David Garrick as the Best Commentator of Shakespeare and His Production of Macbeth

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  • ベスト・コメンテイターとしてのギャリック -『マクベス』を実例として-
  • ベスト ・ コメンテイター ト シテ ノ ギャリック : 『 マクベス 』 オ ジツレイ ト シテ

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Abstract

David Garrick, in his long career as an actor, dramatist, and theatre-manager, continued to edit and produce the works of William Shakespeare successively, and to be praised as "the Best Commentator of Shakespeare" by his contemporaries. But the texts which he edited were, sometimes drastically and crucially, different from the Shakespeare's original texts, in spite of the fact that their productions were often advertised in their playbills and several publications `as written by Shakespeare.'This essay, taking his production of Macbeth as an example, as it is the first production for which he himself edited the text of Shakespeare and shares the common particularities of his successive Shakespearean productions, placing it in the context of the eighteenth-century London, and comparing with the adaptation of Macbeth of William Davenant which had been the only Macbeth in London before Garrick produced his own version of Macbeth, reveals the reasons why the eighteenth-century audience and critics could accept and praise the Garrick's Shakespearean productions `as written by Shakespeare.'For this purpose, in this essay, especially the three aspects of the production of Garrick's Macbeth are discussed: the emphasis on music and spectacle; the matter of plot; and the functional nature of Garrick's acting. Through the examination of these three aspects, this essay reveals what were the tastes of the theatre audienceand the current of thought in the eighteenth-century London, and, at the same time, the way how Garrick, adding several changes into the original text of Shakespeare and making full use of his acting, created the production which was recognized by his audience and critics `as written by Shakespeare.'

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