Things I will not do when I direct a Shakespeare production

I got this list a number of years ago from a Shakespeare chat group. I've modified it a bit. For instance, I took out the one that said "I will not let Glenn Close within 10 feet of a Shakespeare production" because I actually liked her work in the 1990 Hamlet film.

1. The ghost of Hamlet's father will not be played by the entire ensemble underneath a giant piece of diaphanous black material.
2. I will not imply that Hamlet is sleeping with his mother, or wants to.
3. I will not make actors in battle scenes wear knitted chainmail of a color that makes them resemble not so much a medieval warrior as Winnie-the-Pooh.
4. I will not allow any actor to bring a knife to a gunfight.
5. Likewise, I will not allow any actor to bring a gun to a knife fight.
6. I will not cast actresses as Helena and Hermia who are the same height.
7. Richard II's minions will not be made to wear pink.
8. Battle scenes will not be presided over by a ridiculous contraption resembling a death-bot.
9. Ariel should, ideally, wear more than Gollum.
10. I will not work in any pop music.
11. I will not use long red ribbons to represent blood, particularly if the long red ribbons bear an unnerving resemblance to pasta.
12. I will not cut important scenes simply because I do not like them.
13. As much as I enjoy his films, I will not steal from Kenneth Branagh. It's not like people won't notice.
14. I will not employ a conception of Caliban which would require him to wear a ghastly furry costume reminiscent of a hypothetical offspring of Chewbacca and the Wolf from Into the Woods.
15. I will not pantomime every image employed in the text in concert with its recitation under the assumption that it's the only way the dumb audience could possibly understand Elizabethan text.
16. I will not flood the stage with water.
17. The Twelfth Night Fool will not be split into four parts: Gotcha, Misha, Feste, and something else (can't remember - I was Gotcha).
18. Titania should not be portrayed as a dominatrix.
19. Olivia being played by a man who really looks more like a woman is not that good of an idea.
20. I will not change words in the text simply because I fear "glass" instead of "mirror" or something similar is too difficult for the audience to understand, as I am not Shakespeare and should just leave it alone.
21. If I'm doing Twelfth Night, Sebastian will not be played by a 6'6" man with a heavy black beard and Viola will not be played by a 5'4" woman with a big chest and strawberry blonde hair and we'll just pretend nobody can tell the difference.
22. If I'm doing As You Like It, when the Duke says "Find Cesario" I will not have the player playing Cesario standing 2 feet away staring at them.
23. I will not have actors prancing about in the background acting the seven scenes of man's life in As You Like It, no matter how stupid my audience is.
24. I will not allow the King's ghost in Hamlet to look like a hairy popsicle.
25. Macbeth will not wear a kilt that goes down past his shins. That, my friends, is a skirt.
26. Puck will not wear little gold Arabian Nights shoes that curl up at the toes.
27. Sir Andrew Aguecheek will not be a young, lean, attractive man who no one in the audience can understand why Olivia turned away.
28. I will not re-stage Twelfth Night to take place in Wonderland.
29. If I cannot or will not get an actor to impersonate a corpse, I will not use a mannequin and then make a dramatic point of revealing said corpse.
30. I will not aim for realism in my fight choreography when both armies together only number about ten people. Especially if I have a big stage.
31. Richard III will not be portrayed as a whiny little prat who couldn't seduce or murder his way out of a wet paper bag.
32. People playing human (non-elf/fairy/spirit) characters will not be made to wear costumes that sparkle unless there is a good reason for it.
33. I will not make my cast simulate slow motion.
34. When characters are required to speak with accents, I will make sure the actors in question can actually do them.
35. I will not fail to employ a dictionary if there are words in the text whose pronunciation is uncertain, and I will strongly encourage my actors to do the same. I will not allow an actor playing Richard II to go through the rehearsal process without being disabused of the notion that "Antipodes" rhymes with "nematodes" if he is in need of such disabusement.
36. No character will be allowed to skip around the stage without a particularly good reason. Particularly if it's a guy.
37. I will not open the play with scenes from the fifth act and treat the action as a flashback.
38. I will not have Henry throwing tomatoes at a spinning fan blade whilst yelling at Montjoy.
39. I will not portray Mercutio as a speed addict and Tybalt as his dealer. I will try to do the world a favour and cease from modernising Romeo and Juliet.
