Here Is a Play Fitted exhibition material

This article offers a comprehensive list of each piece included in Here Is a Play Fitted: Four Centuries of Staging Shakespeare, one of the Exhibitions at the Folger.

The Earliest Texts & the Unstable Script (cluster 1)

Roughly half of Shakespeare's plays were printed in individual quarto editions before thirty-six of the plays were printed together in the First Folio in 1623. Several quarto plays vary significantly from the version of the same play printed in the Folio. Many scholars have devoted their careers to determining the relationship between the quarto texts and the First Folio: are they early drafts, acting versions, versions used while touring, or separate works? The earliest versions of the plays in this exhibition—Othello, Richard III, Romeo and Juliet, and A Midsummer Night's Dream—each reveal a different relationship to the Folio text.

Compare the Romeo and Juliet "potion" scene in the First Folio with the same scene from the first quarto. This first quarto of Romeo and Juliet has been called a "Bad Quarto" because it is nearly 800 lines shorter than the First Folio version. These pages show Juliet’s famous "potion" soliloquy, which is only half as long as the version of the same speech in the Folio. This page also includes the intriguing stage direction, "She falls upon her bed within the curtains," which does not appear in the Folio. The First Folio's version of the same scene runs forty-five lines long.

Early quartos of the four plays examined in this exhibition give us evidence that theater practicioners have always played with and adapted texts.

Items included

• William Shakespeare. An excellent conceited tragedie of Romeo and Juliet. London: John Danter and Edward Allde, 1597. Call number: STC 22322; displayed I1v–I2r and LUNA Digital Copy.
• William Shakespeare. A midsommer nights dreame. London: Richard Bradock for Thomas Fisher, 1600. Call number: STC 22302; displayed G3v–G4r and LUNA Digital Copy.
• William Shakespeare. The tragedy of King Richard the third. London: Valentine Sims and Peter Short for Andrew Wise, 1597. Call number: STC 22314; displayed L1v–L2r and LUNA Digital Copy.
• William Shakespeare. The tragœdy of Othello, the Moore of Venice. London: Nicholas Okes for Thomas Walkley, 1622. Call number: STC 22305 Copy 2; displayed L2v–L3r and LUNA Digital Copy.
• William Shakespeare. Mr. William Shakespeares comedies, histories, & tragedies. London: Isaac Jaggard and Edward Blount, 1623. Call number: STC 22273 Fo.1 no.46; displayed p. 72–73 of Romeo and Juliet and Binding image on LUNA.

Who Changed Shakespeare (cluster 1 wall)

FACSIMILE.

Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Shakespeare: Revision and Adaptation (cluster 2)

Parliament closed the London theaters between 1642 and 1660, during the English civil war and Interregnum. When they reopened at the Restoration of Charles II, Shakespeare’s plays were still popular, but many of the new performance scripts bore little resemblance to the plays Shakespeare wrote. The scripts were cut, altered, and amended to appeal to both theatrical practice and literary taste. In order to suit the actor-managers who ran the playhouses and starred in productions, some scripts were revised to focus more attention on main characters. Other plays were altered to fit the literary demands of “poetic justice,” the neoclassical unities, and decorum.

Colley Cibber (1671–1757) was an actor, playwright, and the manager of Drury Lane Theatre. He heavily adapted Shakespeare’s Richard III in 1699, and placed more emphasis on Richard (the character that Cibber himself played in his production). Cibber kept only a quarter of Shakespeare’s lines, added over a thousand of his own, and included lines from seven other Shakespearean plays. Cibber’s version has an engaging theatrical flow, which made it the standard stage version until the early twentieth century. Cibber's influence can still be seen in Laurence Olivier's version of Richard III.

The Theatre Royal, Smock Alley, in Dublin was one of three Restoration theaters opened when Charles II resumed the throne of England, Scotland, and Ireland in 1660. The Smock Alley promptbook of Othello shows the play as it would have been performed in the theaters in the 1670s and 80s. Notice the cuts to the script made on these pages.

Hear curator Denise A. Walen discuss the cuts made to the Smock Alley promptbook.

Items included

• William Shakespeare. The tragedy of Othello, the Moore of Venice.. London: 1663/64. Call number: PROMPT 3d Folio Oth. Smock Alley; displayed p. 810–811.
• Louis Du Guernier. Thomas Otway. London: for J. Tonson and sold by W. Taylor, 1712. Call number: ART File O92.3 no.2 (size XS) and LUNA Digital Image.
• Thomas Otway. The history and fall of Caius Marius. London: for Thomas Flesher, 1680. Call number: Prompt C8; displayed p. 18–19.
• William Shakespeare. The tragical history of King Richard III. Altered ... by Colley Cibber. London: for W. Lowndes and S. Bladon, 1793. Call number: PROMPT Rich.III 4; displayed title page.
• James Hopwood. Colley Cibber, esqr.. London: Mathews & Leigh, 1808. Call number: ART File C567 no.4 (size XS) and LUNA Digital Image.
• George Colman. A fairy tale: in two acts. London: for J. and R. Tonson, 1763. Call number: PROMPT M.N.D. 22; displayed Dramatis Personae (image).
• William Shakespeare. A midsummer night’s dream; with alterations and additions, and several new songs ; as it is performed at the Theatre-Royal in Drury-Lane.. London: for J. and R. Tonson, 1763. Call number: PR 2827 1763b c.1 Sh.Col.; displayed Dramatis Personae.