adaptation
adaptation.The practice of rewriting plays to fit them for conditions of performance different from those for which they were originally composed, in ways which go beyond cutting and the transposition of occasional scenes. Even leaving aside the questions as to whether Shakespeare's use of dramatic sources itself constitutes adaptation (e.g. whether King Lear can be regarded as an adaptation of The True Chronicle History of King Leir), or whether his own revisions to plays such as Hamlet and King Lear might be classed as such, the altering of Shakespeare's scripts for later revivals certainly dates to before the publication of the First Folio, which prints Macbeth in a form revised by Thomas Middleton.
The adaptation of Shakespeare was at its most widespread, however, between the Restoration in 1660 and the middle of the 18th century (see Restoration and eighteenth-century Shakespearian production), when drastic...
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