40. In a production of Cymbeline, Jupiter should not be played as some kind of bizarre winged thing on a high metal contraption with a magnifying glass for a face. Additionally, portraying the Leonati as four faceless figures swathed in one long, connected white cloth and bunches of gold Christmas lights with their lines delivered from offstage through the sound system that echoes and is impossible to understand is a bad idea.
41. I will recognize that there is never a need for a monolith a la 2001: A Space Odyssey in Macbeth.
42. I will not project a PowerPoint slideshow onto a large screen above and behind the actors, ever, for any reason, no matter what.
43. I will refrain from "correcting" the text politically or "improving" it to avoid possible offense.
44. Thematically apt though it may be, I will not have anyone in Twelfth Night resemble a character from Rocky Horror.
45. I will not allow my actors to suffer under the misapprehension that "more spittle" = "better acting."
46. I will not have sheep in my pastoral scenes.
47. I will not put La Pucelle in a Xena-esque metal bikini, no matter how attractive the actor's legs and stomach are.
48. No matter how clever or "modern" the production, no characters in Shakespeare will ever be portrayed at a rave.
49. I will not cut the mythological "filler" from characters' dialogue to shorten a play's running time.
50. No matter how much I may personally be enthralled by Dadaism, I will not insert random Dadaist elements into a production of Taming of the Shrew. I will especially not have actors carrying gigantic black bowlers through the scenes for absolutely no reason.
51. I will not use a chipmunk puppet, a frog puppet, and a neon green alligator puppet (or indeed, any puppets at all) instead of actors.
52. I will not portray Oberon and Puck as two handsome and well-built young men dressed in little more than blue and green paint. This is for the simple reason that it is distracting.
53. I will not dress Goneril in dry-clean-only mint green silk shantung and then block her sitting on furniture containing substantial traces of "vile jelly" from the previous scene.
54. If Macbeth is dressed in 1930s-era fascist chic, Lady Macbeth will not be allowed to dress in a 1960s caftan, complete with beads.
55. I will not stage Macbeth as the leader of a Scottish mafia family.
56. I will not put Titania in a neon-green wig, especially when the actress has perfectly fairy-esque short, curly brown hair.
57. I will not make my Midsummer Night fairies into furniture for the other actors to sit upon. It's cruel and painful, no matter how cool it looks, and the audience will laugh at them.
58. The Three Witches in Macbeth should never appear clad entirely in burlap sacks, including sacks over their heads. And there's no reason to have 9 of them, even if you're trying to do some stupid Norn fates thing because it's SCOTLAND, OK? Not Scandinavia.
59. Lady Macbeth doesn't start out the play insane. If she does, there's nowhere to go. It's called a character ARC!
60. Lady Macbeth should never give her biggest speeches lying facedown on a green couch.
61. The Three Apparitions should NOT crawl offstage in full view of the audience after giving their speeches, particularly not while wearing a silver lame evening gown.
62. If you are setting Macbeth in the modern era, there is no excuse for people fighting with broadswords in the subway, no matter how much you loved Highlander.
63. Forty-seven women in identical black wigs commuting on the train do not make good Three Witches.
64. At the end of The Merry Wives of Windsor do NOT have the company arrive to torment Falstaff dressed as for Venetian Carnivale in all white robes with pointed hats. It ends up as a Klan rally gone seriously awry. Poking Falstaff with the point of your Klan hat should ABSOLUTELY be avoided as it causes uncontrollable laughter on the part of the audience.
65. Even if you're short on budget, any set from The Merry Wives of Windsor should in no way resemble Faust's hell.
66. The Duke in Measure for Measure will not be allowed to descend from the heavens on a trapeze bearing the legend: deus ex machina.
67. I will never portray Lady Macbeth as practicing Wicca. Especially if the production keeps the play in medieval Scotland.
68. I will not use a timpani as a substitute for dramatic tension during battle scenes.
69. Hamlet's mother will not be played by a woman who could have gone to high school with the actor playing Hamlet. At least not without rather a lot of aging makeup!
70. I will not set The Tempest in a Gilligan's Island episode, and have my actors play their roles as characters from the show.
71. If I have a high concept production, I will make sure it makes sense to people who aren't me.
72. I will not allow my extremely young Juliet to have caffeine before the performance. She's supposed to be immature, not a Muppet on speed.
73. I will have a contingency plan for outdoor plays in case of disasters other than weather. For instance: search helicopters looking for fugitives in the area. The actors are accomplished clog-dancers, but it's not fair to ask them to do that for the interim.
