For our class editing project, my group was assigned Act 1 Scene 1 and Act 5 of The Two Noble Kinsmen. When we began our discussion of how we wanted to transform our scenes, we first considered whether to keep the Shakespearean language or change it into modern English. At first, we decided to keep the Shakespearean language because we thought that without it, the play would lose some of its deeper meaning. With this decision made, we tried to go through Act 1 Scene 1 and cut down some of the characters’ lines. However, we immediately discovered that this was a much harder task than we initially anticipated. We found this to be difficult because if we tried to cut merely a few words of any character’s speech, a lot of the meaning behind their words would be lost. We therefore realized that we would have to convert the play into modern English in order to be able to both cut down the length of the play and cut out characters while still keeping the meaning of the characters’ words and the story line in place.

Another decision we had to make was to decide if we could cut any characters out of the play. We immediately realized that it was unnecessary for the play to have three queens. Instead, we chose to have only one queen, because we felt that the purpose of the three queens could still be fulfilled even if we only used one queen. Additionally, for Act 5, we decided to cut the jailer’s daughter and the wooer. This decision mainly came from the discovery that in Chaucer’s The Knight’s Tale, these characters did not exist, and neither did the entire part of the plot line that they were associated with. With these cuts, we would be able to cut all of Act 5 Scene 2, and it would allow us to make fewer cuts in other parts of the play.

Finally, we decided that, because we were going to use modern English, we should create a modern setting for the play as well. At first, our group decided on a military-based theme. We made this initial decision because of our desire to keep the plot as close to that of the play as possible. However, after further thought, we decided that with this military-based plot, our adaptation was almost exactly the same as that of the play. For this reason, we decided to try to come up with a new plot in which there were some new plot twists and a few additions to the story line. We therefore decided to create a movie made for children from the play. For this children’s movie, we thought it would be a fun and interesting twist to the story to make Palamon and Arcite into the superheroes Pala-man and Arc-man. This adaptation would allow us to add new parts to the story of the play, while still allowing us to keep the meaning of the characters’ words and actions in tact.

Although our group knew which characters to cut and how to frame the story, we found it to be a little challenging to decide on the smaller details of the format of the movie. A main problem we faced was what to do with the prologue. After much discussion, we chose to omit the prologue created by Shakespeare and Fletcher completely. Instead of this prologue, we decided that at the beginning of our movie, after the title was shown, an opening credit would be shown in which a disclaimer was made that the movie is an adaptation of both The Two Noble Kinsmen and The Knight’s Tale. We chose to make such a radical change to the prologue of the play because the message that was conveyed in the prologue would not fit well at the beginning of a movie, especially if it supposed to be a movie for children.

In class, we had discussed the idea of blocking the script so that each characters’ lines would all be together, and cues would be given to each actor so they would know when to speak. Our group considered this idea but, after much thought, decided against it. Since we planned on making a movie, we realized that before the scenes are taped, the actors and director hold a read through of the entire script. If the script were blocked, it would be difficult for the actors to read through their lines in the way they were intended to be portrayed. Additionally, we thought that line cues would be unnecessary, as the actors would be allowed multiple takes to perfect a scene, and the crew of the movie could hold cue cards when desired.

Overall, our group’s goal was to keep the plot and the words of the characters as close to that of the play as possible, while still providing a more modern twist on the story. Although we have found this to be a difficult task, we believe this is the best way to edit the text while still keeping the important parts of the play in tact.