some of my oddly specific shakespeare staging opinions:
modern stagings of hamlet should keep them as royalty unless the fact that they aren't is hugely relevant to that production.
benedick and beatrice should be in their early 30s at least and claudio and hero should be noticeably younger. beatrice being adamant against marriage and both her and benedick's reaction to each other makes more sense if they're older.
this one's controversial but i think paris should be in his late teens, not way older. i might make another post elaborating on this but paris' death frames him as another victim of the families' violence, with romeo mourning + identifying him as being in the same situation as himself. it's not that old man paris isn't a good interpretation; it's often the easiest way to show romeo and juliet's positions as children helpless under their parents, and makes very clear what demands are being made of juliet. but i feel that adding paris to the list of young people killed in the play as a byproduct of the adults' violence gives romeo's identification with him more weight. given that he clearly has much more control than romeo and juliet but is still identified as a victim of the violence, i think it makes the most sense if he's a bit older than r&j but still very much young.
modern stagings of julius caesar should keep all the knives as knives, but if there has to be a gun, make cassius shoot himself in the head while caesar and brutus still die by stabbing. i've posted about this but the short version is that's it's the best way to show cassius' death as cowardly in contrast to brutus and caesar, whose deaths still mirror each other.
give the fool in king lear an onstage reason for disappearing. i like the 2018 national theatre version that has edmund kill him, and the 2023 south korean production that had cordelia be the fool in disguise the whole time. there was one from 2014 where lear beat him to death in madness which i think would be very shocking, but to good effect. the subsequent lack of comedy in the play after his disappearance would feel more jarring if we actually see his death.
benvolio should appear again in the last scene of romeo and juliet, mourning the two along with everyone else.
