From: conrad@brahms.udel.edu (Jon Conrad)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies
Subject: Re: Regarding Henry:Henry V vs Henry V: Shakespeare and Men's
Date: 13 Apr 92 20:25:58 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: University of Delaware

In article <1992Apr11.214513.27076@Princeton.EDU> egnilges@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Ed Nilges) writes:

>In article <28781@brahms.udel.edu> conrad@brahms.udel.edu (Jon Conrad) writes:

>>In article <1992Apr9.162229.4877@Princeton.EDU> egnilges@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Ed Nilges) writes:

>>>Then you'll have to explain why Shakespeare is rarely placed on stage
>>>unaltered, whereas he is almost always read in uncut form.  

>>Easy.  NO play, by anyone, is often staged without at least minor
>>alterations and cuts.

>The issue, I'll remind everyone is this: was Shakespeare a poet first or
>dramatist first?  I content that he was a poet first, Jon takes the
>opposite view.

Not exactly.  My position is that it's a false dichotomy.  One can be
(or at any rate, I consider that Shakespeare was) BOTH a poet and
dramatist without either one having to be "first."

>Most importantly, I'd say that those "minor alterations and cuts",
>rather like the Lacanian unconscious, form a language.  This is less an
>attempt to mystify than an attempt to show that when directors wield the blue
>pencil, they do not cut at random.  Their cuts instead display exactly
>the same sort of intentionality as does a speaker of a language when
>s'he makes a positive statement.  

Unless you're speaking in a rhetorically abstract sense (saying that
accidents can have an intention), this is not necessarily true at all.
Cuts in a play (by Shakespeare or anyone) can happen for such reasons
as:
- The director has an interpretation to push
- The line's meaning is so indepherable there's no point in saying it
- The actor can't handle it
- The actor can't get a laugh with it (if it's supposed to be funny)
- There aren't enough actors in the company and a role is cut
- The actor refuses to say a certain sentence
- It gets a laugh in an unwanted spot
- And so on....

>IF Shakespeare was as great a dramatist as you claim, Jon, and IF he
>"never blotted a line" (as his friend Ben Jonson claimed), THEN it would
>seem that he could be played uncut.  

Could be, sometimes is, as I've said elsewhere.

>IF he must be cut, THEN he is not
>as great a dramatist as you claim, 

How does this follow?  If it happens to the greatest of dramatists
(Aeschylus, Chekhov, Shaw, O'Neill, Goethe, Racine, Brecht aren't always
performed uncut either), that makes Shakespeare just one of the pack.
It's just the world of theater.

Plays are written to be realized in the performing medium, an inherently
human and imperfect (but wonderful and living) means of transmission.

>and IF he is less a poet than a
>dramatist, THEN his poetic stature also diminishes.  

It sounds as if what you really want to say is that a dramatist is
ALWAYS inferior to a ("pure") poet, because too many comporomises are
inherent in the act of theatrical performance.

>You may wish to claim that Shakespeare must be cut more savagely for
>film than for live theater.  

I never said "must be"; but we can all observe that most of the time he
is.

>But if the BBC Shakespeare series is any
>indication, the fact that film can focus on a speaker whereas theater
>cannot except through lighting makes cuts less excusable than in
>theater.  

The BBC series did not use uncut texts either (though a few plays came
very close).  Again, it's a matter of the problems of a particular
production:  actors' abilities, time limitations, scenic problems, all
the messiness of performance.

>Nobody can claim to any sort of understanding of Henry V if s'he's just
>seen the Branagh film, whereas READING shows that (by making the
>climactic battle scene a comic encounter between Pistol and the French
>knight) Shakespeare is saying "look, all this glory is nothing more than
>the miles gloriosus."

This is fair enough.  It would never occur to me to take a film version
for the play, but it's probably true that others do.  I certainly agree
that we lose a lot with this omission.

Jon Alan Conrad