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It's almost impossible to go to a Shakespeare festival or even see an individual production of Shakespeare done "traditionally". Everyone feels they have to do a "concept," setting the play in a different place or time, costuming and set decoration suited to a new context, and sometimes even changing the lines, swapping the order of scenes, cutting large pieces or characters, adding pieces or characters, giving a different character a speech traditionally spoken by another. I saw a production some years ago of "Taming of the Shrew" in which the great speech by Kate at the end "...my hand is ready, may it do him ease..." was given instead to Sly, the drunkard who has been watching the play within the play. Often that role that frames the play is cut out altogether, so I liked the idea of the production including him, but it was just WRONG to give that speech to anyone else. Some people might say that doing the play in any costume other than that which is consistent with the time and place in which the play is being performed would be doing a concept. Shakespeare costumed all his plays in "dressed up" versions of contemporary English Renaissance dress, even those plays set in Medieval times, in the Italian countryside, in ancient Greece or Rome, although he did give some characters a piece or two to suggest that time or place. So doing Hamlet true to 11th century Denmark is actually more of a concept than doing it in contemporary dress suited to the locale of the audience. Well, I think the plays were written to evoke a particular time and a place, and changing anything that changes that, is creating a new context. Having a new context is okay, maybe even creating a lot of new possibilities for insight into the plays and reminding us just how universal and still relevant the plays are, but the task then is for everything in the play to be consistent with that new context. The Baz Luhrman Romeo and Juliet did a pretty good job of that, but that doesn't mean that every production of R&J should avoid the Italian Renaissance... These are my thoughts today...

Thanks. I hate to sound like a raving purist, but really, most people have never seen the plays done right, so how can they hope to understand them when someone gets in and messes with them?

I agree with you on this, Bill knew how to tell a tale so please stop trying to improve upon it or interpreter it into how u think it should have been done.