SOURCE: "Three Adaptations," in Shakespeare Survey: An Annual Survey of Shakespearian Study and Production, Vol. 13, 1960, pp. 137-45.

Since Dryden's day, Shakespeare's plays have been much studied in schools and elsewhere, so that public opinion has turned against large-scale rewriting. (Translators, however, still cut, alter and add to please themselves, as Hans Rothe in Germany and Matej Bor in Yugoslavia.) This means that in England, at any rate, poets are no longer employed to alter Shakespeare and the responsibility has devolved entirely upon theatre-managers and directors. Of course, their scope is still considerable. Tyrone Guthrie, directing All's Well that Ends Well at Stratford in 1959, made some additions to the dialogue to fill out those scenes which had particularly attracted him: so a major-domo instructs lesser servants about 'hastening the musicians' and moving a platform 'more to the left', a courtier inquires about the 'good old king' and there are many 'Quite so's', 'Hear, hear's', petty oaths, orders and exclamations; more ambitiously, the Duke of Florence enquires 'Is this the machine?' But Guthrie's invention—in keeping with the present reluctance to accept rewriting— was more plainly shown in numerous dumb-shows, excisions, actions in contradiction to what is said, and deliberate and effective mis-speaking of Shakespeare's lines.

Yet after he had taken all this trouble, it was hard to see his leading purpose in adapting the play. During the first half, the scenes in which the Countess appears were set in and around an elegant Chekhovian mansion: in a tender, brownish light, a grove of bare and slender trees bend gracefully, from both sides of the stage, towards a summer-house, and, while its inhabitants are voguish and precise in dress, from classical urns dead leaves and tendrils hang untended. At the end of the play the same house becomes, surprisingly, a vast hall, sketchily furnished in trivial blue, white and gilt. The King's Court at Paris is a dark ballroom, glittering occasionally with lights and dancing figures but, more often, empty and comfortless, so that its inhabitants protect themselves with tall leather screens. All these scenes were presented as if the action took place just before the First World War, but in later scenes among the soldiers in Florence the stage was set as for the Second World War: there is a microphone and a megaphone of the latest design, and the men are dressed in khaki shorts, the officers in tunics, black ties and berets. The widow's household was presented in a mixture of the two periods: for, gaping and giggling at the soldiers, the girls are dressed in housecoats and headscarves, and one sucks a fruit lolly; but for travelling, Diana appears in an Edwardian coat and hat, to match Helena's, who has come, unchanged in her style of dress, from the other part of the play.

The treatment of the text was as various as that of the setting. At one extreme, Lavache, the old clown, is cut completely, and at the other, the Countess is played by Edith Evans with assured dignity, feeling and intelligence, in keeping with the sense and music of Shakespeare's lines. The King, both when dying and when restored to health, is a tetchy princeling: in Robert Hardy's performance, he has nothing of the Countess' assurance, but strives continually to exert himself; he toys with Helena and pats his courtiers; his lines are ingeniously spoken so that 'I fill a place, I know't' [I. ii. 69] is a petulant rebuke, 'My son's no dearer' [I. ii. 76] an affected self-advertisement, and 'the inaudible and noiseless foot of Time' [V. iii. 41] a jest that amuses its speaker. Diana, who is called a 'young gentlewoman … of most chaste renown' [IV. iii. 14-15] and claims to be descended from 'the ancient Capilet' [V. iii. 159], is played by Priscilla Morgan for restless comedy: on her first entrance she looks as if she passed her days reading cheap magazines and staring at men, and this appearance is half-reconciled with her lines about virginity, virtue and pity in that she speaks them with a pert and knowing avidity. Angela Baddeley, as her widowed mother, keeps the audience laughing by little tricks which emphasize her decrepit old-age and prudence to the exclusion of everything else. The bizarre effect of mingling these interpretations may be exemplified from the final scenes: here Parolles takes his proper place as Lafeu's fool without the encounter with Lavache to establish his new status; the king does not sit in judgement, but moves continually among his courtiers, so that he often steps up to a character before addressing him; only the Countess is unmoving and dignified and so, in the continual bustle, draws all eyes to herself—but there seems to be little purpose in this, for Shakespeare has written few words for her in this scene. In this disorder, some expectancy is awakened for Helena's final entry by sweet and soothing music played off-stage.

Guthrie's liveliest invention was reserved for an interpolated dumb-show in Act III, sc. iii. In Shakespeare's play this is a brief moment when the audience is shown the Duke of Florence welcoming the boy Bertram as a man and soldier of worth, and without any of the references to his father's virtues which he has always heard before. As such it is a step forward in the presentation of Bertram, but Guthrie has used it for introducing an entertaining episode in which a comic duke (a grotesque caricature of General Smuts, short-sighted and falsetto) inspects a comic army (a pair of trousers threaten to fall down, someone catches a sword between his legs, a flag slips from its staff as the general salutes, and most of the words are inaudible); this farce lasts six or seven minutes, in which time less than a dozen of Shakespeare's lines are heard, or partly heard. Similar comic invention was utilized every time the soldiers appeared after this, so that the braggart Parolles is shown up as a coward and liar among soldiers that could never fight a battle, and the audience has to suppose that Bertram achieves 'the good livery of honour' in a crazy-gang army. Of course the whole economy of Shakespeare's play has been altered, its proportions, tempo, tensions, emphases, and its comic spirit.

