As I watched these Hollow Crown episodes, there was something about the delivery of the dialogue that seemed off to me. It was strangely flat and naturalistic, spoken like ordinary dialogue in historical fiction. Then it hit me: the verse is spoken in prose. This is a huge problem. We have amazing production values; sumptuous settings; virtuoso directing; good actors and visual splendor enough to knock anyone's socks off - and we also have Shakespeare's story and words. Tragically, however, without the verse delivery of the lines, we have none of the grandeur of the language; no poetry in the performance. The artfulness of Shakespeare's work has been excised.
There is little to criticize about these versions besides this, but this point of criticism is an all-important one. Reducing Shakespeare's poetry to straight-forward prose is a terrible idea which takes away the audience's joy of the beauty of the words, and also deprives the actors of doing the kind of Shakespeare they want to be doing. I assume it was done to make Shakespeare's language more modern and understandable to an audience that is not weaned on Shakespeare, but to drag Shakespeare down to this level is artistic sabotage. I am deeply against it, and I hope they won't do it in the other upcoming BBC Shakespeare installments by producer Sam Mendes. Sadly, they probably will. Sigh. :-(
There is little to criticize about these versions besides this, but this point of criticism is an all-important one. Reducing Shakespeare's poetry to straight-forward prose is a terrible idea which takes away the audience's joy of the beauty of the words, and also deprives the actors of doing the kind of Shakespeare they want to be doing. I assume it was done to make Shakespeare's language more modern and understandable to an audience that is not weaned on Shakespeare, but to drag Shakespeare down to this level is artistic sabotage. I am deeply against it, and I hope they won't do it in the other upcoming BBC Shakespeare installments by producer Sam Mendes. Sadly, they probably will. Sigh. :-(