74. If unable to avoid going post-modern, I will not cast and costume all major characters so similarly that they can not be told apart. It's just mean to the new kids.
75. I will not cast the ghost of Hamlet's father as a tinny voice speaking from inside a green-lit coffin.
76. Puck should not wear a tutu. Nor should he be twins.
77. As much as I like the actress, I will not cast Hamlet as a woman pretending to be a man.
78. I will not have men in kilts leaping down from set pieces.
79. When the audience is close enough to touch the actors, I will not instruct them to swing sharp weapons, like axes.
80. I will not begin A Midsummer Night's Dream with a song-and-dance number featuring Puck tap-dancing.
81. I will not replace all the famous lines in Romeo and Juliet with pantomime just because everybody already knows the lines.
82. Just because somebody can play an instrument, I won't necessarily have them do so.
83. If I must stage Macbeth in a modern setting, there is no reason to dress the Scottish nobles as Hare Krishnas, especially if I also arm them with machine guns.
84. I will not make the spirits summoned by the witches in Macbeth resemble glow-in-the-dark ducks in a shooting gallery.
85. At no time shall Romeo slap Tybalt with a fish. This is especially key during their confrontation in 3.1.
86. I will not cast a 6'6" walking wall as Tybalt and a 5'4" pretty little man as Romeo without giving some thought at least as to how I will choreograph the above mentioned confrontation in 3.1.
87. If I am staging an outdoor production of Romeo and Juliet, I will make sure that I use whatever is necessary to keep the nearby bats from attacking the audience.
88. I will never try to cast Richard III as a cyberpunk war between two companies.
89. I will not have Hecate in the back of every scene of Macbeth, posing and trying to look interested, nor will I have her do an impromptu dancer's leap off stage-left at the end of Act III. It will only make my audience giggle and point.
90. If the text says "thou purple herb," I will use a purple flower.
91. Hippolyta is an AMAZON QUEEN; I will not portray her as a weak woman.
92. I will not put Puck, nor Feste, nor Lear's Fool, nor any other character, in a Maxfield Parrish-esque fool costume COMPLETE WITH BELLS. If I absolutely MUST do that, I will make certain that the bells do NOT jingle.
93. I will not allow juggling nor acrobatics to be involved in my production.
94. I will not have actors rap rhyming passages.
95. I will not cast as Charles the wrestler someone who is better-looking, more charismatic and more talented than the actor playing Orlando. Having the audience cheering for Charles is a bad thing.
96. Spandex is not a costume, even for the fairies in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Especially pink and green spandex.
97. Do not use a cooking video to illustrate the magical feast in The Tempest, no matter how funny it was at the time.
98. If the play I am producing does not have a swordfight, I will resist the urge to add one.
99. I will not use combs to substitute for knives. Nor will I use ski poles. Or big sticks.
100. Anything that requires anyone to be flopping long sheets of cloth in the background to symbolize something, including "our set designer's on strike", should probably be rethought.
101. There is no reason to be tying people up in King John. Okay, maybe when putting out Arthur's eyes. But that's all.
102. Juliet does not chew gum, even if she is fourteen.
103. I will not rehearse hand-to-hand fight scenes in small rooms with brick walls, unless I wish rehearsal to be held up by one of the actors suffering a concussion.
104. If I am going to stage anything outside a theatre requiring actors to be out in public with swords and armour, I will remember to warn the local police first. The show will not go on with half the cast in the cells.
105. Mummification in Saran wrap does not make for a good costume, even for fairies in Midsummer Night's Dream. Especially if it is performed outdoors in the middle of summer.
106. If I make the fairies in Midsummer Night's Dream wear headlamps in my outdoor production because the lights look cool moving through the woods at night, I will come up with an alternative costuming idea for the matinee performances, when the lights just make them look like deranged miners.
107. Beatrice is generally well-liked by everyone except Benedick. Thus she should not be a raving bitch to everyone she meets. I will remember that there is a big difference between wit and PMS.
108. If I decide it's a good idea to set Much Ado during the Spanish Civil War, I will refrain from altering massive swathes of the text to accommodate it, especially if I have no sense of meter. Shakespeare knew what he was doing. Benedick is NOT the fourth Stooge.
109. Similarly, I will remember that Much Ado is a comedy. I will refrain from having the company dress in funereal black for the wedding, dancing to sombre music, and then dying in a bombing raid. Even if am labouring under the misapprehension that this would be terribly artistic.