Shakespeare's progressive presentation of the relationship between Helena and Bertram is particularly subtle, yet Guthrie has freely changed this in accordance with his own conception. In the original, Helena hesitantly approaches each of the King's other wards before she confronts Bertram, and then, realizing the presumption of demanding him as husband, she only gives herself to him:

I dare not say I take you; but I give
Me and my service, ever whilst I live,
Into your guiding power.
                        [II.iii. 102-04]

In Guthrie's version, Helena's choice is made while she engages in a series of lively and sentimental dances: Bertram offers himself, unprompted, as her partner for the last dance and Helena of course is delighted, and, when the dance concludes, addresses him in modest joy, not in fearful resolution; Bertram relinquishes her hand later, only when the King insists that he must call her wife. Here Guthrie has lessened the nervous embarrassment of Helena, and directed the audience's attention away from her and her feelings; he has also introduced some entertaining divertissements and heightened the sense of surprise. When the King demands their marriage, overriding everyone's wishes, Guthrie has directed Bertram to walk right across the stage in a general silence and, after a pause, to say the line Shakespeare has given him, very deliberately: 'I cannot love her, nor will strive to do't' [II. iii. 145] Again this heightens the dramatic excitement through suspense, but it alters Shakespeare's portrayal of Bertram, making him appear so deliberate that it is no longer credible that, in his inexperience, his action is 'but the boldness of his hand … which his heart was not consenting to' [III. iii. 77-8]. Next, Guthrie played confidently for pathos: numerous courtiers take silent leave of Bertram, as if sympathizing with him, and then Bertram and Helena walk together across the empty hall towards the marriage ceremony, and are followed by the far brisker steps of Longaville who has been ordered to conduct them. Shortly afterwards an entirely new scene has been added, the re-entry of Helena and Bertram as from their marriage, holding ceremonial candles and attended by a priest. In all these mute actions, Bertram treats Helena with a quiet, dazed tenderness which is in direct contrast with the brusque, reiterative words Shakespeare has given to him: 'I take her hand. … Although before the solemn priest I have sworn, I will not bed her. … O my Parolles, they have married me! I'll to the Tuscan wars, and never bed her' [II. iii. 176-273]. For immediate dramatic gains of suspense or pathos, or in order to introduce dance and movement, the director has altered the presentation of Helena and Bertram.

Whether he was following Shakespeare's text, or deliberately misconstruing it, or introducing some new incident, Guthrie was continually in command of the whole stage; and if his adaptation fails (like Davenant and Dryden's Enchanted Island) to sustain any comprehensive dramatic interest, it is always (again like the earlier adaptation) diverting, varied and spirited. If this was the full scope of Guthrie's intentions, he has been brilliantly successful—with the proviso that his version is seen once only. The third or fourth time it is seen, the additions and alterations cease to hold the playgoer's attention, and those parts where he has followed Shakespeare most closely tend to dominate everything else: Zoe Caldwell's tense and emotional Helena in the earliest scenes and Anthony Nicholl's unvariedly elegant Lafeu both gain in stature and interest when they are seen without the new distractions, and Edith Evans's Countess still more realizes the human understanding and poetic utterance which have always been the hall-marks of Shakespeare's original plays.

PRODUCTION:

Michael Benthall • Old Vic • 1953

BACKGROUND:

Benthall's production of All's Well That Ends Well focused on the folkloristic origins of the narrative and presented Shakespeare's play as a comic fairy-tale. This atmosphere was achieved in part by Osbert Lancaster's ingenious set designs, which resembled the illustrations found in children's books. While this approach offered a unifying and coherent conception of the drama, critics generally felt that it did so at the expense of the play's serious undertones. This was especially evident in Laurence Hardy's portrayal of the King of France as a figure of fun. Commentators were similarly made uneasy by Claire Bloom's Cinderella-like rendering of Helena, which both J. C. Trewin and Audrey Williamson felt displayed poor taste. Richard David maintained that despite her grace and deft handling of the soliloquies, "her performance made no coherent impression, and the spectator was left in irritated puzzlement as to what exactly the actress had been driving at." Michael Hordern's Parolles, however, won universal praise from critics. David described it as "brimful of vitality, and a masterpiece of comic invention." Commentators further admired the performances of Fay Compton as the Countess; John Neville as Bertram; William Squire as Lafew; and Gwen Cherrell as Diana.

COMMENTARY: