In one scene in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, comic actor Brown, playing Flute, one of the clowns, was chased, tripped, pinched, bitten, and finally tossed into a lake by his fellow clowns. When he came to the surface he ad-libbed: “I won’t play anymore.”
Brown’s line produced a big laugh when the scene was run off in the projection room but there was a great deal of agonizing over whether to retain it.
A Shakespearean scholar finally convinced the producers that Shakespeare himself, a hardworking actor-manager, enjoyed making audiences laugh. So Warners kept Brown’s line in the film on the theory that Shakespeare would approve. American audiences did.
Source:
Boller, Paul F., and Ronald L. Davis. "Classics and Biopics." Hollywood Anecdotes. New York: Morrow, 1987. 333. Print.
Original Source Listed:
Alva Johnston, “Shakespeare in Hollywood,” Woman’s Home Companion, LXIII (April 1936), p. 17.
Further Reading:
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