If my employer had acquired Playing Bit Parts in Shakespeare under its previous title, Bit Parts in Shakespeare’s Plays, I would probably not have picked it up. As it was, I was browsing through books on Shakespeare and performance, and I thought that (1) although Buckingham is not a bit part, he does have two acts during which he appears to be a bit part, with very few lines and a good deal of standing around, and (b) anything useful in this book will likely to be useful to me, either in this role or some other in the future. Plus, there was a whole chapter on R3, so that was good.
It turns out that the book is not chock full of useful advice for the actor. I have the impression that the author, Molly Maureen Mahood, thinks that it is chock full of useful advice for the actor, but it isn’t. It is chock full of interesting observations about Shakespeare’s plays, though. It is, in some ways, a terrific book. But it is not a terrific book in the specific way of helping an actor who happens to find himself cast in a bit part in Shakespeare.
For one thing, Ms. Mahood’s interpretations of the plays and their roles is likely to come in to sharp contrast with the director’s ideas, and when you are in a show, particularly in a small part in a show, the director’s ideas take precedence. For another, much of the book is simply an argument that the bit parts are very important to Shakespeare’s technique, and that therefore they should not be cut from performances. The idea that the scrivener is not expendable ultimately has to run up against the fact that the scrivener is expendable, as is shown by the fact that almost all productions do without him and have for hundreds of years, but it is good to read a vigorous defense of the scrivener and his like. Still, these are not decisions for the actor to make: if you have been cast in a bit part, the odds are good that it is being kept, and for practical purposes you can leave out the argument. And, alas, when Ms. Mahood does give concrete ideas for a bit part, they tend to Coarse Acting, which of course there is a great deal of in Bit Parts in Shakespeare, but then, that book already exists.
So, not so much help on Playing Bit Parts in Shakespeare. On the other hand, Ms. Mahood uses the bit parts to bring out some very interesting (and, yes, potentially useful) things about Shakespeare. The earlier chapters, in which she discusses the various structural and thematic tasks the bit parts play, are really wonderful. The plays reward truly close reading, and Ms. Mahood has the trick of it, and puts that to good work. As a result, not just bit parts but any part in the play is opened up to possibilities: is a theme or metaphor brought out first in a minor character to be picked up and brought to full fruition later? Or perhaps is it the other way around, with a minor character bringing back a metaphor or reference, keeping it fresh or looking at it anew? Or, intriguingly, is a bit part acting as a sort of corporeal metaphor; a gardener who does not garden onstage but brings up the idea of the garden, or a messenger who might, by his presence, bring into question the direct and indirect communications we have been seeing?
And there are other aspects that are lovely. In the chapter on Julius Caesar, she observes the difference in character and in audience sympathy between those bit parts we see in the first part of the play and those we see in the second. I think a skillful director could do a lot with that. Which is part of the problem with the title. A more accurate one might be Thinking about Bit Parts in Shakespeare, or even more accurately Stuff for a Director and Dramaturge to Think About before Cutting a Shakespeare Play. And, of course, it’s great stuff to think about whilst reading a Shakespeare Play, which doesn’t necessarily require cutting at all.
I’m afraid, though, that I am a firm believer in cutting the plays; they are very long, and audiences are not used to that sort of thing. Nor can I hold it against them; I am not used to that sort of thing, myself. I would rather see a well-cut production; I would very much rather be in one. And if there is to be a maximum length (3 hours, or even better, 2 and a half) (including intermission), then the question is not whether to cut but where to cut. And Ms. Mahood is not helpful with that. She does not, for instance, vigorously argue in favor of cutting down the speeches of the main characters, or for trimming out entire subplots. No, she argues only in favor of leaving in. And as I said about Pygmalion, when I like a play that much, I will feel like every cut is a tragic loss, even while admitting it as a necessary loss. Perhaps Ms. Mahood can convince me, or go at least a good long way towards convincing me, that the scrivener is a tragic loss. But in order to convince me to keep the scrivener, she’s got to point to something else that can go, and be less of a loss. That, she does not do.
Plus, and I find this endearing, honestly, I have a sense that the whole book is put together as the way for her to make the claim that she can’t really do in a book of criticism, which is what the book might be. And that claim is a claim of the importance in The Tempest—no, the absolute and fundamental centrality to The Tempest—of the Bosun. Yes, I had forgotten there was a Bosun, too.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.
I was forced to revisit The Tempest on the basis of this post, and my vote is: she’s high.
On the other hand, I am axiomatically against cutting The Bard. On the other other hand, I’m an English teacher, not an actor.
peace
Matt
Well, one could reasonably argue that the political meaning of The Tempest will be greatly influenced, if not determined, by the performance of the Bosun in the opening scene of the play. The political theme is rich enough that its full development can’t be _determined_ by this single role, but he is the strongest and potentially most sympathetic voice for the common worker in the play, contrasted to the feckless aristocrats. If his strong advocacy for the primacy of professional expertise over political clout and for the irrelevance of “nobility” to the powers that govern the natural world is removed, the political balance of the play will tip even more strongly than it already would in favor of the aristocrats.
