{"product_id":"2940013741027","title":"Cymbeline Refinished","description":"The practice of improving Shakespear's plays, more especially in\u003cbr\u003ethe matter of supplying them with what are called happy endings, is\u003cbr\u003ean old established one which has always been accepted without\u003cbr\u003eprotest by British audiences.  When Mr Harley Granville-Barker,\u003cbr\u003efollowing up some desperate experiments by the late William Poel,\u003cbr\u003eintroduced the startling innovation of performing the plays in the\u003cbr\u003eWest End of London exactly as Shakespear wrote them, there was\u003cbr\u003eindeed some demur; but it was expressed outside the theatre and led\u003cbr\u003eto no rioting.  And it set on foot a new theory of Shakespearean\u003cbr\u003erepresentation.  Up to that time it had been assumed as a matter of\u003cbr\u003ecourse that everyone behind the scenes in a theatre must know much\u003cbr\u003ebetter than Shakespear how plays should be written, exactly as it\u003cbr\u003eis believed in the Hollywood studios today that everyone in a film\u003cbr\u003estudio knows better than any professional playwright how a play\u003cbr\u003eshould be filmed.  But the pleasure given by Mr Granville-Barker's\u003cbr\u003eproductions shook that conviction in the theatre; and the\u003cbr\u003esuperstition that Shakespear's plays as written by him are\u003cbr\u003eimpossible on the stage, which had produced a happy ending to King\u003cbr\u003eLear, Gibber's Richard III, a love scene in the tomb of the\u003cbr\u003eCapulets between Romeo and Juliet before the poison takes effect,\u003cbr\u003eand had culminated in the crude literary butcheries successfully\u003cbr\u003eimposed on the public and the critics as Shakespear's plays by\u003cbr\u003eHenry Irving and Augustin Daly at the end of the last century, is\u003cbr\u003efor the moment heavily discredited.  It may be asked then why I,\u003cbr\u003ewho always fought fiercely against that superstition in the days\u003cbr\u003ewhen I was a journalist-critic, should perpetrate a spurious fifth\u003cbr\u003eact to Cymbeline, and do it too, not wholly as a literary jeu\u003cbr\u003ed'esprit, but in response to an actual emergency in the theatre\u003cbr\u003ewhen it was proposed to revive Cymbeline at no less sacred a place\u003cbr\u003ethan the Shakespear Memorial Theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCymbeline, though one of the finest of Shakespear's later plays now\u003cbr\u003eon the stage, goes to pieces in the last act.  In fact I mooted the\u003cbr\u003epoint myself by thoughtlessly saying that the revival would be all\u003cbr\u003eright if I wrote a last act for it.  To my surprise this blasphemy\u003cbr\u003ewas received with acclamation; and as the applause, like the\u003cbr\u003eproposal, was not wholly jocular, the fancy began to haunt me, and\u003cbr\u003epersisted until I exorcised it by writing the pages which ensue.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI had a second surprise when I began by reading the authentic last\u003cbr\u003eact carefully through.  I had not done so for many years, and had\u003cbr\u003ethe common impression about it that it was a cobbled-up affair by\u003cbr\u003eseveral hands, including a vision in prison accompanied by scraps\u003cbr\u003eof quite ridiculous doggerel.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor this estimate I found absolutely no justification nor excuse.\u003cbr\u003eI must have got it from the last revival of the play at the old\u003cbr\u003eLyceum theatre, when Irving, as Iachimo, a statue of romantic\u003cbr\u003emelancholy, stood dumb on the stage for hours (as it seemed) whilst\u003cbr\u003ethe others toiled through a series of dénouements of crushing\u003cbr\u003etedium, in which the characters lost all their vitality and\u003cbr\u003eindividuality, and had nothing to do but identify themselves by\u003cbr\u003emoles on their necks, or explain why they were not dead.  The\u003cbr\u003evision and the verses were cut out as a matter of course; and I\u003cbr\u003eignorantly thanked Heaven for it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen I read the act as aforesaid I found that my notion that it is\u003cbr\u003ea cobbled-up pasticcio by other hands was an unpardonable\u003cbr\u003estupidity.  The act is genuine Shakespear to the last full stop,\u003cbr\u003eand late phase Shakespear in point of verbal workmanship.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe doggerel is not doggerel: it is a versified masque, in\u003cbr\u003eShakespear's careless woodnotes wild, complete with Jupiter as deus\u003cbr\u003eex machina, eagle and all, introduced, like the Ceres scene in The\u003cbr\u003eTempest, to please King Jamie, or else because an irresistible\u003cbr\u003efashion had set in, just as at all the great continental opera\u003cbr\u003ehouses a ballet used to be de rigueur.  Gounod had to introduce one\u003cbr\u003einto his Faust, and Wagner into his Tannhäuser, before they could\u003cbr\u003ebe staged at the Grand Opera in Paris.  So, I take it, had\u003cbr\u003eShakespear to stick a masque into Cymbeline.  Performed as such,\u003cbr\u003ewith suitable music and enough pictorial splendor, it is not only\u003cbr\u003eentertaining on the stage, but, with the very Shakespearean feature\u003cbr\u003eof a comic jailor which precedes it, just the thing to save the\u003cbr\u003elast act.","brand":"WDS Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47070259478768,"sku":"2940013741027","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013741027_p0.jpg?v=1763589614","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013741027","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}