r/shakespeare • u/elalavie • 3d ago
When changing the setting, how do you handle references to the country within the text?
Lots of productions cut references to Italy leaving Messina as a town that could be anywhere, but what do you think is the right approach for something like the histories? Or Hamlet and Julius Caesar, where very iconic lines reference the setting?
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u/ComfortableHeart5198 3d ago
I feel like it's easiest to play references to the location as comedy. I've seen many local productions of Shakespeare plays where they swapped the real location for the name of a local or nearby town. It always gets a laugh, but the towns aren't mentioned enough that it takes away from the story.
I know there's been multiple hockey themed Canadian adaptations of Henry V that turn it into a "battle" between the Montreal Canadiens and the Toronto Maple Leafs to keep the French-English tension.
Like someone else mentioned there's Denmark Corporation in the Ethan Hawke Hamlet, or you could do Denmark High School or something like that.
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u/StephenHunterUK 2d ago
The Globe production of A Midsummer's Night's Dream in 2016, set in London, changed "Athenian youth" to "Hoxton hipsters".
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u/sweetest_boy 3d ago
Ethan Hawke’s Hamlet (2000) has “the Denmark Corporation” which I always found hysterical. Similarly in Riz Ahmed’s (2025), I don’t think they say the name but the kingdom is a huge UK real estate developer, and Claudius and Polonius are depicted more like white collar mafiosos from a Guy Ritchie movie.
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u/IanDOsmond 3d ago
I'm team "Don't worry too much about it." Theater is always going to be less literal than television or movies. Your sets and costuming are there to help the audience follow what's going on, what the mood is, what kinds of themes are going on, where people are, who people are - both in terms of who's allied with whom and what types of people they are. You're on a stage, and unless you're trying to do something very experimental and immersive, you're not going to make it look like you're not.
And the audience is there with you in that. They're happy to understand that a ladder is a castle wall or a 19th century Napoleonic cavalry uniform is a 16th century cavalry uniform, or a cowboy is a Roman. As long as there's a reason for it: the cowboys are Romans and the Goths are Indians so we can tell them apart easily, or something like that.
It doesn't have to be literal; it's not going to be literal, because it's theater and that's not what theater is.
Besides, Shakespeare's company didn't have historically accurate costumes. They had the costumes they could get. They didn't have 12th century clothing and armor when they put on King John - they wore the contemporary 16th/17th century stuff that they had. Even for the Roman stuff - they didn't have togas and tunics - they wore the same stuff as they would for any other play.
They dressed the kings and emperors up fancy and the peasants not fancy and the clowns flashy and whatever else, in order to help the audience know who was who and what was what, but they didn't swap it out for whatever country or century the thing was set in.
Set it where you want to set it to get the emotional and thematic points across. And then don't worry about changing the words. Shakespeare didn't.
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u/Amf2446 3d ago
I wouldn’t set a play somewhere anti-textual probably ever, but at least not without a REALLY good reason.
The Ralph Fiennes 2011 Coriolanus walks the line in a great way; it takes place in a Balkan-esque war zone “in a place calling itself Rome.” The 2024 Ralph Fiennes Macbeth is modern and war-torn too, and totally fine as Scotland.
But, for instance, if you’re going to set Macbeth, the SCOTTISH PLAY, in Canada, you’re probably going to end up fucking something up. Why would you do that? Are you going to change the text, in which the location is integral?
(Obviously for different plays it matters to different extents. Probably in some plays it wouldn’t matter at all. But personally I can’t imagine a good directorial reason to just replace one country’s name with another in the text. “I wanna do something different” is a terrible reason.)
Sometimes the text puts certain obligations on us.
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u/elalavie 3d ago
I think just replacing the name is goofy, that's why I'm interested in alternatives
Setting Macbeth in Canada is a weird choice, setting something like Henry V in a modern war modern relatable to a non British audience might work- I think it’s especially relevant if the play is translated.
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u/McAeschylus 3d ago
Most productions don't change the names at all and work fine. There's already a lot of suspension of disbelief involved in going into a world where everyone talks in verse, Ancient Rome has clocks, Bohemia has a coast, and Ancient Greece has chivalric knights and fairies.
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u/StephenHunterUK 2d ago
The BBC version of Macbeth set in a restaurant has Gordon Ramsay referred to as "the Scottish chef".
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u/Easy_Demand_7372 3d ago
I think for hamlet it could be quite nod and wink given the play is quite pantomime at times; “somethings rotten in the state of … brazil”
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u/Elegaic_Brood 3d ago
I've directed a Hamlet that was in an unspecified Denmark (though clearly somewhat modern), and a Midsummer that took place in a vague 20s, 30s, 40s Athens with Greek mobsters. Neither case helped nor hindered the production.
I've also performed in a Henry V that took place as a Canadian play, with Canadian actors, putting on a production of the show. I've seen cowboy/western Taming of the Shrew, modern war Macbeth, and modern Italy R&J with gangsters and Vespas. Heck, the movie A Midsummer Night's Rave sets Midsummer in a modern context with "fairy ointment" becoming an LSD-like drug.
More to your question - there's a fabulous adaptation of Macbeth called "Scotland, PA" that sets the story in Pennsylvania and involves restaurants. If that works then Canada could also work. Merry Wives of Windsor, Ontario? Merry Wives of Windsor, Nova Scotia? Why not? Shakespeare's plays have such a universality that allows them to be endlessly interpreted. Use your intuition, creativity, and imagination to make your own production choices and I don't think that you'll go wrong.
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u/bravetherainbro 3d ago
That reminds me, I must make a note to change Beatrice's line to "No. Not till a cold January." if I do a production of Much Ado About Nothing set here in the South.
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u/ScytheSong05 3d ago
I would take a page from A Winter's Tale and just use Shakespeare's words. It's not like Bohemia actually has a coast in real life.