Dissecting Shakespeare?

.....Attended Yule Feast yesterday and had a couple of very interesting conversations with Sir Brand. If I'm understanding him correctly he is finishing up a play written in the style of Shakespearey, even to the extent of having all the dialogue written in iambic pentameter. That alone is enough to impress me A LOT.

.....Consider the complexity of this challenge. The meter and cadence of the dialogue has to carry off an entire play. Over many scenes. With various characters who all have various types of personalities. This is even more impressive when you consider the fact that every word has to be considered with great care as it affects all the other words around it, as well as the context of the character and the overall play.

.....I work a lot within a microcosm of this in the form of a sonnet, where it is especially true that with a body that has three quatrains, fourteen lines total, that every word makes a difference. But again, an ENTIRE PLAY?! I am impressed.

.....Sir Brand is having a reading of this play next weekend over in his area and he invited me over for the reading. I have to admit that I'm very interested in going and hearing this. Even more so when he gave me the agenda. He wants to have a reading where all of the dialogue is dissected for shade and meaning. Interpretation will be debated, with word changes as needed. Character development will be discussed. It all sounds incredibly fun. I'll have to see if I can get my schedule beaten up enough to allow me to get over there.

.....There was one part of the conversation that excited me GREATLY as it REALLY resonated. Something that Sir Brand has learned in his study of Shakespearean writing is how much EVERYTHING WRITTEN, EVERY LINE, makes a difference! Something I've advocated for a long time, sometimes quite passionately, is that cutting and chopping of Shakespeare in the name of 'modern interpretation' is not necessarily a good idea. Shakespeare was a master at his craft. Once again, EVERY LINE, EVERY WORD, MADE A DIFFERENCE and was integral to the overall play or written piece.

.....Modern directors often take Shakespeare and cut out dialogue, or even whole scenes, in their interpretation, often because they did not understand exectly how that dialogue or scene fit in and affected the rest of the play. Sometimes that affect may have been subtle, but still of great importance.

.....Finally, someone who was on my side! I was giddy with excitement by this time in the conversation. Her Excellency Brighid almost had me convinced that maybe I should be more accepting of modern interpretation of Shakespeare. But now I shall proudly stand up and again be the old advocate that Shakespeare should not be 're-interpreted'. There was a reason Shakespeare put in every single word he did. USE THEM!

.....Of course, this new conviction will give Her Excellency Brighid a headache as I will now be even more passionate in my belief that the gutting of the verbiage in a Shakespearean play is the wrong approach. Understanding the nuances of WHY the language is what it is and where it is makes much better use of the director's time and energy when staging a Shakespearean play.

.....An intriguing question that also came out of the conversation was the affect of ADDING language to a Shakespeare play. Is adding verbiage to enlarge a scene (to give it greater depth, or 'explanation') just as bad as removing or editing scenes?

.....Hmmmm... :-)

.....Aaron / Arontius.