From: davidf@HQ.Ileaf.COM (David Fristrom)
Subject: Re: sort of LOCAL:  UC Santa Barbara Shakespeare
Reply-To: davidf@HQ.Ileaf.COM (David Fristrom)
Organization: Interleaf, Inc.
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 92 14:12:29 GMT

In article <28844@brahms.udel.edu> conrad@brahms.udel.edu (Jon Conrad) writes:
> In article <kuc34rINNnek@news.bbn.com> ahsiung@labs-n.bbn.com (Anita Hsiung) writes:
> 
> >Last weekend we took a jaunt up to Santa Barbara and caught the
> >American Shakespeare Company of UCSB doing "Love's Labor Lost". ...
>  ... 
> >Costuming was terrible, not in the clothes themselves, but in
> >consistency.  Half the players wore modern double-breasted suits or
> >skirts half the time.  Everyone ended up in period costume by the last
> >scene, but I was very confused as to what they were trying to say in
> >the cross-period dressing.
> 
> This sort of thing is not unheard of in Shakespeare.

Indeed.  I realized how used I had become to seeing Shakespeare in all
sorts of period dress last year when I saw a production of "Julius
Caesar" at Hartford Stage.  "Caesar" is so frequently done in modern
or various (non-Roman) historical costumes, in order to point up
parallels in political situations, that I found I was surprised for a
moment when I saw that they were doing it in togas.  (Of course, that
wasn't "authentic" either, if I am remembering my Elizabethean theatre
correctly -- in Shakespeare's time the actors would have worn mainly
contemporary dress.)


> >Does anyone think the four men would return to their women at the end
> >of 12 months?  I didn't think so, but some of the romantics in our
> >group fervently hoped so!
> 
> I guess I'm a romantic.  I always figured that the four couples do
> reunite after a year passes.

Interestingly, the "Complete Oxford Shakespeare," (general editors
Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor), presents evidence for the existence of
a lost Shakespeare play called "Love's Labour's Won."  It seems that a
Francis Meres, writing in 1598, mentions Shakespeare's "'Gentleme of
Verona,' his 'Errors,' his 'Loue labors lost,' his 'Loue labours
wonne,' his 'Midsummers night dreame,' & his 'Merchant of Venice'".
Also, a fragment of records from a bookseller in 1603 mentions "loves
labor lost" among other Shakespearean titles (although Shakespeare is
not mentioned).  The editors point out that many other plays from the
period have been lost, and that we know that some other of
Shakespeare's plays almost didn't survive, so it is not improbable
that at least one of his plays has been lost.  (They also point out
that many plays at the time, including some of Shakespeare's, were
originally published without naming the author, so it is just barely
possible that a copy of "Love's Labour's Won" exists somewhere without
the owner being aware of its signifigance.)

Although the evidence for the existence of LLW provides no clue to its
contents, it is natural to assume that that it was a sequel to LLL,
telling what happened a year later.  Shakespeare was certainly not
adverse to sequels (think of "Henry IV part 2, and "Merry Wives of
Windsor" is also a kind of sequel).  If it follows the pattern of his
other comedies, there would be difficulties, but everything would end
happily, persumably this time in marriage.  (It occurred to me after a
particularly good production of LLL that since the original is lost,
someone should go ahead and write a new LLW.)

By the way, the "Complete Oxford Shakespeare" is a lot of fun,
especially if you are familiar with more conventional editions of
Shakespeare.  The editors seem to go out of their way to be different.
To begin with, past editors have tended to assume that the various
quartto and folio editions of a play are all corruptions of the
original, ideal version, and have tried to recreate the ideal by
combining the "good parts" of the various editions.  The Oxford
editors, on the other hand, while recongnizing that there certainly
have been corruptions, assume that many of the differences come from
Shakespeare revising his plays over time.  They try to reconstruct the
original version, with passages added later placed in an appendix
(this reaches an extreme for "Lear," where they present two different
versions).  I'm not competent to judge how well they carry out their
theory, put I like they idea behind it.

They are also unconventional in titles and names.  Rather than use the
now standard titles, they use the titles that occured in the original
editions, so that "Merchant of Venice" becomes "The Comical History of
the Merchant of Venice, or Otherwise Called the Jew of Venice."  The
differences are most marked in the histories, but unfortunately I
don't have that volume with me.  Names, too, are changed from what has
become the standard.  In Cymbeline, the heroine is usually known as
Imogen.  The editors point out that that form only appears in the
Folio; other early editions and contemporary accounts refer to
Innogen.  So they assume the Folio version is a misprint and use
Innogen throughout.  Their most radical name change is in Henry IV
part 2.  It has long been known that the character Falstaff is based
an actual knight called Oldcastle, and that Shakespeare originally
used that name, but changed it because of pressure from Oldcastle's
descendents.  So the editors go ahead and use substitute Oldcastle for
Falstaff, arguing that the name was used in the original production,
even though all of the printed sources use Falstaff.  (For part 2 they
revert to Falstaff, since the name had been changed before that play
was written.)

All in all, the Oxford Shakespeare is a good way to shake up any
settled opinions you may have about the Bard.

David Fristrom		|
Interleaf, Inc.		|	"Brush up your Shakespeare,
davidf@ileaf.com	|	    start quoting him now."
Newsgroups: rec.arts.theatre