An Actor's Edition of Shakespeare Revisited

Book excerpt: An Actor’s Edition of Shakespeare Revisited is a book for actors, directors, professors of theatre and the general public. Each of the plays has been edited for more understandability and length. The intent of the book was to make the works more accessible without making the language modern. When audiences see a Shakespeare play, they have only one time to grasp the words as they are spoken. Audience members do not have time to look at lengthy explanations or notes about words or expressions. Therefore, this edition of these five plays, presents the plays so that audience members as well as actors can follow the plays with little difficulty. Some words have been changed to accomplish this. In certain speeches, subjects or verbs were supplied for understandability. Because Shakespeare used many pronouns, these plays make use of more nouns so that the meaning of who or what is being spoken about becomes more clear. The book also has some useful tools for the director and actors. A chart has been provided for each play that lists each character by act and scene. This can be very useful when there is a need to double cast actors. In addition, a “combination roles” page has also been added which gives suggestions for doubling parts for a smaller company. To help at rehearsals, page numbers for the beginning of each act and scene is provided on a single page for each play. Finally, each play has been broken into “beats” for the actor and the director. It is the hope of the author of this book that more people will find excitement in reading, performing, staging, or viewing Shakespeare because of the edited versions for understandability. Enjoy the plays---either reading or performing.