Month: February 2011

  • Shakespeare Uncut

    Among the hundreds of amateur and professional Shakespearean productions every year few, if any, honor the exact text, or even ninety percent of the text.  When was the last time we saw Hamlet (other than Branagh’s film version) performed without cutting—make that hacking—it? With the exception of a few theatre groups committed to “complete text”…

  • The Winter’s Tale (Program Notes for Michael Kahn’s Production)

      The description of Shakespeare’s last plays as romances suggests that they contain certain features from a romantic tradition which began with the Roman playwright, Plautus (who in turn borrowed from the Greeks), and flourished throughout the Middle Ages in such tales as Beowulf, The Song of Roland, and the Arthurian legends.   In an age…