Jane Wessel, co-organiser of recent production Shakespeare Restor’d, reflects on the process of reviving Shakespearean adaptations.

Reviews of 18th-century productions sometimes lament the infrequency with which plays from this period are performed. There is undoubtedly risk for many theatre companies in attracting crowds to see plays from playwrights essentially unknown to modern readers and audiences. This challenge inspired the development of Shakespear Restor’d, a piece jointly created by the organizing committee of the 2014 annual meeting of the East Central American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies and the University of Delaware’s Resident Ensemble Players, and funded by the Charlotte Orth Shakespeare Fund at the University of Delaware. The conference organizers (of which I was one) aimed to create a show that would not only give avid 18th centuryists an opportunity to see rarely-performed Restoration plays, but would appeal to members of the University and local community, by taking advantage of Shakespeare’s popularity.

The show paired five scenes from Shakespeare plays with scenes from their Restoration adaptations. These included Romeo and Juliet alongside Thomas Otway’s rewriting, The History and Fall of Caius Marius (1679); The Tempest with John Dryden and William Davenant’s The Tempest, or the Enchanted Island (1668); Richard III with Colley Cibber’s Richard III (1699); Macbeth with Davenant’s Macbeth (1664); and King Lear with Nahum Tate’s The History of King Lear (1681). The scenes were framed playfully within a conversation between Samuel Pepys and the ghost of Shakespeare, arguing about the merit of Shakespeare’s works. As the play opens, we discover Pepys recording in his diary that Romeo and Juliet was “the worst [play] that ever I heard in my life.” As he is critiquing the performance, the ghost of Shakespeare enters to defend his work. After a few minutes of comic banter between the two – which highlights Shakespeare’s precarious position in literary history prior to the 18th century – the two men invite the audience to judge for themselves between the originals and their adaptations.

Seeing the original scenes alongside their adaptations not only gave audiences a sense of just how radically Shakespeare’s plays were altered during the Restoration period, but how some of these alterations could have been taken seriously as improvements to the original texts. The juxtaposition of the death scenes from Romeo and Juliet and Otway’s Caius Marius, for instance, made it very clear how powerful and moving Otway’s revisions were. By making Romeo’s death less immediate, Otway provided an opportunity for the lovers to reunite before death. As the two embrace and Lavinia expresses her passion, the poison slowly takes effect, and Marius grows limp in her arms. Audiences see Marius slowly fade into death before Lavinia realizes what is happening – an ending which the actors and much of the audience found more moving than Shakespeare’s.

The most popular segment of the evening (or at least the one to produce the most laughter) was Davenant’s adaptation of Macbeth. This laughter resulted, in large part, from the actors’ interpretive choices. In a talk-back on Friday evening, the actors explained that as they rehearsed the scene between Macduff and Lady Macduff, spoken entirely in rhyming couplets, they encountered difficulty with the language, which felt unnatural and forced. After playing around with it for a bit, however, they discovered that adding a Scottish accent made the lines easier to read. Thus, they chose to draw attention to this performative choice by beginning the dialogue in their natural voices and intentionally stumbling on occasion over forced rhymes. In frustration, they then threw on tartan and adopted a brogue that made the rhyming couplets work much better. The result was farcical. But for modern audiences more accustomed to Shakespeare’s language than to the rhyming couplets of the Restoration and 18th century, this farcical tone was well received.

The talk-back with the actors, all of whom were graduates of the University of Delaware’s Professional Theatre Training Program, provided audiences with insights into the process of performing Restoration adaptations of Shakespeare. In particular, the discussion pointed to the difficulty of taking these adaptations seriously in their own right when we are generally so enthralled by Shakespeare. The actors found it nearly impossible to perform the works without constant thought of the originals – a challenge that Restoration actors and playgoers would not have encountered. Yet, they also expressed genuine enjoyment in performing these works, and a few actors even preferred some adaptations to the originals. This sentiment extended to the audience, who were surprised, for instance, by how much they enjoyed Davenant and Dryden’s comic expansion of The Tempest.

The performance was naturally shaped, in part, by limitations in time and resources. With just over an hour run-time, each of the five plays and their adaptations were necessarily short. Moreover, without an orchestra or singers to work with the performers, the focus was almost entirely textual. Restoration adaptations of Shakespeare were multimedia experiences, often incorporating song, dance, and other spectacle. In spite of these limitations, however, the performance succeeded on its own terms: seeing these rarely-performed adaptations on stage allowed audiences to understand the dramatic value of the adaptations in themselves. The general consensus among the audience was that the show was both instructive and delightful; and it certainly sparked productive conversations among conference-goers through the evening and following days.

Shakespeare Restor’d was performed on November 8th 2014. The script of Shakespeare Restor’d, including the introductory dialogue between Pepys and the ghost of Shakespeare, will soon be licensed with Creative Commons, making it available for others who might wish to perform the work.