Old Vic Prefaces by Hunt Hugh;

Author:Hunt, Hugh;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group

2. The wooing of this eligible young lady by Caius, culminating in his ridiculous duel with Evans.

3. The wooing of Anne Page by Fenton, ending as all true comedy should end in the triumph of true love.

These three situations are neatly tied up in the final scene, and there is no problem here beyond the necessity of making Fenton and Anne very delightful young people; for their parts are of necessity somewhat pale beside those of Caius and Slender, and we must not allow our interest in them to be lost.

There is a further situation which presents a considerable problem: this is the revenge taken upon the Host of the Garter by Evans and Caius in the incident of the Germans’ horses. (Act IV, Sc. 3, and the last eighteen lines of Act IV, Sc. 5.) Most critics of the play are agreed that this situation is faulty and probably results from a cut in the text. I have quite simply solved this difficulty by making a further cut and removing the situation entirely from the acting version. I will make no further excuse for doing so. I have taken a similar course with the catechizing of Page’s son by Evans (Act IV, Sc. 1), which is no more than a contemporary comic interlude used as a stop-gap in the action. We have, therefore, one main problem so far as the cumulative nature of the play is concerned, and that is to ensure that the scenes of Falstaff’s wooing do not tail off in expectation or in comedy.

The second problem which is the lack of flow of the action, due to the frequent changes of location and the numerous and rather isolated incidents, has set the designer and myself a problem. We have had to reconcile our desire to provide a setting realistic enough for a modem audience to recapture the flavour of Elizabethan life, a problem which did not exist for Shakespeare’s audience, with our desire to give the play consistent flow. If we have erred in our solution on the side of too many changes of scene, I think we have rightly erred, having regard to the peculiar need for recapturing the flavour of the Elizabethan, domestic atmosphere.

Now we come to the requirements of characterization, many of which have been covered by previous remarks, though something yet remains to be said. In general we should observe with Johnson that despite its faults ‘This comedy is remarkable for the variety and number of its personages who exhibit more characters appropriated and descriminated than perhaps can be found in any other play.’ Ford, Page, their wives, Falstaff and his crew, Caius, Mistress Quickly, Evans, the Host, Slender and Shallow, are all complete, living persons about whom we can learn all there is to learn by a careful study of the text.

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