see all those grand censors, that now style them such vanities, flock to them for the main grace of their gravities - especially this author's comedies...It deserves such a labour as well as the best comedy in Terence or Plautus...nor like this the less for not being sullied with the smoky breath of the multitude; but thank fortune for the scape it hath made amongst you.'

It's obviously addressed to an audience assumed to be rather snooty about plays and the theatre, but who enjoy reading classical poetry. Here we see an early example of Shakespeare being exalted as 'high art' rather than 'popular entertainment'; later that attitude would become the norm, and I guess it still is, but in 1609 it was a slightly more radical position - and a defensive one. Just thought it might be of interest, since it's the only concrete evidence of this sort of attitude that I can think of.

[skweeker]

Thank you Sloper for the quote: it serves to illustrate the level of literacy assumed to have been achieved by the audience, by Shakespeare and his contemporaries. That is quite the sales pitch!

Perhaps Bloom is correct: modern audiences (thanks in part to our favorite medium, film) have fallen back in their literal competence.

Upon reflection (how handy be mirrors!), I think that determining which work qualifies as being "Shakespeare" and which does not, may be simply determined by adapting the our modern tests for the violation of copyright: that is, assume for the exercise, that Shakespeare set down and published his work, and that he further did so within the five years prior to the creation of the work under consideration. If that were the case, could the work under present consideration have been liable to a successful suit for breach of copyright, by the Bard? If yes, than it may be said to be Shakespeare: if not, then it cannot.

The degree of adaptation is thus thrown into high relief: for that is what our copyright law requires.

After all, breach of copyright suits are all too common: we have expertise in distinguishing and differentiating between "authorship" claims. The same apparatus and tests may be applied successfully, I think, to the works of Shakespeare, to determine whether a work is his, or not.

That this exercise may produce different results than what I have previously stated to be my opinions as to the works, I have little doubt. But at least the "test for Shakespearianess (sic)" becomes more elucidated, more consistent.

[HerrSchreck]

First off there's no need for the "Oh please stop".

You’re right. That was in response to what seemed like a rising chorus at the absurdity of his position.

is it Shakespeare, or is it silent film?

I think you’re skipping over the most sensible cutoff point; plays. Consistency would require him to hold the same beliefs re other playwrights being adapted, as presumably their words are their essential contributions the same as Shakespeare, but I don’t see any reason to extend his argument further than that. Silent screenwriters and scenarists, working specifically for the medium, would lose nothing in translation because the only translation occurring is one in which they were anticipating and in fact designing their work for.

That's a red herring. ..and you're also placing skweekers conciets/concerns into the mind of a silent film scenarist, which you posit that he is composing versus-- that there is a loss of fidelity that he is anticipating, whereby he will make adjustments to insure that his authorial identity will and can be authenticated because of countermeasures versus the silent film. I say flapdoodle: all you need is a good cast and crew and it gets across.

Clarifying: whether it's a play or its a script, the overriding point, the crux of the discussion here is, a la skweeker, that what the author has written as dialog cannot be heard by the viewer. This is the maker or the breaker. And this is a hindrance not unique to plays in the silent era. There is dialog written and spoken in silent film scripts-- they are scripts just like any other script, be they play or film. They have artfully written dialog that is put into the mouth of characters at the same rate as a play... the actors rehearse this and put as much into their performance, (as did a writer who wrote it) as does a stage actor or a playwright. Skweeker's point is strictly that because, in Richard, dialog that was written is not audible, what is seen onscreen is "no longer" "Shakespeare".

But even if the examples of Harbou, Mayer, and other scenarists are insufficient for you-- then stick with plays only, which were made into silent films: The Blue Bird, Assunta SPina, Peter Pan, A Dolls House, etc etc ad infinitum. Lets posit for the sake of argument that like Richard these plays maintain fidelity to the original book. Explain why this problem doesn't exist for these plays but it does in Shakespeare.

yeah...the difference, I think lies in what is being written for, by the author. That is, where her ultimate aim lies: the stage or the screen.
Shakespeare is one of the very few authors yet widely used in the making of popular entertainments whose original works were created prior to the invention not just of film but of photography itself.

What, anyway, makes the 1912 Richard III a "film"-- the fact that it was filmed? The dialog of the film as spoken on the set is Shakespeare's play-- this equates to a "filmed play". Like Schlondorff's Death of a Salesman with Hoffman & Malkovitch.

A play doesn't cease to be a play simply because a camera records the unfoldings-- especially in the case of proscenium-style filming of the early silent era where a camera is plunked down at a distance and merely simulates the visual perception of an audience member with good seats.

Again-- if what we see onscreen of Richard III from 1912 is "not Shakespeare" then that which is beheld by a deaf person who plunks himself down into a play of same today, yesterday, or tomorrow, is "not Shakespeare" either.

The fact is it's simply Shakespeare without sound. No more, no less. The words, if known, are there for presentation-- a lip reader can read them and hear them, a person who knows the play can enjoy them. The lack of an actors voice does not make something "not" Shakespeare, or turn it into something authorially inauthentic. A deaf person, or a person with the play in his lap to follow along, or a person who knows the play very well, would protest this lunacy most forcibly. Saying that it is not Shakespeare is like saying a book is not a book unless you buy the Book On CD where it is read to you by an actor.

