Shakespearean Production || Shakespeare at Work in His Theatre

Shakespeare at Work in His TheatreAuthor(s): B. Iden PayneSource: Educational Theatre Journal, Vol. 19, No. 3, Shakespearean Production (Oct., 1967), pp.327-332Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3205241 .

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B. IDEN PAYNE

Shakespeare at Work in his Theatre

IT IS NOT MY PRESENT PURPOSE TO GIVE AN ACCOUNT OF ALL THAT CAN BE GATHERED

or surmised about Shakespeare at work but only of one aspect of it, namely, the consideration of whether, in constructing his plays, he held in mind and made use of the facilities of the theatre in which they were to be performed. There is a practical value in this. Long experience in various kinds of

Shakespearean production has convinced me that something approximating to the main features of the Elizabethan theatre (as usually understood) is not only the most suitable but is even essential if the desire of the director is not self-exploitation but an honest determination to make the plays come to life for a modern audience.

The "something approximating" is what I have called Modified Elizabethan Production.

The flexibility of the Elizabethan stage is a commonplace; and it is fre-

quently recognized that some means ought to be found for achieving the

continuity of acting. But, generally speaking, it is not fully recognized that

continuity must be, to use a musical analogy, as absolute as the playing of a piece of music from beginning to end. The movement of screens or similar devices makes the action jerky and so destroys that unbroken flow of action which can only be described as Shakespeare's melodic line of scene develop- ment. Even the drawing of curtains across the stage near the proscenium is fatal to the flow of action because that movement is subconsciously associated with a feeling of finality-the feeling that something has been finished and

something new is about to begin. Even in theatre-in-the-round-not good for Shakespeare anyhow for his plays require a background-there is a detri- mental break in the action when furniture is changed.

But it is a curious psychological fact that if there is an open space between each column of the penthouse and the nearest door (as on the Elizabethan

In a stage career as an actor and director in England and America, spanning nearly seventy years, Dr. Payne has directed over one hundred productions of Shakespeare. Forty of these were at Stratford-upon-Avon where he served as General Director from r935 to 1943. The other sixty were at American universities or festivals-Carnegie Tech, Iowa, Washington, Missouri, San Diego, Michigan, Colorado) Ashland, and Texas. At one time or another he has staged thirty- two of Shakespeare's thirty-seven plays, and in the last twenty years alone he has mounted thirty-three productions, twenty-one of them at Texas where he has been a permanent member of the staff since the mid-forties. Dr. Payne was elected a Fellow of AETA in December, 1966.



stage) then, provided a new group of characters enters while the curtains are

closing, the spectator feels that the sequence of scenes brings no interruption to the action, one scene flows into another.

I learnt gradually. It was the hard school of experience which taught me that the modified method of Shakespearean production is the best, if not the

only way of bringing a Shakespeare play into harmonious concord with any audience. At the end of the nineteenth century it was not unusual for a

young man who had decided upon acting as his career to go straight upon the stage without preliminary training. It was easy to get an engagement in

touring companies for the demand was greater than the supply. In my own case an early love of Shakespeare made me feel fortunate when I had the

opportunity to join the best Shakespearean company on the road in England at that time. It was under the management of its leading actor, F. R. Benson, afterwards Sir Frank Benson. He had a fine company, but for the mounting and style of production of the plays he followed the firmly fixed conventions of the time; naturally enough, for they were regarded as the right and proper way. It was taken for granted that every scene shown to the audience had to be realistically presented. Consequently, as in a sort of Procrustean bed, scenes were freely transposed or omitted. Also at any great climactic moment even if it was in the middle of a scene (such as Claudius stopping the play- within-the-play in Hamlet) the act drop was lowered with a storm of applause and curtain after curtain followed as prelude to an intermission. All this resulted in blatant distortion of the text. But of this, like nearly everybody else, I was unaware.