110. I will never dress Puck in a black t-shirt reading PCUK, even if it seems funny when I think of it.
111. I will never cause a character to fall into water (e.g. swimming pool) just because the actor looks good in a wet t-shirt.
112. I will not allow my actors to speak so fast that the words mean nothing. Neither will I encourage them to stress the iambic pentameter until the sense leaves the words.
113. Nor will I encourage them to hold their breath while other actors are speaking.
114. And in addition to "Lady Macbeth should never give her biggest speeches lying facedown on a green couch", may I add: Neither should Lady Macbeth give speeches while lying on her back in the bath, with her face underwater. It's deeply inadvisable.
115. I will never have the cast of Midsummer Night's Dream try to pull members of the audience onto stage to dance. It's not very clever to begin with, and it takes so long to find someone willing to dance that the music finishes before you get back on stage.
116. As tempting as recasting a Shakespeare play into a different historical era may be, it does require more of a twist than simply dressing people in different costumes. The Three Witches in Macbeth need never be portrayed as Central Park bag ladies; Hamlet need never be the tale of the son of a 30s mafioso instead of the son of a late-medieval Danish monarch. Twelfth Night does not need to be re-cast with the leads from the television show Friends.
117. Never give in to the temptation to use pyrotechnics during the storm at the beginning of The Tempest, especially when the gauze you have tied to the front of the stage is fireproof - but the paint on it isn't.
118. I will not have the major dramatic characters in Macbeth wear make-up that makes them appear as an animated stained glass window.
119. I will not have the entire cast of Macbeth clad entirely in black, except for Lady Macduff, who will be in pale blue. If I MUST, for some reason, costume everyone entirely in black, the set will NOT be entirely black as well.
120. I will not decide that Helen of Troy in Troilus and Cressida is actually a sports car, nor will Pandarus do lines of cocaine off of her. (I will especially not do this if I can't afford a real sports car and have to make do with a small toy Ferrari, set on a table).
121. When "the barber's man hath been with" Benedick, I will make him look at least slightly shaved.
122. I will not incorporate an ominous witch-doctor woman into Romeo and Juliet, having her stalk the streets of Verona until she's finally revealed as the apothecary.
123. I will not have Romeo and Juliet's clothes gradually become more modern as the play progresses, to symbolize that their love is eternal, especially if this means that Juliet has to wear a pink mini skirt for her death scene.
124. If characters mention the music that they hear playing, I will make sure there is music for them to listen to.
125. I will not cast Hamlet as two people, one male and one female.
126. I will not give Thisbe cleavage by blowing up multi-coloured latex balloons and taping them under her dress; furthermore, during Thisbe's death scene, I will not tape a safety pin to the end of Pyramus' sword and allow Thisbe to pop said balloons for comic relief as she tragically stabs herself.
127. I will never allow the unnecessary pause between "to be" and "or not to be" to last more than ten seconds, no matter how much the actor playing Hamlet believes it will transform him into Olivier. If he draws it out for more than twenty seconds during any rehearsal, I will recast the part.
128. I will not set Macbeth in World War Two era garb, or leave Hecate on stage - in a rocking chair - for the entire fourth and fifth act. There is also no need to make Hecate a sexually ambiguous goth with a walking stick.
129. The "Man of Wax" Paris will never be an ugly fat man.
130. The Nurse will not face the audience with every line, no matter how much musical theatre experience she has.
131. If an actor cannot convincingly cry on stage I will not force them to state the lines "boo hoo hoo boo hoo hoo" in their place (Lady Capulet in particular).
132. I will not allow, no matter how tempting or how realistic, the production's Romeo to drink warm soy sauce as poison... It is unnecessary and unpleasant to him and those all around him (including Juliet who then must kiss his lips).
133. Romeo's tunic will not be covered in ORANGE flowers.
134. While in a period production, even a low budget production, Romeo's boots will not have an "Adidas" visibly in sight.
135. If I must give in to my need to modernize Much Ado About Nothing, I will not set the entire play in an art gallery, and make Benedick attempt to hide by pretending to become part of the paintings.
136. Casting a black Desdemona alongside a black Othello is kind of missing the point a bit.
137. The Montague clan are not aliens. No, really, they're not.
138. No matter how much homoerotic subtext has been built up over the course of the play, I will not end Richard II by having Henry pull Richard's dead body out of a pool of water, having him proceed to lie on top of it, and then roll, the one over the other, all over the stage in complete silence until the curtain comes to hide them from the audience's bleeding eyes.