As far as "adaptations of Shakespeare" go, aside from the printed words themselves (that can be completely authenticated) there is no "immutable Shakespeare"-- there are variations between each and every performance of each and every play. In a sense every presentation is an "adaptation" of Shakespeare.

And skweeker, there were no wax records to be played along. What there was was this: Frederick Warde did some limited touring with the pic, and did opening and closing presentations-- before and after the film rolled-- to enhance the perception that they were seeing the Great Actor in the ultimate presentation of Richard.

[skweeker]

So, here are some scenes from the silent/1912 Richard III. The latter one has an off-putting score.

More like a kinescope novelty item, than Shakespeare. At least to my senses.

Now, for Shakespeare. There is a difference. The crucial difference lies in presence of the spoken words, I tells ya.

And once it is film, a play becomes a film: it is inaccurate, to call the projected image of the play, "still a play": no, it is now a film, of a play. Perhaps a silent film, of a play which has as its principal characteristic the richness of the spoken language used by the playwright.

[HerrSchreck]

No-- it's the written language of the playwright. This is the immutable point you're blooping over. If your point were accurate, no deaf person could see "a play", and video/film records of same (regularly made by production co's) would cease to be plays.

[/Usefulness of thread]

[skweeker]

As pointed out above, Shakespeare never wrote his plays down: for this author, his work was intended as solely a live, and I hold, essentially aural experience.

Changing an author's intention, post mortem, is quite a feat of magic.

What's the problem? Film is its own medium: ALL works not written for the screen, and which must thus be adapted therefor, differ essentially and ineluctably from their originals, even in the simple, primitive aspects of their sensory apprehension. The blind are well capable of appreciating Shakespeare, and as Shakespeare intended: not so the deaf. The blind may experience Shakespeare's words, albeit stripped of all the trappings added thereto by the producers of the play or film or pantomine: but not so the deaf, who only experience those trappings, with (perhaps) the dead words on the inter-or-sub-titles.

I note from the 1912 clips linked to, that it actually uses NONE of Shakespeare's own words or lines. Therefore, it has been inspired by Shakespeare: but it is not Shakespeare. Any more than my copy of the Mona Lisa in watercolors can be said to be Da Vinci's work, or to accurately convey da Vinci's intent - for that one needs to look at the original. Fortunately, original words are well capable of lossless copying, so that the author's words in this case serve to convey the author's actual factual intent. No intermediation required, apart from giving the words their voice.

Or, consider the brilliantly-plumed songbird. The deaf may see the plumage, but they do not therefore and thereby hear the song; while the blind may hear its song, but of necessity be ignorant of its plumage. Shakespeare is a singer, who left only songs: the plumage has since Shakespeare's time always been added by others. No song, no Shakespeare. It seems simple, clear and a consistent enough a position for me. Useful too in determining what ought to be credited (if the giving of credit counts for so much) to our contemporaries: which is the actor's, which is the author's, and which is the set-dresser's or producer's.

The profoundly blind do not appreciate films in the same way as do the sighted. On Shreck's analysis, this would not necessarily be so; I have to disagree. And that position, like my position on Shakespeare, is no insult to the differently-abled: it is just the way that it is, as a result of the construction of the human frame, and its senses, together with the limits of our technology.

[HerrSchreck]

Look skweeker-- this is going to constitute my last post here, as it's a little embarassing to have come this far already.

If you're going to keep posting here, and bring up The Brilliantly Plumed Songbird, The Mona Lisa, etc, that's fine. But if you reference me, I ask that you not put words in my mouth. I never said

The profoundly blind do.. appreciate films in the same way as do the sighted.

I said that the deaf can go see a "Shakespeare" play, because they can apprehend the script in other ways. The same way that a deaf individual can watch the CC Richard III with the subtitles on. I'm not talking about "ways of film appreciation" of the blind vs the sighted. I'm talking specifically about the authorial identity of that which is beheld when the audio soundtrack is removed. Earlier you said the Olivier film "was" "Shakespeare", now you're morphing to saying that if it's a film, it's "not" "Shakespeare". i e.

his work was intended as solely a live experience

Lastly I'd recommend you at least Netflix the 1912 Richard III before making pronouncements about it's content, about which you are absolutely, completely incorrect-- the actors, as they are being filmed (I mentioned this multiple times above), are performing the script of the play. It's simply Shakespeare without sound. You can watch the documentary on the disc which authenticates this, as they track Warde's monologues, and even superimpose Oliviers voice over Warde's lips-- so similarly did they announciate the script, that the v/o works perfectly.

Arrivederci and out!

[skweeker]

Nevertheless, Warde's version requires that the audience supply Shakespeare's words: while the sub-titles in Olivier - a technological achievement - are able to supply the words, where one's own ears do not.

In the latter case, Shakespeare's words are at least presented to the audience: not so, with the silent versions, which require that the audience be pre-prepared, that is, be already familiar, with the words of Shakespeare's Richard III.