Before long my principal interest in the theatre shifted to what was then

regarded as the "new drama" and for the time being Shakespeare was in abey- ance in my regard. But in 1907 when, in spite of my youth (I was twenty-six at the time), I was chosen to take in hand the foundation of Miss A.E.F. Horni- man's Company at the Gaiety Theatre in Manchester-the first modern rep- ertory theatre in England-I was anxious to bring any sincere theatrical nov-

elty to the attention of the public. I had heard vaguely about the Elizabethan

Stage Society, just enough to know that its work would probably help my purpose, so I approached its founder and leading spirit, William Poel. With some

difficulty, for he did not care to work with seasoned professional actors think-

ing they would be too set in their technique and he had peculiar views about the speaking of verse which he feared they would resist, I persuaded him to

produce Measure for Measure bringing with him the Elizabethan Stage So-

ciety's setting and costumes. It seems astonishing to me now (partly no doubt because at that time I was immersed in the performance of my own part, Lucio, for which Mr. Poel cast me, thus not being able to see the production as a whole clearly), but I thought about the production as being interesting and as a curiosity; as one newspaper critic put it, no more than a "museum piece." Naturally, therefore, when a year later I ventured upon my own Shakespearean production at the Gaiety Theatre, I mounted it in the conventional Victorian manner that I had learnt with Benson but making the representational scenery as simple as possible.

However, my interest was more and more swinging back to Shakespeare, and beginning in 1916 it became customary for me to undertake an annual

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spring production of a Shakespeare play at Carnegie Institute of Technology. My mind went back to Measure for Measure at the Gaiety and a nagging feeling grew that I might have missed something. I was against the idea of trying to make a reproduction of an Elizabethan performance-I thought that would be a barren academic exercise-but I wished to find some intermediate form which would make it possible to present Shakespeare's text unadulterated. I finally found in what I have called the Modified Form of Elizabethan production what I believe to be a satisfactory solution.

The modifications are few but trenchant. The use of symbolic or even representational scenery both before, within, and behind the inner stages; sometimes of both. Curtains to the penthouse hide the changes of scenery and

properties from the audience. They are closed and opened by curtain boys dressed in clothes of the period depicted in the production. The only addi- tional modification from Elizabethan practice is the free use of modern light- ing effects.

It was not, however, until 1926 when I became the chairman of the drama department that I had a full opportunity to put the modifications into operation. When I did so I had some startling experiences. I found that by imagining oneself to be Shakespeare himself producing one of his own plays in the Globe Theatre, instance after instance was disclosed where his practical dramaturgy was seen to be at work, especially in the allocation of the different portions of the stage to the scenes as they unfold-the zones of interest as I call them. In this his skill and artistry is revealed in a sphere to which little, if any, attention has been given. Shakespeare, of course, sometimes wrote plays-Love's Labors Lost is the earliest of them-for production primarily in places where the theatre facilities were absent. But with these I am not now concerned. My present purpose is to show Shakespeare at work in the theatre on one of the plays obviously written with the Globe Theatre in mind. For no other reason than that it is so well-known I have selected The Merchant of Venice.

Whether or not Shakespeare had before him an earlier play on the same subject (as is highly probable), his problem in arranging the fable of the Mer- chant of Venice for the stage was that he had to integrate two diverse themes -that of Shylock and the "merry bond" and that of Portia and the caskets. Let me briefly recall the material as Shakespeare arranged it. Bassanio, a young aristocrat of Venice, is in love with Portia and eager to undertake the hazard of the casket choice. His friend Antonio offers the use of his credit to raise money to equip him for his voyage to Belmont. Antonio signs a bond with Shylock which stipulates that if he fails to repay the debt by a certain date he will forfeit a pound of flesh. Other suitors fail, but Bassanio guesses correctly and so wins Portia. But Antonio, unable to meet the due date of the bond, is arrested. When the case comes up for trial, Shylock, infuriated because his daughter Jessica has eloped with a young Christian called Lorenzo, is inexorable though offered three times the value of his bond. Portia dis- guised as a judge confounds Shylock by proving that his own life will be for- feited if blood is shed in the cutting of the pound of flesh. Portia, in lieu of her fee, asks for the ring she had given to Bassanio as an eternal bond of love. Bassanio reluctantly surrenders the ring, and Nerissa, Portia's lady-in-

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waiting, likewise secures a ring that she had given to Gratiano, her newly wed husband and Bassanio's friend. The play ends in reconciliation between the two couples after a scene of pretended indignation by Portia and Nerissa against their husbands for having parted with the rings.

