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Why Stories Are Changed
spring and summer of 1936, the author made a speaking tour embracing forty-three American cities. The subject, "Better Motion Pictures," was discussed before educational and club leaders. This tour was ended with a lecture before the Secondary Division of the National Education Association Convention at Portland, Oregon. In these talks much interest was aroused by the statement that William Shakespeare was "a natural born scenario writer." It was pointed out that practically no changes had to be made in the Quarto of Romeo and Juliet.
Professor William Strunk, Jr. of Cornell University, literary advisor for the photoplay, is authority for the assertion that the film version of Romeo and Juliet provides practically the first chance for this play to be heard and seen almost exactly as Shakespeare wrote it. It is a fact that far more changes were required for the various stage versions, particularly the Cibber version, than for the photoplay.
Shakespeare began his career under crude stage conventions. He played in inn yards and in comparatively unequipped theatres like the Swan and the Globe. He had little constructed scenery. We know how humorously he satirized the stage delinquencies of the time in his play within a play in A Midsummer Night's Dream. He did not confine himself to the traditional three or four acts of the classical drama. He made many scenes. He changed his locale swiftly whenever it advanced his dramatic purposes, and, because of this, many of his plays have the fast pace, the fluidity, of a modern motion picture.
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