As I mentioned in last Tuesday’s post, I’m currently in a production of Shakespeare’s AS YOU LIKE IT. Which, of course, makes this the perfect time for me to go over John Philip Kemble’s version of the play — which was the version used at the Theatre Royal Covent Garden during the Regency, and was also published and sold (for eighteen pence a copy).

So, what changes did the great actor/manager/director (pictured here) make to Shakespeare’s text?

I was delighted to find that the answer is, very few!

Let’s start with what Kemble left in. The following are words and phrases that Kemble clearly thought acceptable for general audiences to hear and read: damn’d, damnation, bastard, foul, slut, puking, belly, stomach, body, bawdry, udders, country copulatives, virgin, maid

The most vulgar speech that I could find that he left in was said by Touchstone the Fool, who is pretending to scold a shepherd for the immorality of his profession:

That is another simple sin in you: to bring the ewes and the rams together, and to offer to get your living by the copulation of cattle: to be bawd to a bell-wether; and to betray a she-lamb of a twelvemonth, to a crooked-pated, old, cuckoldy ram, out of all reasonable match. If thou be’st not damn’d for this, the devil himself will have no shepherds…

Some of the cuts (most of them quite short — a line here or there) were, as far as I can tell, just for length, or occasionally to cut an obscure passage. Some, though, were probably for the indelicacy of the topic, or the vulgarity of the phrasing — but even this seems not to be invariable. Touchstone talks a fair amount about horns (a constant joke in Shakespeare’s plays, where all men seem to eternally fear being cuckolded), but a couple lines of Rosalind’s joking about horns was cut. Perhaps in this case, the jokes themselves were not too warm, but the character of Rosalind was now thought to be too refined to make such jokes?

And yet Rosalind did keep some of her suggestive lines. Kemble left in the passage which reads:

ROSALIND: … till you met your wife’s wit going to your neighbor’s bed.
ORLANDO: And what wit could wit have to excuse that?
ROSALIND: Marry, to say,–she came to seek you there.

On the other hand, Kemble cut the passage:

ROSALIND: I prithee take the cork out of thy mouth, that I may drink thy tidings.
CELIA: So you may put a man in your belly?

Other passages that were presumably cut for indelicacy include:

CELIA: You will cry in time, in despite of a fall. (This is a double joke, referring to both sex and childbirth)

TOUCHSTONE: He that sweetest rose will find, must find love’s prick and Rosalind.

Also cut was a longish passage in which Touchstone and the shepherd compare a shepherd’s greasy hands (due to handling ewes’ “fells”) and a courtier’s hands, perfumed with civet (“the very uncleanly flux of a cat.”)

Kemble invariably cut “God” (e.g. “I thank God” and “God save you”) and changed it to “heaven” (so: “I thank heaven” and “Heaven save you”) — so I presume this was consistently done on the Regency stage.

Well, that’s AS YOU LIKE IT as Kemble liked it! Hope you liked it too…

Cara
Cara King, www.caraking.com
MY LADY GAMESTER — out now from Signet Regency!

My only real hobby — besides reading books, buying books, going to libraries, buying more books, wishing I had time to read them, trying to find room to store all my books (all of which is not a hobby, after all, but an obsession, or, if I stretch things a bit, a part of my career and therefore all of it quite necessary) — sorry, where was I? Oh yes . . .

As I was saying (or trying to say, before my book habit got in the way, as it always does) — as I was saying, my only real hobby is acting. I particularly love Shakespeare. At the moment, my husband and I are in a production of Shakespeare’s comedy As You Like It at Caltech. I’m playing Celia, the Duke’s daughter who runs away to the Forest of Arden, and Todd plays Oliver, a villain who reforms and (coincidentally) falls in love with Celia.

Now that I have my lines memorized (and there are a lot of them — Celia is quite a nice role) — I can read John Philip Kemble’s version of the play and tell immediately which lines he cut, and which words he changed. Quite fun!

