Concerning Julius Caesar's Conventions at The Shakespeare Conference
1/28/04
There must have been some convention about or acceptance of
nudity, because there had been wide spread stagings of Mystery
plays featuring naked Adams and Eves. Presumably, though not
necessarily, Eve was played by a male. But the Fall plot stipulates
that our first parents must begin naked, become ashamed, and
cover themselves with leaves that grow nearby. Pictorial representations
of Adam and Eve before and after the period show them as naked,
with varying degrees of veiling of the private parts by posture
or gesture or vegetation-- not really possible on a stage, although
movies manage it.
I've staged Cycles including Adam and Eve and the Fall multiple
times, in the context of a church worship-event, using various
conventions from maximum flesh to baggy long johns dyed beige
with "parts" drawn on with magic marker. The response-- which
ranges from bawdy laughter to reverent seriousness-- seems to
depend more on the performance style and the actors' own expressive
choices than on the choice of costume. A convention is only
acceptable if it is accepted-- there must have been those to
whom the very idea of nakedness is so offensive that any mention
of it, let alone and representation of it, is an abomination.
So the question becomes: did the offended have enough power
to make staging nakedness unlikely? Lear and Poor Tom suggest
otherwise. (1/27/04)
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