The silent film is not Shakespeare: O's is, even if one cripples it by turning off the sounds, and turning on the subs. But even O's version would cease so to be, if both sounds AND subs remained unprovided: for once again, the audience's own memory would be from whence "Shakespeare" would need to be drawn, in that case. As is the actual case with Warde's: only Warde's version does not allow one to "turn on the subs", so as to cure the "fault" of relying upon the audience's prior familiarity with Shakespeare's play. A fatal defect IMO: which may be capable of correction, by the addition of Shakespeare's words, in the form of subs or inter-titles. Yet even then it would still limp, compared to the spoken, genuine words, as Shakespeare could have known or heard them.

[Mr Sausage]

As pointed out above, Shakespeare never wrote his plays down

The King's Men must have had magic memories, then, otherwise how exactly does one put on a play without a script?

[skweeker]

Silent films do not have scripts, in the sense that films with dialogue do. They have scenarios. Screenplays without dialogue.

Shakespeare is immanent in his dialogue: that is, in the dialogue which has been critically accepted as having been written/created by Shakespeare. And that's all there is to him. If you don't give the audience at least that, calling it "Shakespeare" is just misleading marketing: a misuse of a great, but dead and defenseless, artist's reputation and legacy.

As was pointed out earlier in this thread, Shakespeare himself never published his plays in his lifetime: and I do not know if there are "canonical" copies written in Shakespeare's hand from whence all others are drawn. I had thought that his company published the plays some time after Shakespeare's death. The original King's Men may well have just been working by memory.

Returning now to O's Richard III, one aspect of Sir Larry's performance has always disappointed me: his hump. I have always felt that if there is to be a hump, that it may as well be a mighty hump. His hump just doesn't cut the mustard.

I'm guessing that for some this movie cuts the cheese, though.

[Mr Sausage]

Silent films do not have scripts, in the sense that films with dialogue do. They have scenarios. Screenplays without dialogue.

You said: "Shakespeare never wrote his plays down." What does this statement have to do with silent film scripts?

As was pointed out earlier in this thread, Shakespeare himself never published his plays in his lifetime: and I do not know if there are "canonical" copies written in Shakespeare's hand from whence all others are drawn. I had thought that his company published the plays some time after Shakespeare's death. The original King's Men may well have just been working by memory.

Casting doubt on the legitimacy of Shakespeare's words as being his words, rather than the pieced together remembrance of other people, does your argument no favours. The plays were likely published from extant scripts since there would be no sense in getting rid of the whole dramatic repetoir of the company's leading playwright, especially if you want to put the shows on again. And it goes without saying Shakespeare wrote his plays down: they weren't one man shows.

[zedz]

There's no evidence, tho', that Shakespeare approved these quarto versions, and even the first folio (published seven years after his death by a couple of the King's men, and of which we do not know if Shakespeare approved) refers disparagingly to the early quartos as stolen and illegitimate. As you've pointed out, publishing one's own works wasn't an accepted practise at the time (was ungentlemanly), and guys like Ben Jonson caught a lot of flak for it, so it's not a foregone conclusion that Shakespeare would have wanted them published.

As for the argument that Shakespeare published his plays so that others could perform them, you're right to be suspicious. This would be the equivalent of one major movie company publishing its scripts so that every other major movie company could produce them. The Globe theater was a business, one that had competition (from places like Black Friars); for Shakespeare to give his plays to any and every other theater company would be a remarkably dumb business decision for someone who makes his living on the Globe's profits.

It's been some long years since I did any work in this area, but this is close to my understanding of the situation.

The quartos, good and bad, were almost certainly not Shakespeare's doing, but rather compiled from a variety of good to bad sources. Good = a prompt book, maybe S's 'foul papers'; bad = the memory of one or more players; a feverishly scribbling audience member (the Renaissance equivalent of many a concert bootleg). The evidence for all of this is almost entirely textual and relative (e.g. some of the differences between rival versions of the texts seem to be mishearings; some seem more like paraphrases; some seem like problems deciphering a handwritten text).

The reason printers of the day went to so much trouble to obtain a 'Shakespeare text' for printing was - duh - that there was a demand for them. His plays were popular and lots of people wanted a souvenir of them - to read. The plays were also proprietary and commercially valuable, so the King's Men were certainly not publishing the texts so that rival companies could produce the plays.

The best analogy I can offer for this situation is music bootlegs. People want to hear their favourite band's music, but the band doesn't release any albums. They can see them live, sure, but what do you do between concerts? It'd be great to have a bootleg of high-quality session recordings, but you'll make do with a desk tape. Hell, you'll even snap up a recording made on somebody's walkman in the middle of the crowd next to a drugged-up oaf who won't shut up.

The first folio was like the record company finally releasing the coveted recordings after the artist's death. Most of what you want's on there, but there were some crucial bits they couldn't find in the vaults, they had to bootleg the bootleggers for some titles, or combine two different audience recordings from two different concerts to get the whole (OK, 80%) of the song. But don't worry, there'll be a second volume if this one sells (and if they find more stuff lying around in mislabelled cans).

EDIT: I see Tommaso made the same point in about a third of the time above!