Kemble was in charge of the Theatre Royal Covent Garden before and during the Regency, and he was one of its top actors too. He was most respected as an actor when playing tragic roles, particularly noble Romans, but he also appeared in comedies. When he was young, he sometimes played Orlando — and when he got a bit older, he often played the melancholy Jaques (who has the famous speech “All the world’s a stage . . .”)

Mrs. Jordan, nowadays better known as the long-time mistress of the Duke of Clarence (one of King George III’s sons, who later became King William IV) and the mother of many of his children, was the most popular comedic actress of the time. She frequently played Rosalind, but by the Regency proper was too old — and too large — to play a young lady who disguised herself as a boy.

Then again, if you look at the engraving here by Bunbury, you will see that even when she was young, the lovely Mrs. Jordan did not possess what we would call a “boyish figure.” Indeed, one can tell from the way the artist drew her that seeing her curvaceous figure in men’s revealing clothing was something that the men found quite pleasing…and so few of the men would have likely complained that the delicious Rosalind would never have passed for a boy with that shape…

Next week, I’ll talk about Kemble’s version of the play — and which lines were too naughty (and which weren’t) for Regency audiences . . .

Cara
Cara King, www.caraking.com
MY LADY GAMESTER — out now from Signet Regency!!!

I find Shakespeare fascinating. Shakespeare has been hugely popular on British stages almost non-stop since his own time, and the Regency was a high point for Shakespeare in many ways. Of course, the Regency Shakespeare wasn’t exactly like our Shakespeare….and certainly it wasn’t Shakespeare’s Shakespeare…

Here we have two pictures of the reconstructed Theatre Royal, Covent Garden — where John Philip Kemble produced and starred in many of Shakespeare’s greatest works. Kemble’s sister, Sarah Siddons, was one of the theatre’s biggest draws, and had a following so passionate it was almost religious. (After the theatre pictures, we have two pictures of Kemble, one of Siddons, and one of Kean.)

What fascinates me most are the differences in the Shakespeare plays in the different periods. When I researched my workshop “The Regency Joy of Sex (Drugs & Gaming Hells)” for this year’s Romance Writers of America national conference, I was most intrigued by the changes made to Shakespeare’s text in the period — and the changes that weren’t made. In other words, what parts of Shakespeare they found taboo (or, in Regency parlance, “indelicate”), and which were acceptable for a theatre audience comprising men, women, and children drawn from all classes.

So what was acceptable? When John Philip Kemble edited Shakespeare’s text, here are some words he left in: virgin, adultery, fornicatress, naked, damned incest, bosom, virgin-violator, bastard, deflowered maid. (However, in one passage, “virginity” was changed — implying the word “virginity” was more shocking than “virgin”, which at the time didn’t necessarily have the purely sexual meaning we attach to it.)

So what was taken out? The most common change I found was the invariable changing of the word “body” to the word “person.” It seems the Regency folk didn’t really mind sex, or talk about sex, but some words they found too gross, too vulgar, too indelicate — and “body” was one of them. (Versions of the Bible in this period also took out the word “body” and similar words.)

In one passage, “virginity” becomes “honour.” The word “lechery” becomes “wenching.” One passage from “Measure for Measure” was cut and rearranged thus:

SHAKESPEARE’S ORIGINAL: Why, what a ruthless thing is this in him, for the rebellion of a codpiece to take away the life of a man!
J. P. KEMBLE’S VERSION: Why, what a ruthless thing is this in him, to take away the life of a man for–

Ah, yes, the telling “trailing off” trick. (Too true!)

Is anyone else fascinated by Regency Shakespeare? Any questions? Comments? Favorite plays? Plays you wish you could see the Regency versions of? Or any comments on the topic of bowdlerism in general? (Though the term did not yet exist, and Bowdler was only getting started in our period…)

Cara
Cara King, MY LADY GAMESTER — out now!!!
for more info on Regency theatre, see http://caraking.com/Theatre.html
for more info on Regency private life, see http://caraking.com/PrivateLife.html