To blend the diverse themes it is necessary for the action to oscillate between Venice and Belmont. The play begins in Venice, and Antonio agrees to raise the money not having the cash in hand. The scene is expository of the

Shylock theme and it is more than likely that, as in the majority of the plays, this exposition was presented by the actors on the forestage in order to be in the closest possible contact with every member of the audience. (The forestage was also used when a group of characters was on the way somewhere, for pro- cessions, and for low-comedy scenes which were not integrated into more im-

portant scenes. Such scenes were frequently necessary to give the audience the

feeling that time passes.) In the next scene the spectator is introduced to Portia in Belmont and the

zone of interest moves back to the middle stage, the space under the penthouse. The change of locale was further indicated by opening the curtains to the lower stage behind which the caskets were exposed to the audience. That the caskets were shown in this way is proved by the fact that Nerissa speaks of them not as the three caskets but as "these three caskets," a clear indica- tion that they were revealed to the audience, obviously in the Inner Below.

The use of the caskets having been established, the curtains to the inner

stage were closed and the audience found themselves back in Venic for the scene where Antonio agrees to sign the merry bond. Now scenes are to follow later where the doorway of Shylock's house is shown to the audience. The side doors are too generalized in action for anything so particular as an indi- vidual house. What is more likely, then, that Shakespeare settled its place for the spectator at this point? I do not think it is a far-fetched assumption to conclude that it is probable that in the preceding scene Portia and Nerissa moved downstage at the entrance of the Servant (later to be known as Bal-

thazar) while the caskets were removed and a doorway was placed between the curtains of the partially open Inner Below to be used as that of Shylock's house. At any rate, it is very effective in the modified production to take advantage of

having the penthouse curtains by closing them at the point just mentioned and to re-open them to begin the next scene with Shylock in his doorway and Bassanio standing by and explaining the reason he had come to see him. In any case, the scene is unquestionably an exterior, for Antonio is later seen to be approaching from a distance.

The action then returns to Belmont. The scene deals with the arrival of one of Portia's suitors, the Prince of Morocco. But the caskets are not visible this time for he asks to be led to them, a request which Portia postpones until after dinner. It seems that Shakespeare was not ready to let Morocco make his choice, but the scene was necesary to give the feeling of the passage of time and Shakespeare used it to remind the audience about the casket theme; therefore Morocco is merely "on the way" to the caskets.

In the next scene (II, ii) there is no question about the necessity of the door to Shylock's house for it begins with Launcelot Gobbo slipping out of it to tell us that he is tempted to break the law by running away from his

330 B. IDEN PAYNE




indentured service but he learns that Bassanio has already arranged with Shylock to accept him as a member of his retinue.

The next scene is still in Venice and consists of a few lines only. Jessica bids Launcelot farewell and gives him a letter to deliver secretly to her lover, Lorenzo. Later in the play Jessica is to appear at the window of her room just before her elopement. It seems highly probably that Shakespeare, the cunning artificer, here made use of a necessary expository passage to shift the attention to a new zone of interest which will be necessary later by having this short scene played in the window above the door of the house. Here is necessary matter discussed and, simultaneously, an interesting shift to a new zone of interest! One can imagine Shakespeare feeling rather pleased when he thought of this device.

The next scene (II, iv) is a forestage scene: there can be no doubt about that. It is both "on the way" and serves to indicate the passage of time. Plotwise it gives Launcelot an opportunity to deliver Jessica's letter to Lorenzo and to forward our knowledge of the coming elopement.