I see the issue of cutting Shakespeare like this:
1) If you can have the curtain go up at 7:30, there’s no need to shorten a Shakespeare play to below 3 hours. If you give a good performance, the spectators are _not_ going to be bored. I see the Chicago Shakespeare theater routinely do 3 hour productions, and I never see boredom in the audience. If you keep the audience in their seats past 10:30, they are going to start to get tired because of the hour.
2) If cutting is to be done, most of the time “thinning” is a much better strategy than “lopping”: almost every scene in Shakespeare has value to the design of the play, so any cut of an entire scene is likely to be damaging. (The Clarence’s kids scene in _Richard III_ is a rare exception.)
3) If you are doing a Shakespeare play because you want to do Shakespeare, cut only as much as is necessary to meet time restrictions and casting restrictions that the production must accept. If you are doing Shakespeare because you have this idea you want to explore, then make the play what you want it to be, but be honest about the fact that you are adapting the play, not just editing it.
Well, and 7:30 remains an earlyish curtain, particularly for a Friday (or a Thursday). For R3, our curtain was 8 and we were done at 10:30, and I thought it went pretty quickly. And, of course, that’s including a 15-minute intermission; if the theater is going to break even, there needs to be one of those.
As for lopping versus thinning, my biggest reason for lopping is casting, I think. Our show had 18 or 19 actors (I don’t remember which) and cut a dozen parts, I think, depending on how you count. I am not the best judge, but I would say that, oh, five of the actors were sub-par. Some in the audience may have found more or fewer, but let’s say five, or rather, let’s say that thirteen of our actors were par or better. Which, I must say, is pretty damned good, for a community theater, albeit on in a state capitol metro area. Anyway, keeping (f’r’ex) the Scrivener means either adding another actor, probably a sub-par one, or doubling another actor, again probably a sub-par one. And remember that doubling can make a par actor appear sub-par; if you are doing much of it, you start to need, say, nine really good actors instead of three or four lead/featured and five or six pretty good. I saw a chart, don’t remember where alas, that showed how few actors you could do R3 with, and it’s something like eleven–but those eleven have to be very good indeed.
Now, if a production has the luxury of a big, talented cast, then thinning may be better than lopping (although the thinning is difficult to do well, but then it’s probably easier to find one excellent dramaturge than twenty excellent actors). The question of the Scrivener is not just whether the scene could be good, the question is whether it will be good as played by somebody you can find to take the part. And the scene with the three Citizens, and if you want the Murderers to not be Tyrell and Ratcliffe–and you either want all those six played by different people who can play them well, or played by three people who can not only play them well but double effectively. And I’m afraid that you are adding those parts, really, at the level below the worst actor you have cast as Brackenbury or the Messenger or the Bishop of Ely–and I don’t want to knock my own castmates, but that’s not going to be very good acting, I’m afraid.
As for The Tempest, I don’t know it well enough to dissent from your view, but even accepting it—it’s an argument that the Bosun isn’t entirely peripheral, and I will buy that (although I wonder if most of what you say is not so much the character of the Bosun as the way the nobles react to him), but central? Anyway, one of the things I love about Shakespeare and Shakespeareans is the wonderful availability of Theories about the plays that sound utterly high, and utterly plausible, if not both at once. I was much more favorably inclined to Ms. Mahood after that final Tempest chapter than I was before it.
Thanks,
-V.
I admit that I am thinking about editing Shakespeare for the stage primarily in the context of professional theater and academic, where a production team really ought to be able to find or train actors of sufficient skill to carry one full Shakespeare part of several small ones. That’s the sort of production context the plays were designed for, so taking them out of that context may well entail changes.
Re the Bosun: “Central” is surely a rather hyperbolic claim that must rely on a modernist understanding of the play as a pattern for which an essential center can be identified. Mahood is one of the great mid-twentieth century formalist critics of Shakespeare, so I suspect she is writing in a tradition in which it is more possible to make a claim of this kind than it is now in a postmodern critical era. I would agree that the way the nobles react to him is important, but if he is not there they cannot react to him, and the meaning of their reaction for the audience will be profoundly influenced by the Bosun’s own behavior. What can get really interesting is the distance between the spectators’ reaction to the Bosun and the nobles’ reaction to him. I’ve seen Tempests with and without the Bosun (and the sailors as a group), so I can attest to it making a significant difference in orienting the audience toward the play as a whole.
I suppose it is the fact that I am partly persuaded by the formalist understanding of Shakespeare that I get twitchy at a mainly pragmatic “reduce the number of actors needed” attitude toward cutting the play. Every detail in Shakespeare is full of potential meaning, so whenever the play is cut its potentials are greatly altered. I don’t like to see such potentials removed without due consideration of their impact.