Any Shakespeare buffs out there? I have a little question about the ending of the said play.
I just saw a production of it at the American Repetory Theater in Cambridge, which I felt was excellent. The show went through the tragedy and comedy it’s known for, but the ending had an interesting twist. Rather than having the traditional interpretation of the ending where the queen comes back to life and happilly walks off with the king, the director chose to have a rather bittersweet ending.
The queen and daughter stare at eachother, both crying with grief for the past, the time lost, and the dead brother. In the distance, we hear the brother sing his song of spring, and the queen is slowly pulled offstage by the king, leaving the daughter in her apparent anguish.
So what do you think, given what I’ve described and your knowledge of Shakespear, which ending is more appropriate?
What we need here, my friend, is the DRY man.
Wherefore art thou, DRY?
Scotti
Occasionally I have to actively maintain the fiction that I have a life outside of the SDMB. It’s not actually, true, but I have to maintain it.
I confess that I am not nearly as familiar with The Winter’s Tale as I am with some of the others. (Never seen it, never read it, haven’t read the Cliffs Notes on it. Don’t laugh–the Cliffs Notes are an excellent way to gain greater understanding of a given play or book)
IIRC correctly, the Winter’s Tale is supposed to be somewhat of a sad play, and therefore a sad ending might very well be more fitting.
On the other hand, the traditional happier ending might be seen as uplifting and renewing.
I’d have to take a look at the play to give you my opinion. Not that my opinion counts more if I happen to be more familiar with Shakespeare. Shakespeare is what you make of it. Hamlet in particular is open to about a million
interpretations.
Scotticher will appreciate this: if I could change the ending of a play, I’d change it so that Richard III WINS. But that’s another story.
You mean he didn’t? What’s up with THAT?
Scotti
Defender of Richard’s Everwhere
Now that I have gotten over the crushing news that Richard III really dies at the end of HIS play, I have been able to give more thought to your question.
I have never appreciated the versions of Shakespearian plays where they bring them into contemporary settings and update everything. I even saw “Comedy of Errors” once that was set in a circus, and-well, you can imagine.
I guess I am a purist when it comes to the Bard, and I am firmly on the side of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” I realize this is not a very popular notion these days, but I enjoy seeing Shakespeare as he wrote it. This includes not changing the ending, and leaving the dialogue essentially intact. I also prefer to see the sets and costumes re-created as closely as possible to the way they would have been done during Elizabethan times.
Of course, I draw the line at having ALL of the parts played by boys and men-can you imagine Titania with a beard? What a concept!
This is just my opinion, and I grant that I may be old fashioned about this issue.
Did you enjoy the play? That is really all that matters, I guess.
Scotti
The Winter’s Tale is actually classified among the romances of Shakespeare. The point is to show the evils of jealousy. Unlike Othello, there is no seeming justification for his jealousy. And in the end, all he denied is restored to him. Even in what you describe. He pulls his wife off stage but his daughter is not lost to him…
Lucky man.
As long as the king gets his queen back in the end, it’s not that radical of a change. He sent her away because of his delusions about her faithfulness, and has suffered all those years for the loss of her and his children. A radical change would be her being reunited with her daughter and them leaving the old king alone for good. I guess it’s a romance because everything is larger than life and heart-wrenching, but most of it is so sad even the “happy” ending is too little too late.
Except for his son and 15 years of happiness…
Scotti’s last line really says it all.
Like Scotti, I used to view Shakespearean production in “modern dress” with distaste. However, I found that a few of the plays that I really enjoyed were only available on video in the “modern dress” version. After a time, I barely noticed the change.
My pet peeve is the altering of the dialogue (for example, Hamlet’s soliloquies in the Mel Gibson version. I must, out of fairness, say, that Gibson himself did an excellent job in the role). But that’s just me.
Did you enjoy the play? That’s really what counts. One of my LEAST favorite versions of Hamlet was Lawrence Olivier’s–IIRC, he cut out Rosencrantz and Guildenstern entirely!
But you know what? “Bad Hamlet” still beats the crap out of a lot of other stuff.
for the record, yes, I did like it. It was very well acted and directed, plus it’s a great play, and (at times) is very funny.