139. In a production of As You Like It, I will not portray the banished Duke and his followers as a community of Mennonites simply because I have an excess of those costumes in the costume storage shop.
140. If I must stage Macbeth as set during Nazi-era Germany, I won't let Macbeth wear a kilt and a red swastika armband.
141. I will not set fire to the actors to emphasise their emotions. It never helps.
142. I will not end Comedy of Errors with a shower of "gold" foil coins and a Singing In the Rain-esque umbrella dance while the cast sings "Pennies from Heaven."
143. I will not be afraid to portray Romeo and Juliet as a comedy, but whether I portray it as a comedy or tragedy, I will decide that before I have auditions.
144. Do not EVER, under ANY circumstances, dress fairies in 1950's style prom gowns.
145. If you decide to put Christmas lights in your fairies' hair, try to find a better way to hide the battery pack than making a huge corsage and pinning it to their chests. This is especially important if you ignored the last rule.
146. If I absolutely must stage Julius Caesar on 1930's Wall Street, I will not make it impossible to tell the characters apart - identical suits and haircuts do not a good production make.
147. Taming of the Shrew may, possibly, work when set in the Wild West. It will not work, however, if ALL the characters are shouting ALL their lines in horrible Texas accents.
148. If I have to include Hecate, I will not cast a pretty boy and put him in a white dress and give him white contact lenses, no matter how "cool" I think it is. Particularly when this makes "her" look like a Greek statue.
149. I will check up on the set designer on a regular basis so that they do not surprise me when the time comes to put the set in the proper space by 1) not showing up and 2) not having done anything but paint a bunch of platforms black. Especially when my original set design didn't call for any black whatsoever.
150. I will check up on the costume designer on a regular basis so that they do not surprise me two weeks before opening night by coming into the prod staff meeting with a single suitcase full of fabric and a half-assembled costume and saying, "Well, this is what I've done so far..."
151. I will also make sure that the costume designer is aware that if they measure people for their costumes, they should not measure them over their clothes, particularly when the temperature has been in the lower forties.
152. I will never stage Macbeth entirely in freestyle rap.
153. Failing this, I will absolutely not have the first act staged normally and the second act in rap - the contrast will be immediately obvious and the "out damn spot" scene does not work when Lady Macbeth is clearly sane enough to talk in perfect rhythm, if not sane enough to turn down the part.
154. Failing both of the above I will at least not attempt this with a class of middle-school, middle-class, white Jewish students who wouldn't know rap if it bit them on the backside and who have only fourteen days of rehearsal time. Total.
155. I will never have Romeo shoot Tybalt in the back.
156. I will never, when directing Romeo and Juliet, choose to set it outdoors near a known landing site for rescue helicopters, as it confuses the audience during the tomb scene.
157. I will never cast the same actor as both Mercutio and Lord Capulet, without a major costume change to alert the audience that no, this is not Mercutio returned from the dead to berate Juliet for not wanting to marry his murderer.
158. I will never instruct Romeo and Juliet to "die faster, people didn't come here to see you two die."
159. I will never inform my costume crew, after they've finished the fairies costumes for Midsummer, that I've changed my mind about the entire cast looking like various rock/pop/alternative musical groups, and am instead going for a late Victorian garden party setting - then tell them to just leave the fairy costumes as they are, but make everyone else's fit the new theme.
160. I will never tell my actors that they don't need to understand the text, they just need to say it.
161. I will never, ever, ever, use an Enrique Iglesias song as background music for a love scene. It makes the audience gag.
162. I will under no circumstances have the same actor play Hamlet, the king and Hamlet's father, thus allowing a fight scene where Hamlet beats up an ugly blow-up doll.
163. I will not have the background music be loud drums and metallic sounds that makes it impossible for the audience to hear what is being said.
164. I will not present Macbeth with Klingon characterization (no matter how many Trekkies are in the cast).
165. It's fine to cast people of various different body-types as the fairies in A Midsummer Night's Dream. However, you should not then costume said fairies in lycra body stockings. Particularly if the first thought the audience members have upon seeing Titania & Oberon's attendants is: Wow, look at all the chunky fairies!
166. Trying to do Macbeth set in a pseudo-prehistoric Scotland set - complete with an enormous Georgia O'Keefe cow skull, lots of chains hanging around and inexplicable macramé tabards for Macbeth and his Lady - is a really bad idea. Trust me.
