HOW WOULD SHAKESPEARE FEEL ABOUT CUTTING HIS PLAYS?
HOW WOULD SHAKESPEARE FEEL ABOUT CUTTING HIS PLAYS? How would Shakespeare feel about cutting his plays to please a modern audience? My friend Don Doub observed almost 50 years ago that Shakespeare sought a large audience and claimed that if Shakespeare were writing then (in the 1960’s), he would be writing for the movies. I think that Shakespeare would understand and sympathize with all the various efforts to make his plays accessible to a wider audience. I also think that if he were writing today, he might well create works that were longer and more complicated and richer…. Think of boxed DVD’s…or videogames.
It’s interesting that you mention video games. There are some that have dozens upon dozens of hours of gameplay and story. Final Fantasy VII, which I loved and I believe many others did, could take days to get through. There were roughly a dozen protagonists and each had their own backstory which fed into the plot.