Was ever script of this length staged?

Too often, students and instructors approach a Shakespeare play as they do a house of worship—quietly, reverently, hoping not to upset too much. Directors and actors, however, approach a Shakespeare play as a working document, a plan that demands editing, a narrative that they must animate. Working on this script is especially daunting. BBC television’s 1983 Richard III (link) runs three hours and forty-nine minutes; staging the entire play…well, it seems almost unfair to the audience. And to the actors. Kevin Spacey, who recently starred in a world tour as Richard, noted in a recent interview (link) that Shakespeare’s Richard III is particularly difficult...too durned long, demanding too much of the lead actor.

So yesterday at Greenhill, we approached Richard III with an eye toward actually staging the drama rather than merely studying it, actually figuring out what was essential for an actor and an audience rather than merely taking the text as handed down.

The assignment for the day was to cut fifty lines from Act 1, Scene 3. Why those lines? Entire lines? Half-lines? Would any characters not survive the cuts? Here are a couple of the cuts we made, and what we understand as the consequences—good and bad—of making such tough but necessary choices.

First, many of us at Greenhill wanted to cut more quickly to the Richard and Margaret conflict, so we whittled down the opening forty lines to a quicker explication of Elizabeth's anxiety. We cut from lines 17 through lines 32 [Cambridge School edition throughout].

Rivers: Is it concluded he [Richard] shall be Protector [of the princes in the event of Edward's death]?

Elizabeth: It is determined, not concluded yet, / But so it must be if the king miscarry. [Enter Buckingham and Derby] What likelihood of his his majesty's amendment, lords?

With that cut, Elizabeth's concern over the king's health focuses our understanding of her character. Of course, we lose the palace intrigue of slander, which would mean further adjustments later. We made another cut about sixty lines later.

We noticed that Margaret had many many asides, all directed toward the same kind of effect, so we talked about paring down some of them. Cut 106-111, 113-118, and 124-140.

Elizabeth: My lord of Gloucester [Richard, obvs], I have too long borne / Your blunt upbraidings and your bitter scoffs. / By heaven, I will acquaint his majesty / Of those gross taunts that oft I have endured.

Richard: What? Threat you me with telling of the king? / Ere you were queen, ay, or your husband king, / I was a pack-horse in his great affairs, / A weeder-out of his proud adversaries, / A liberal rewarder of his friends. / To royalise his blood I spent mine own.

Margaret: [Aside] Hie theee to hell for shame, and leave this world, / Thou cacodemon. There thy kindgom is.

Now this cut demands more of a defense and explanation than the first. Again, we as a class an audience rigorous adapters of the script wanted to preserve the power of Margaret's asides without, y'know, banging the same key on the dramatic piano over and over again. So this cut does away with a couple of her asides. By means of this cut, Margaret's aside is political--in order to royalise Edward's blood, Richard sheds Margaret's husband's blood.

Remember, Margaret's husband has made an appearance in Richard III: The usurped Henry VI's still-bleeding corpse is carried onstage in Act 1, Scene 2. Keep in mind that in the previous history play, 3 Henry VI, after her son (another Edward) is killed, Margaret exclaims "Oh, kill me too!" to which Richard responds, "Marry, and shall!" When his brother the now-king Edward IV holds him back, Richard complains, "Why should she live, to fill the world with words?" (link). Instead of killing Margaret, Richard exits the stage and, in the next scene (3H6, Act 5, Scene 6), kills Henry VI. We thought that Margaret's go-to-hell aside was similar in tone, focus, and imagery to the ones we cut, we thought it was consistent with the enmity between the two characters, and thus, we thought it worked well as a response to Richard's line about royalising the Plantagenet line.

During class yesterday, we even played with a mid-sentence edit: Look at Richard at line 112, "What? Threat you [Elizabeth] me with telling of the king?" Now consider it in our pared-down version.

Richard: What? Threat you [pause] me? with telling of the king?

What do you think of these cuts?

Are there others that we missed that you would suggest?

Please let us know!