I’ve started listening to Shakespeare plays on my iPod. Conveniently, the local library has the excellent complete Arkangel Shakespeare on CD. Well, maybe not excellent. It’s not the BBC or RSC, but it’s pretty good. Mostly I listen while working out, where I don’t have to negotiate sidewalks and traffic lights and the like.
So last night I’m on the treadmill and listening to Scene 2, Act 2 from Hamlet, and I hear a bit that almost never gets performed. It’s after Hamlet meets Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, but before the players arrive. The three discuss the declining fortunes of the players troupe:
HAMLET
How chances it they travel? their residence, both
in reputation and profit, was better both ways.
ROSENCRANTZ
I think their inhibition comes by the means of the
late innovation.
HAMLET
Do they hold the same estimation they did when I was
in the city? are they so followed?
ROSENCRANTZ
No, indeed, are they not.
HAMLET
How comes it? do they grow rusty?
ROSENCRANTZ
Nay, their endeavour keeps in the wonted pace: but
there is, sir, an aery of children, little eyases,
that cry out on the top of question, and are most
tyrannically clapped for’t: these are now the
fashion, and so berattle the common stages–so they
call them–that many wearing rapiers are afraid of
goose-quills and dare scarce come thither.
What do you know? That bit is almost always cut. I’d cut it too, if I weren’t producing a four-hour extravaganza. Still, it’s interesting that the players who show up have fallen on hard times. In reality, this is no doubt Shakespeare editorializing on the acting companies of boys that were emerging during this period. This brightly-coloured BBC page has more on the subject.
DarrenBarefoot.com 