From Playwright to Production: the Process of Recreating Shakespeare

From Playwright to Production: the Process of Recreating Shakespeare

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A full understanding of Shakespeare's plays is arrived at through the process of imaginatively recreating them. Reading a play, or watching a production, or being involved in a production, or reading what someone else has to say is not enough fully grasp any given play. All of these things must be done to achieve a deeper comprehension. On the following pages I will try to organize my ten week Shakespearean experience by drawing parallels between my own experience and the experience of the rude mechanicals and royal audience of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Origin of a Shakespearean Production: The Bard Himself Any representation of a Shakespearean work must necessarily begin with Shakespeare himself. He is the creator and the genius behind the dramatic works that hold a revered place in our literary and theatrical culture. Part of what makes Shakespeare great is his consciousness of the enduring role of the poet and a playwright. As a result, he wrote not only for his own age but, in Ben Jonson's words, 'for all time.'; Shakespeare focuses not on what was popular and relevant in his contemporary world, but on the themes that would be enduring beyond his death.

Shakespeare's musings on the function of the poet and playwright are included as themes of many of his plays. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Theseus speaks for Shakespeare at the beginning of Act Five: the poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. (Act V.i.12-17) The poet is a visionary and his main tool is his imagination. Through his imagination he looks at heaven and earth and sees what the average person does not. The imagination gives 'bodies'; to and brings forth what cannot be seen by the naked eye. The poet is given insight into a world beyond what is seen every day of the surface of the world. He is like Bottom, who when awakening after his adventures with Titania says: I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was....The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was.