Shakespeare scripts: expert advice
Fran has taught Shakespeare, directed Shakespeare plays, adapted Shakespeare scripts, and advised directors and performers on technique. She's the Number One expert as far as I'm concerned. This page is based on her advice (but if there are errors I take the blame for them).
What you need in a script is a reliable text, some notes, a book you can hold in your hand, and a price that lets you buy copies for all the performers.
"Reliable" means that the script bears a pretty close relationship to what's accepted as Shakespeare's work. For example, King Lear must not have a happy ending grafted onto it, and the rude gags in Twelfth Night must be waiting to offend some members of the audience.
You want notes because not all your performers will know what "sith" or "wherefore" means. Not notes to get in the way of preparing your show, but notes that will help the players understand what they are saying so that they can tell the audience.
This note is all mine: Forget about a "translation" of Shakespeare. What you find in a Shakespeare script is modern English, it's just unfamiliar in spots. If you simply can't make head or tail of it, choose another playwright. It is no dishonor to admit that the script is beyond you, but it will insult the customers if your Hamlet begins, "Duude, should I eighty-six myself? Whatever."
As a translator myself, though, I must give you a lead to some of the best Shakespeare translations: German Project Gutenberg's presentation of the plays as rendered by Schlegel, Tieck, Wieland, Baudassin and others. I know it's an exercise in ethnocentrism, but you can't read these texts without thinking how lucky the Germans are to have such great translations of our playwright. "Hold their manhoods cheap"—kleinlaut werden—I just get chills.
Fran suggests that the New Folger Shakespeare series published by Washington Square Press has the best combination of sound text, reasonable notes, portability and price. Most plays cost between four and five bucks. You can have your local bookstore order in quantity; inquire about a bulk or educational discount, too.
I'll add that some plays are out in Dover economy books for a dollar or two. Use these scripts with care: They are mostly reprints of editions from the 19th and early 20th centuries, and they won't have notes, helpful or un. You may also find quirky editing; while these were wholly reputable when they first appeared, scholars keep finding new knowledge about these plays—knowledge that will help you get your show ready.
If you are also an expert, you may prefer to find an online text and do your own cut or adaptation. That's if you are an expert. But the cost to make copies of your script may be an obstacle (most of these scripts play out to 80-100 letter-size pages—you multiply it). Very likely it will be cheaper to get the Folger Merry Wives and simply cross out the enigmatic Germans. Here is one source for free online (HTML) Shakespeare texts.
Extended note about further online sources, again from Fran:
- The Royal Shakespeare Company uses the Arden editions of Shakespeare, but these texts, while very scholarly, are probably more expensive (and more annotated) than most companies need.
- This site is a fine piece of work for online Sh and has the very best search engine.
- Someone has a Sh's monologues site.
- A fair number of online play texts are listed at eserver or my beloved online book site.
The Folger series (do visit their home page) includes just about the entire list, which I'll reproduce just so your favorite search engine will find this page:
- All's Well That Ends Well
- Antony and Cleopatra
- As You Like It
- The Comedy of Errors
- Cymbeline
- Hamlet
- Henry IV, Part 1
- Henry IV, Part 2
- Henry V
- Julius Caesar
- King John
- King Lear
- Love's Labour's Lost
- Macbeth
- Measure for Measure
- The Merchant of Venice
- A Midsummer Night's Dream
- Much Ado About Nothing
- Othello
- Richard II
- Richard III
- Romeo and Juliet
- The Taming of the Shrew
- The Tempest
- Timon of Athens
- Twelfth Night
- The Two Gentlemen of Verona
- The Winter's Tale
The Merry Wives of Windsor should come out before long.
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Shakespeare scripts