Workshop Discoveries 1: Beatrice as Moral Centre
How we cut the script for the workshop reflected director Lior and dramaturge Julian’s interests in exploring particularly questions foundational to the project and to critical conversations on The Dutch Courtesan that had taken on weight and urgency during the first weeks of rehearsal (questions about the play’s critical ‘point’ and humour were, for example, drawn directly from questions posed by the cast during initial read-throughs). But the materials we presented during the 23 February workshop were also shaped by logistical pressures – such as cast availability and time constraints. When we learned that our Crispinella and Tysefew would not be available for the early workshop, we decided to work with that pair in the later conference workshop instead, using this early rehearsal workshop to focus more on the confrontation between Beatrice, Franceschina, and Freevill.
During discussion, Carmen Kruk fascinatingly revealed an unintended emotional affect this particular cut of the script had for her as Beatrice. We had cut the lighter banter at the beginning of 4.4 where Sir Lionel Freevill, although worried about his son’s disappearance, nevertheless seizes the opportunity to offer a sudden marriage proposal to Crispinella. She wittily and almost cruelly turns him down, pointing to his aged body and old men's inability to please women in bed. Our 4.4 began with the arrival of Freevill in his disguise as ‘Don Dubon’ and Franceschina, announcing 1) that Freevill is dead and 2) that he has been unfaithful to Beatrice and is in love with Franceschina.
In this second, sombre half of the scene, Crispinella only has two lines which she directs to Beatrice in the following exchanges:
Dialogue 1: 4.4.45-47
BEATRICE:
Oh, my heart! I will love you the better; I cannot hate what he affected! Oh, passion! Oh, my grief! Which way will break, think, and consume?
CRISPINELLA:
Peace.
Dialogue 2: 4.4.58-62
BEATRICE
I think you say not true. [To Crispinella] Sister, shall we know one another in the other world?
CRISPINELLA
What means my sister?
BEATRICE
I would fain see him again. Oh, my tortured mind!
Freevill is more than dead, he is unkind.
For the first exchange, we kept Beatrice’s distressed ‘Oh, my grief! Which way will break, think, and consume?’ but cut Crispinella’s response. Beatrice’s expression stands on its own, as it is directed inwards, largely rhetorical, and is not a question that calls upon any – or indeed can be – given a meaningful reply. In the second exchange, we additionally cut Beatrice’s direct address to her sister about the afterlife, which leaves the remainder of the speech haunted by the possibility of suicide (or at the very least, her untimely death from sheer grief).
Kruk revealed that these cuts increased the emotional pain of the scene for her playing Beatrice – she hears heart-breaking news, gives expression to her grief, and there is no one left to offer her emotional support. Crispinella’s ‘peace’ is a small thing, but it tells Beatrice that her distress has been heard – she is not alone with her grief (note that in the full text this scene also includes the silent presence of the sisters’ nurse Putifer, who was also not present at our first workshop). The line cuts may remove the implicit anxiety of suicide from the moment, but they also left Beatrice revealing her innermost sorrow, and her desires to see Freevill one last time to a room filled with her taunting enemies (Franceschina) and men who are more concerned with moving straight to matters of justice than in easing Beatrice’s personal wounds.
Kruk revealed that the emotional difficulty of playing the scene in its cut format brought into relief her feelings about what it's like to play Beatrice in the play as a whole. She told us that Beatrice feels out of place in this play: with its bawdy humour, cynicism, and characters who are all out to get one another, Beatrice and her emotional openness and fidelity feels like she does not belong. She also recounted to us moments in rehearsal where the genial cast would be joking around, laughing together offstage, and she was unable to participate because she would be gearing herself up to play scenes requiring her to cry for extended periods.
In rehearsal and at the workshop, we talked a lot about the different possibilities for playing Beatrice. To modern eyes, Beatrice’s devotion to Freevill even after he tests her cruelly is hard to understand and feel sympathy for; to those familiar with city comedy, her presence is equally bewildering. The temptation is to label her a stick in the mud, or to mock her as a histrionic, outdated, and risible parody. But there are other options. Kruk worked to pull Beatrice’s grief beyond parody and in doing so found real pathos in the character which also illuminated the emotional cost of city comedy's schemes and jokes on the vulnerable. In the Toronto Dutch Courtesan production, it was Beatrice, not Freevill, who was the moral centre of the play.