Cuts in Performance
The on-stage slaughter of Macduff's son was often cut in 19th century performances on the grounds of taste. The child was carried off-stage, and the murder left to the spectators' imaginations. Very often, the entire scene was cut, not only on the grounds of taste, but, in an age of elaborate scenery and lengthy scene shifting, on time constraints and production costs in mounting a superfluous scene verbally summarized to good effect almost immediately in 4.3.
Read more about this topic: Macduff's Son
Famous quotes containing the words cuts in, cuts and/or performance:
“You don’t want a general houseworker, do you? Or a traveling companion, quiet, refined, speaks fluent French entirely in the present tense? Or an assistant billiard-maker? Or a private librarian? Or a lady car-washer? Because if you do, I should appreciate your giving me a trial at the job. Any minute now, I am going to become one of the Great Unemployed. I am about to leave literature flat on its face. I don’t want to review books any more. It cuts in too much on my reading.”
—Dorothy Parker (1893–1967)
“He sent for lancewood to make the thills;
The crossbars were ash, from the straightest trees;
The panels of white-wood, that cuts like cheese,
But lasts like iron for things like these;
The hubs of logs from the “Settler’s ellum,”—
Last of its timber,—they couldn’t sell ‘em,”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)
“No performance is worth loss of geniality. ‘Tis a cruel price we pay for certain fancy goods called fine arts and philosophy.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)