 | Entrance | Main | Wiki | List of forums | The Writings |
[RiverStar]: 149.Essays.Act
Rating: 0.00 Uploaded by: Created: 2006-03-09 23:30:02 Keywords: Dummies Guide to Acting Shakespeare
When Shakespeare was writing his plays, actors did not have the chance to spend a month memorizing lines and rehearsing. When the playwright finished his script, he handed it off to the acting company, who would often to be performing the piece within a few days. Not only did the actors have to perform almost immediately after receiving the script, but they did not get the whole script. They got what are called sides. Sides are “an incomplete script that shows the lines and cues of a single performer only” (American Heritage). Shakespeare, who was also an actor, knew about the predicament this put actors in. In response to this problem, he included many helpful hints within his writing that aided an actor in his task, like his punctuation choices, word choices and rhythm. It is a common myth that Shakespeare is hard to act, but if you learn to read it properly Shakespeare is no harder than any other playwright.
The first thing one must realize when trying to prepare a Shakespearean piece is that Shakespeare’s works were written with the intention to be heard, not read (Brine 61). Often you can switch words around in Shakespeare’s plays to make the phrase make more sense literally, but it would loose its oral power and cadence. In saying this, much about how to act Shakespeare only makes sense if you are using the First Folio. Modern editors have changed things to match modern grammar, and in doing so have eliminated all of Shakespeare’s aides to actors.
Upon starting to prepare your piece, the first thing you should do is look at the punctuation. Modern punctuation is simply used to indicate when to pause and breathe. Shakespeare’s punctuation does this and much, much more. Modern oral language is almost lacking in most punctuation entirely, while Shakespearean language is full of punctuation, all of it very essential to the understanding of the text. Some punctuation is standard, like the period. A period represents the end of a thought or idea and the transition to a new one. However, colons and commas, a lost art of modern language, are integral parts of Shakespeare's speech.
A comma has two main ways to be interpreted: as a question mark, or as a pause. Hamlet uses the method of questioning commas often. For example, in Act 1, Scene 2, Hamlet says "These, but the trappings, and the suits of woe" (I.2.86). In this quote, the comma after "These" should really be a comma (Flatter 138). What Hamlet is really saying is "[As to] these [garments]? [They are] but the trappings..." (Flatter 138). When an actor recognizes this use of comma, he should raise the inflection of his voice as one naturally does when saying a question mark. The second use of a comma is a pause, whether it be thoughtful, hesitant, or for dramatic purposes. This is the more common use for a comma. Later in Hamlet, Ophelia says "He hath my Lord of late, made many tenders/Of his Affection to me" (I.3.99). This comma pause is hesitant, Ophelia respects and fears her father and is unsure about how to say what she wants to, so she pauses as she tries to figure out how to say it (Flatter 140).
The other interesting use of punctuation is Shakespeare is his use of colons. A colon isn't used very often in modern language, but in Shakespeare a colon tells an actor that the next part of the text is logical or that he should do some sort of gesture at that point. When confronted with a colon in some text, an actor should first look to see if the next part of the text is logical: does it provide explanation of the previous point, much like the colon use in this sentence (Flatter 146)? If it does, then the lines should be said rather matter-of-a-fa
From punctuation an actor should next move on to the actual words themselves. Shakespeare's choice in words helps a lot in the understanding of a piece. For vague words, often the imagery of the accompanying words will help understand the meaning if not the exact word (Brine 62). Very few people know the exact meaning of the word "fardels" but when Hamlet uses the word in his famous "To be or not to be" soliloquy, it is accompanied by the words: bear, grunt, sweat, and weary. This creates an image of a beast of burden which is very accurate since the actual definition of a fardel is “a pack; a bundle; or a burden” (Brine 62; American Heritage). Actors can use this to get past the trap of arcane words that were common in Shakespeare’s time but have now fallen from common usage. Shakespeare’s language is also very repetitious. Shakespeare only uses repetition for a character's speech when the character's subject is of "capital importance" and this use of this repetition is “always building up to something” (Brine 141).
Shakespeare’s language is not that of everyday modern English, but it is not high, fancy verse all the time either. Shakespeare mixes between verse and prose often. This is also another strong clue to what is going on. “If the language is heightened,” then the emotion, passion and power of that speech should be heightened as well (Brine 141). Characters do not fall into verse at the drop of pin. They switch to verse when what they are saying is important and emotional; it’s more powerful than just normal language. A good way to think of the difference between Shakespeare’s verse and his prose is to think of it as a musical. In musicals, the characters burst into song when what they have to say could not be said with mere words, like professing love to someone. It is at these moments that the character bursts into song, or in Shakespeare’s case, verse.
Another of the tricks that William Shakespeare provided for his actors was the use of iambic pentameter. Iambic pentameter is “a common meter in poetry consisting of an unrhymed line with five feet or accents, each foot containing an unaccented syllable and an accented syllable” (Websters). This beat flows in a pattern of “de-Dum de-Dum de-Dum de-Dum de-Dum” and is the base of all Shakespearean verse -- this meter is not used in his prose (Daw 8). While this is Shakespeare’s base, a very large portion of lines have a slight variation. These variations are meant to draw our attention to something: to say that there is something not quite right here. When arriving at these lines, it is important to look at the character and how he is feeling at the moment. An example of that may be happening is the character is so overwhelmed with emotion that he can not control the meter and the lines run a few stresses over the normal 10 beats.
While this list of tricks is not final, looking at punctuation, language and meter will provide a great start for learning to act Shakespeare. If you take the time to learn the tricks to reading Shakespeare, any speech can be interpreted within minutes just like the great Shakespearean actors had to do.
Bibliography
Brine, Adrian, and Michael York. A Shakespearean Actor Prepares. New Hampshire: Smith and Kraus Inc, 2000.
Daw, Kurt. Acting Shakespeare & His Contemporaries
“Fardel.” The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. 2000.
Flatter, Richard. Shakespeare’s Producing Hand: A Study of his Marks of Expression to be found in the First Folio. New York: W. W. Norton & Company Inc, 1948.
“Iambic Pentameter.” Webster's New Millennium Dictionary of English, Preview Edition. 2005.
Linklater, Kristin. Freeing Shakespeare’s Voice: The Actor’s Guide to Talking the Text. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1992.
“Sides.” The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. 2000.