Kicking this up to the top level and out of the comments so people can join in.
The topic is Improvising in Shakespeare’s work. Or, more generally, let’s call it “going off script”, since it doesn’t have to be extemporaneous for our purposes. We’re talking about when actors, in between their Shakespeare lines, add the occasional words of their own devising.
Thoughts?
I have two thoughts on the subject. First, on the subject of “Do we think that Shakespeare’s actors improvised?” I answer, “Shakespeare’s not here anymore to defend himself.” So I have to assume that, when it was live, he had least had the option of going up to an actor afterwards and saying “That was good, keep it” or “Well, that ruined the show, thanks a lot. Don’t do it again.” Who really knows if the plays were the same night after night? Shakespeare could have constantly been revising. So while the Works as we’ve come to know them are like Scripture to us, we almost certainly hold the source material in a much higher regard than the creator did.
Second, I think there is an important distinction between a director saying “Ok, in my vision of the play, I’m going to have you do the following….” versus an actor just deciding to say something funny. I’ve actually just remembered a good example – during the Commonwealth production of Shrew in Boston several years back, I can’t remember why exactly but there’s a chase scene – some servant who has impersonated someone is now being chased by that man’s bodyguards – anyway, he jumps off the stage and into the audience, turns back to the stage (where the bodyguards are approaching), puts his arms up and yells “Wait!! Fourth Wall!” They pause, confused, just long enough for him to head for the hills, before they too jump down and pursue.
I don’t recall at the time being pissed off that the director had thrown this in. I remember thinking it was very funny. It was a directorial decision, and showed some purpose.
Now instead compare a hypothetical scene from Macbeth, at the dinner party before Banquo’s ghost makes his appearance. The seated guests are all no doubt socializing and talking amongst themselves, and then one of them pipes up loud enough for the audience to hear, “Rectum? Damn near killed him!” and everybody has a big guffaw.
I think I’d be upset about that.
Are my feelings on the subject arbitrary? I honestly don’t know. Could be. Could entirely be in the hands of the particular director or actor. If I get the feeling that the director and/or actors have love and respect for the material and are merely trying, in their own way, to present it in the best possible way? I like that. If on the other hand it seems to me like they’ve taken the “We need to make this better” approach, then I have a problem with that. And I do realize that this is entirely opinion – Julie Taymor could have nothing but the utmost respect for Shakespeare’s work, and this is simply her way of expressing it. I have no idea.

Ok, learn something new every day. You know that scene in J.R.R Tolkien’s The Two Towers, when the giant tree-creatures known as Ents march on Saruman’s tower? Remind anybody of a certain Scottish play? Coincidence, you say?

Maybe not. From Tolkien’s letter #163 to W.H. Auden:

Take the Ents, for instance. I did not consciously invent them at all. The chapter called ‘Treebeard’, from Treebeard’s first remark on p. 66, was written off more or less as it stands, with an effect on my self (except for labour pains) almost like reading someone else’s work. And I like Ents now because they do not seem to have anything to do with me. I daresay something had been going on in the ‘unconscious’ for some time, and that accounts for my feeling throughout, especially when stuck, that I was not inventing but reporting (imperfectly) and had at times to wait till ‘what really happened’ came through. But looking back analytically I should say that Ents are composed of philology, literature, and life. They owe their name to the eald enta geweorc of Anglo-Saxon, and their connexion with stone. Their part in the story is due, I think, to my bitter disappointment and disgust from schooldays with the shabby use made in Shakespeare of the coming of ‘Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill’: I longed to devise a setting in which the trees might really march to war. And into this has crept a mere piece of experience, the difference of the ‘male’ and ‘female’ attitude to wild things, the difference between unpossessive love and gardening.

(Emphasis mine.)

There you go – straight from Tolkien’s mouth. Or, pen. I’d provide a link, but unfortunately this comes from a PDF document that I received through …. ummm…..unlinkable means.

You have to admit, though – if we want to pit modern movie special effects against Shakespeare’s ability to paint a picture with words….the march of the Ents still rocks.

UPDATED: Found a link, here.

“I’ll be the new Hamlet,” says Jack Black.
I’m going to assume that he’s joking, given the context of the story. His Gulliver’s Travels comes out soon (now?) and apparently there’s a line in there where he calls himself Shakespeare (at least, that’s what my kids keep telling me). So I’m sure that came up during an interview and hence the above quote.
Although it does make me think of a question. Who among modern actors could play the great comedies? What actor working today would we like to see as Feste, Jaques, or Bottom? I deliberately leave Falstaff out of the list, because I think he’s a category all to himself.

Ok, so I’m sure most of us saw the story, not even worth linking to, that Miramax’s business plan for the next couple of years is to make sequels out of all their old hits – including Shakespeare In Love.
This immediately cast fans of the movie into two camps: the “that was an awesome movie and thus if they can capture that awesomeness again it will be even more awesome” camp, and the “You’ll never replicate it, it’s perfect the way it was, don’t ruin it” camp.
The problem with the second camp is that Miramax is going to do it with you or without you, so the best you can hope for is not “don’t do it” but “oh god I hope it doesn’t suck.”
So, here’s what I’m thinking. Collectively, the people that hang out here probably know more about, and care more about, the subject of Shakespeare than much of the rest of the world. So, let’s write the sequel. Let’s put together so many ideas about what it can and should be that Miramax can’t help but get wind of it and run with whatever we come up with. (I’ll believe that when I see it, of course, but until then it can keep us entertained :)).
So, brainstorm. Let’s go, anybody.
I heard three ideas bandied about on Twitter. One involves a midnight mission to steal and reassemble the Globe in the middle of the night. Great scene from history, and a great scene for a movie. But it’s not a plot, just an event.

One tries to get Shakespeare as far away from the first movie as possible, projecting him into the Late Romance years, near retirement, having lived out a full life and approaching the end of his career, looking back on memories.
One suggested that even Gwynneth Paltrow’s character could be reprised, haunting Shakespeare’s vision of all his female leads for the rest of his career.
Maybe tell it through the character of his children? That has huge untapped potential, since we know so little about his relationship to them. Unfortunately the first movie establishes that the Anne Hathaway relationship is a frigid one, so that pretty much slams the door on any romance (unless you attempt a rekindling storyline, but that would be very difficult I think). Perhaps his daughter’s marriage to… Thomas Quiney, was it? Wait, no, he was the one that had the scandal. Which daughter had the good marriage, Susannah? I could start to imagine a play about Shakespeare’s daughter in love, her famous father cast in something of a secondary role (much, though, like Julius Caesar is to his play, a spectre over the entire production). Ooo, how about a story where his daughter (and son-in-law) conspire to somehow find Gwynneth Paltrow and reunite them? Eh, it’s a thought.
Ok, somebody else go.