Stephen Gudeman - Relationships, Residence and the Individual

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Routledge Library Editions

OLD VIC PREFACES

SHAKESPEARE

Routledge Library Editions Shakespeare

PERFORMANCE
In 4 Volumes

I	Changing Styles in Shakespeare	Berry
II	Elizabethan Popular Theatre	Hattaway
III	Old Vic Prefaces	Hunt
IV	Shakespeares Dramatic Heritage	Wickham

OLD VIC PREFACES

Shakespeare and the Producer

HUGH HUNT

First published in 1954

Reprinted in 2005 by
Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Transferred to Digital Printing 2008

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

The publishers have made every effort to contact authors/copyright holders of the works reprinted in Routledge Library Editions Shakespeare. This has not been possible in every case, however, and we would welcome correspondence from those individuals/companies we have been unable to trace.

These reprints are taken from original copies of each book. In many cases the condition of these originals is not perfect. The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of these reprints, but wishes to point out that certain characteristics of the original copies will, of necessity, be apparent in reprints thereof.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Old Vic Prefaces
ISBN 0-415-35318-1
ISBN 0-415-33086-6 (set)

Miniset: Performance

Series: Routledge Library Editions Shakespeare

HUGH HUNT

OLD VIC PREFACES

Shakespeare and the Producer

ROUTLEDGE & KEGAN PAUL

First published in 1954
by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.
Broadway House, 68-74 Carter Lane
London E.C.4
and printed in Great Britain
by W. & J. Mackay & Co. Ltd.
Chatham

Illustrations

	ROMEO AND JULIET
If I profane with my unworthiest hand Juliet: Claire Bloom. Romeo: Alan Badel.
	LOVES LABOURS LOST
	LOVES LABOURS LOST
	LOVES LABOURS LOST
	HAMLET
	HAMLET
	HAMLET
	TWELFTH NIGHT
	TWELFTH NIGHT
	TWELFTH NIGHT
	MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR
	MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR
Mistress Page: Peggy Ashcroft. Falstaff: Roger Livesey. Robin: Brian Smith. Mistress Ford: Ursula Jeans.
	MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR
	ROMEO AND JULIET
	ROMEO AND JULIET
	ROMEO AND JULIET
	MERCHANT OF VENICE
	MERCHANT OF VENICE
	MERCHANT OF VENICE
	JULIUS CAESAR
This was the noblest Roman of them all. Above: Octavius: Douglas Campbell. Mark Antony: Robin Bailey. Below: Brutus: William Devlin.
	JULIUS CAESAR
	JULIUS CAESAR

T HESE prefaces were intended as introductions to the Shakespeare productions for which I was responsible at the Old Vic between the years 1949 and 1953. As such they were read to the casts which were to perform the plays, and were not intended to be analysed in the study. But for the purposes of this volume I have not thought fit to alter their style, believing their interest to He more in their original intention as production blueprints than as dramatic essays.

They do not aspire to the dignity of literary criticism, nor is it their function to uncover new facts about the plays they treat. They represent the personal approach of a producer to his work. Often they omit the most striking points of characterization and of scholastic discovery, not with the intention of discarding such points, but because they are either obvious or have been sufficiently stressed. If these prefaces have any interest to others, it is an example of a producers approach to an acted play, as distinct from a scholars approach to a printed play.

The approach of a producer to a playproviding such approach is interpretative and not imitativeis ephemeral. It is based on the impression the play makes on him at a specific moment. Such an impression is more emotional than logical, though reason must not be supposed to be absent. For, though the approach may be said to be personal to the producer, the final production must take into account not only the views of author, players and designer, but such necessary and mundane matters as how much money is available, how much time can be given to rehearsals, what size is the stage and what equipment it possesses. These and other circumstances make the theatre an ephemeral art; to attempt to revive a production is nearly always disappointing. However carefully we may preserve our prompt-books, lighting plots, designs and models, a production like a painting can be copied, but not relived.

These prefaces, then, do not set out to standardize the approach to Shakespeares plays, nor even to suggest what the approach should be. I have sometimes been asked to lend a prompt-book to a group of amateurs who wished to produce a play in the same way. I have always refused such requests; not out of desire to preserve proprietary rights, but because imitation destroys the individuality of approach which is the life of the theatre. These prefaces do not even represent my fixed views on the approach to the plays; I have produced King Lear three times at wide intervals and each time I have adopted a different approachthe one that seemed to be right at the time. It is a measure of a playwrights genius, as it is of a painter, a sculptor, or a musician, that not only do his works inspire each one of us differently, but some new feature, angle or perspective, some different colour or atmosphere will be made clear to us each time we contemplate them afresh. Lesser men allow but one interpretation of their work.

This variety of interpretation, which results from a work of art, can also be its misfortune, and monstrous abortions of misplaced imagination have been, and will be, perpetrated on the stage in the name of creative interpretation. It is the task of the producer to keep his imagination within bounds and to do so he must have a full measure of understanding, knowledge and love of his text. Nor must this sympathetic approach be confined only to the text of the play, it must extend to the very existence, creed and personality of the author himself, in so far as these can be known and felt by him.

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