In all honesty, after reading Arden of Faversham I felt completely underwhelmed. Even though I liked the character Alice, I found the play rather dry and the plot kind of redundant. However, after viewing the performance yesterday I had a completely different reaction. I think that the group as whole went into this play far less excited than we had been for the other performances. However, we came out of the play far more pleased than we could have expected. This wonderful experience with the performance has made me realize that I didn’t truly give Arden Faversham a fair chance. I judged the play and the performance extremely quickly (the performance before even seeing it).
After having such positive feelings toward the performance last night I wonder why I didn’t see the potential that the director clearly sees, and that exists in this play. The fact of the matter, she created this adaption from the same play that I read. My question then becomes, if I reread Arden of Faversham will my feelings toward the written text change? Or has the director recreated the play in a way so that I can enjoy the performance greatly without enjoying the actual written play? The answer to that question I won’t know uless I reread Arden. Maybe I overlooked the underlying ideas that this director ran with or maybe her running with them created something that exists exclusively on its own and that this new thing becomes something that I enjoy.
Regardless of whether I will in fact appreciate Arden of Faversham more after analyzing the text again, the fact that I didn’t originally see that possibility matters. How many other plays, novels, and poems did I cast away like Arden? One example that comes readily to mind, Richard II, many members of my other Shakespeare class thoroughly enjoy. The possibility exists that if I see a performance of Richard II I could have a different reaction to the play, much like I did with Arden. Similarly, rereading Richard could help me see things I overlooked and underappreciated greatly the first time around. The illuminating part of this experience revolves around the idea that I readily judged this play and many others and shouldn’t let those judgments overpower the possibilities within the text or the performances.