Act II, v and vi, are continuous, both laid before Shylock's house. In the first he bids farewell to Jessica on setting out to Bassanio's feast and the sec- ond is the elopement. The text at the end of the latter scene is rather odd. Jessica greets Lorenzo from the window and comes down. Lorenzo and his friends carry out their purpose by running off with her, and Shakespeare indicates the end of a scene with the customary rhymed couplet. Why, then, one asks, did he tack on to it, apparently for no reason, eight unnecessary lines? Antonio needlessly tells Gratiano who is to accompany Bassanio that he is

being waited for at the ship. That is all. But the next scene takes us back to Belmont, this time to bring the caskets into service. The extra lines are explained! They are, in effect, a separate little scene, ending again in a rhymed couplet, during which the inner curtains were closed and the caskets put behind them in readiness for Portia's "Go, draw aside the curtains, and discover the several caskets to this noble prince."

Another passage-of-time scene follows on the forestage in which we are told that Antonio has lost some of his ships at sea and that his position is dangerous if the bond is not paid in time. In the following scene we are again in Belmont for the Prince of Aragon to lose Portia by making his wrong selection of the silver casket. Then-the action is swift here-there is another switch to Venice where in an obvious forestage scene we hear about Antonio's danger and witness Shylock's hysterical outbreak at the loss of his daughter and his jewels. After this we once more find ourselves in Belmont for the crucial scene where Bassanio wins Portia by his right choice and Portia sends him back to Venice to save his friend.

There follows a short street scene on the forestage inserted to depict Shylock as being now wholely set upon revenge. We then move our attention to the middle stage, the zone of action being again in Belmont-this time without the caskets-in which Portia tells Nerissa about her plan for them to assume male disguises and for her, Portia, to act as judge when Antonio is brought to trial.

The next scene-still in Belmont-appears to be quite unnecessary from

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the literary point of view, but when its purpose is understood its presence is shown as an interesting example of where Shakespeare can be seen at work. The attention comes back to the forestage. Lorenzo and Jessica, in charge of Portia's house, jest with Launcelot about Jessica's conversion to Christianity increasing the price of pork. Well, the court room had to be set, of course, and the feeling of time passing again established. But why does the prose scene appear to be unnecessarily lengthened by verse passage which in no way helps the plot and which contains eight lines praising Portia as a fine woman, a fact with which we are already familiar and sympathetic enough? This at first

appears to be so much dead wood. But the anomoly is explained if one con- cludes that in rehearsal it was found that the boys who played Portia and Nerissa took longer to change from feminine to masculine attire than had been an-

ticipated! For the trial scene I have found that a setting with the Duke of Venice on

his throne on a raised platform, with his magnificos on each side of him on a lower elevation, and two long narrow tables with a space between them set below at which sit the Clerk of the Court and other lawyers and with places reserved for Portia and Nerissa, is so effective and so strikingly convenient to the action that one cannot but wonder whether it was not the very way in which it was originally played.

After Portia's triumph in the trial scene the story line provides a short fore-

stage scene wherein Gratiano catches up with Portia in the street to receive Bassanio's ring and to make it clear that Nerissa will get her own. This serves as preparation for the complete change in the tone of the play for the final scene. Shakespeare had one final technical problem to meet and he overcame it

magnificently. Literary critics may be shocked, but it is the fact that we owe the lovely night scene between Jessica and Lorenzo and the passage in praise of music to the fact that Portia and Nerissa again required time to change back, this time from masculine to feminine clothing. Shakespeare made a mag- nificent virtue of a necessity by taking the opportunity to express his own love of music and his conviction that it was a powerful agent in developing the soul of man. But indeed he manages to transfuse into the whole of the act, even the comedy about the ring, a deep feeling of the calm and peace of a sum- mer's night.

This summary of the masterly manner in which Shakespeare articulated the

arrangement of scenes in his plays should, I hope, convince the reader that the director working in the modified Elizabethan form has great satisfaction in

feeling at close quarters with Shakespeare while at work. The warm response of the audience is the final source of gratification.

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Shakespearean Production || Shakespeare at Work in His Theatre