167. Similarly, do not conceptualize Taming of the Shrew as being a B-grade Sci-Fi movie wherein Bianca's lesser would-be lovers are costumed as lizard men.
168. I will not set Macbeth in a post-apocalyptic future wasteland. Furthermore, under no circumstance will Banquo be a robot, alien, mutant, or any combination of the above.
169. I will not use a basketball in a sack for Macbeth's severed head. If I absolutely must do so, I will anoint the stupid sack with stage blood to make it look a little more convincing, and I will let out enough air from the ruddy ball so that it does not bounce when it hits the stage.
170. I will not kill Banquo by lethal injection (with or without "O Mio Babbino Caro" blaring in the background).
171. A bunch of people dancing around with suitcases is not an acceptable substitute for the whole Three Witches thing.
172. When Macbeth exclaims that he sees a dagger before him, a machete is not an acceptable alternative.
173. Upon being stabbed, Tybalt should die, not propel himself backwards across the entire length of the stage.
174. Make sure the actor cast as Juliet can actually pronounce the letter R correctly. Please, for the love of heaven.
175. Any actors should be forbidden from calling anyone "Dude". This also applies to minor characters.
176. I will not allow actors playing such roles as Juliet's Nurse, Queen Margaret (in Richard III), Mistress Quickly, or Justice Shallow to deliver their lines in a tone that can shatter glass. To that end, I may bring wineglasses to rehearsals.
177. I will not costume Henry V in Star Trek uniforms.
178. I will remember that updating Othello and making him a boxer would require me to cut around ten pages from the play entirely.
179. I will not add four scenes to Othello in order to make things clearer to the audience, when the show's already been clocked at three and a half hours.
180. Making Iago a woman is a bad idea. Making her seduce Roderigo is a worse idea.
181. I will not add 'Iago's dream scene' before the murder of Desdemona, with strobe lights, just so the female!Iago can kiss Desdemona and Emilia. This scene will also not have modestmouse blaring in the background.
182. Box cutters are not swords, and no actor is good enough to convince the audience that they are.
183. It is rarely necessary for a costume to involve spandex, red sequins, silver lamé, or chicken wire, and certainly never necessary to involve a combination of them all.
184. I will not cast people who sound like Kermit the Frog. I will particularly not cast them in dramatic or romantic roles as this makes it impossible for the audience to take the play at all seriously. (Jim Henson and company are of course exempt from this rule, but no one else is.)
185. I will not pronounce "Titania" to rhyme with Titanium.
186. I will not dress the fairies in glitter and a few carefully-placed leaves.
187. I may do A Midsummer Night's Dream in period costume. I may do it in modern costume. I will never do MND with everyone in period costume except for the fairies, who are in biker leathers.
188. I will not costume fairies in nothing but body paint.
189. I will not costume fairies in shorts and hiking boots.
190. I will not decide that the best way to portray "Exit, pursued by a bear" is to have the rest of the cast dressed in brown and do some sort of modern-dance amoeba thing to absorb the character.
191. I will never say "And under no condition will I trim this Shakespearean script, even if the production is four hours long!"
192. However, if I do decide to cut the script, I will not write my own soliloquies to insert at various points.
193. Under no circumstances should the sound designer decide that it is a good idea to have the fairies in MND dance to "Chim-chim-cherree" (from Mary Poppins) instead of "Philomel With Melody".
194. If you must have one of the characters sing, don't have the accompanying music so loud that you can't hear the words.
195. In the same vein, make sure the actor can actually carry a tune and stay in key.
196. I will not dress Oberon as Aladdin and top it off with ballet slippers and a crown of thorns. Particularly when Titania is wearing something resembling a toga with gold embroidered seashells.
197. No matter how cool it looks to have fairies in Midsummer carrying candles in the final scene, I will refrain. Wings, flowing gauze skirts, and flower garlands are highly flammable. At best, I will have fairies mincing with looks of terror. At worst, they will catch fire. I will also not have them leaping and dancing over scenery while carrying lit candles.
198. No matter how clever it seems, in no way will Death stalk both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. This is especially true if the costume consists of a black tracksuit with a glow-in-the-dark Halloween mask.
199. If I deem it necessary to change the time period of Romeo and Juliet, I will make sure that Friar Laurence is not replaced by an aging hippie.
200. If Shakespeare had intended for any character to say, "YEEEEEEEEHAW!", it would have appeared in the text.