TANDING on the green in front of San Diego's Old Globe Theatre last summer, was both amused and annoyed by a friend's comment: Well, perhaps what we need is a modern Colley Cibber. had just witnessed a dizzying-if dazzlingproduction of something called Henry IV, Part 2, and my first inclination was to grumble indignantly, I doubt it. Having seen Shakespeare's version produced at Ashland less than a month before-a production which had prompted me to review the play rather carefully-I entered the Old Globe thoroughly familiar with the text, but emerged reeling. For two and a half hours William Ball had led me a frantic chase. Not only had he undertaken the staggering task of directing the play and acting Prince Hal; he had completely rewritten the text. Scenes were cut, transposed, interspliced; speeches were shifted, reassigned, rewritten. The startled scholar often wondered what play he was in as he heard lines from 2 Henry IV, from Henry VI, and (I believe) from Richard 11. More frustratting were lines and entire scenes which seemed unfamiliar, and for good reason: Mr. Ball had written them. My first reaction was thus the righteous outrage of the purist. The play was, quite flatly, not Shakespeare; it therefore followed that the play was, quite obviously, unsound. Even at the time, however, had a nagging feeling that despite some serious flaws, the San Diego audience had seen a production more in line with Shakespeare's intention than had the Ashland audience. The production at Ashland was honest and workmanlike, but it was unsuccessful. Part of the problem clearly lay with the director and the cast, but careful comparison of the Ashland-Shakespeare script with the San Diego-Ball adapatation indicates that the most serious problems lay in Shakespeare's text itself. Thus thorough analysis of Mr. Ball's radical changes can raise some provocative questions as to the place of the Improver in the modern theater. The director of 2 Henry IV faces many handicaps: problems created by Shakespeare and problems inherent in the nature of the modern audience. The opening of the play is surely one of the poorest Shakespeare ever wrote. The Prologue of Rumour undercuts all of I. i. The audience is forewarned that the contradictory reports are irrelevant to any serious issue. The problem is further complicated by Northumberland, who is more interested in finding apt similes than he is in learning the fate of his son. If the scene is played in its entirety, as it was at Ashland, all seems mere rushing and rhetoric for its own sake. It would be a simple matter to cut Rumour, the nonsensical reports, and some of the rhetorical excrescences, but cutting alone is not the answer. The entire play assumes that the audience has specific knowledge and certain pre-estab-
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Nov 1, 1969
Emmett L Avery 
