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)
“No man, said Birkin, cuts another man’s throat unless he wants to cut it, and unless the other man wants it cutting. This is a complete truth. It takes two people to make a murder: a murderer and a murderee.... And a man who is murderable is a man who has in a profound if hidden lust desires to be murdered.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“They say all lovers swear more performance than they are able, and yet reserve an ability that they never perform; vowing more than the perfection of ten, and discharging less than the tenth part of one.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)