Free English Literature Dissertations - Note To Reader: Whilst Assuming A Knowledge Of The Shakespearean Canon, I
NOTE TO READER: Whilst assuming a knowledge of the Shakespearean canon, I have attempted not to make assumptions about knowledge of political, historical and theatrical events, or texts outside of Shakespeare, Coleridge and Dryden. To this end, I have provided a number of footnotes that may be ignored if not required for explanation of any of these.
‘Every age will inevitably fashion the interpretative criticism of Shakespeare to its own mood’
DISCUSS WITH REFERENCE TO THE SHAKESPEAREAN CRITICISM AND
POLITICAL ATMOSPHERE OF THE RESTORATION AND ROMANTIC PERIODS
the old play began to disgust this refined age.
(John Evelyn on Hamlet, cited in Clark p.xliii)
The production of Hamlet to which John Evelyn objected was one of the few stagings of the play in Restoration England that used Shakespeare’s text largely without adaptation by later writers. Early twentieth century criticism was frequently as dismissive of these Shakespearean adaptations as Evelyn is about his Hamlet, but there were at the very least expedient reasons for the adaptation of Shakespeare’s plays. Additionally, in the same way that recent productions have at least weighted, if not adapted texts, by presenting audiences with an all-female Taming of the Shrew, a Balkan War-set Troilus and Cressida, a noh Macbeth or an operatic Romeo and Juliet amongst others, the theatrical practitioners of the Restoration saw fit to shape the plays to respond to contemporary political and critical climates. During this period, interpretative criticism went hand-in-hand with adaptation of the plays. If poet-playwrights such as Nahum Tate, John Dryden and Colley Cibber did, in part, consider Shakespeare’s work unfit for the current climate they at least gave their reasons and actively attempted to remodel the work. Examining these plays themselves, as well as their accompanying prefaces, prologues and epilogues may shed light on the influence contemporary criticism and political events had on the refashioning of Shakespeare.
The execution of Charles I in 1649 brought about the close of the Civil War and the beginning of the Interregnum and the Puritan Protectorate of Cromwell. Over the following decade, theatre was actively suppressed and the plays of Shakespeare, his contemporaries and successors, went unperformed. The Restoration of the monarchy and Charles II in 1660 was therefore of unprecedented importance in theatrical history. Charles himself, with his experience of continental theatrical innovations whilst in exile in France, was instrumental in the accelerated development of many of them in the rebuilt theatres of England, not least the superseding of the boy-player by the actress, the use of changeable perspective scenery, artificial lighting, and the proscenium arch and apron stage.
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