Living Shakespeare the Actors Text

In college and high school classrooms around the country, students are forced to make a terrible mistake: they read Shakespeare.

Coming from a time when the spoken play of words had the hypnotic and powerful substance of our television and internet, the text of Shakespeare's plays on the page alone often presents an insurmountable obstacle to young people forced to read it. The problem is that the power of Shakespeare's text lies not in drab classroom readings but in performance. Shakespeare wrote texts for actors, not novels for critics.

By looking at Shakespeare through an actor's eyes it is possible to reach beyond a simple reading and into the inner life of characters that otherwise could seem distant and irrelevant, where in fact the power of Shakespeare is his ability to constantly access the deepest parts of our common humanity and magnify them.

The Meaning of Shakespeare

The first problem in acting Shakespeare is in knowing what the text means. This kind of work must be done before any acting can occur, since an understanding of what one is saying is imperative. TheShakespeare Lexicon will help you find any word or phrase that might seem confusing or unclear. You can find it at the library or it can be bought at most good bookstores.

Once you have determined what the character(s) is saying, the next step is to paraphrase the text out loud in modern language while attempting to preserve the structure of the text as closely as possible. For example:

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day / Thou art more lovely and more temperate"

Becomes,

Will I compare you to a summer's day / You are more beautiful and more moderate

In this way you can get a sense of the text in language more easily understood by our modern sensibility. Without these first few steps in the process, the rest of Shakespeare is meaningless. Words are only powerful if they serve as tools to the correct purpose.

The Rhythm of Shakespeare

The second and perhaps most disliked problem in Shakespeare involves the rhythm of the language. Shakespearean language is poetic and heightened for a reason. The language has the rhythm of natural conversation and thought but speaks through the structure of iambic pentameter. One must count through the iambs to get a better sense of the thoughts that are occurring in a given character's brain. As characters become excited the pentameter becomes irregular and incomplete, as they calm the pentameter becomes fluid and precise. A great deal can be found out about a character simply by the way they speak. For example:

Macbeth II:II

Mac: I have done the deed. Dids't thou not hear a noise?

Lady: I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry.

Did not you speak?

Mac: When?

Lady: Now.

Mac: As I descended?

Lady: Ay.

Mac: Hark!

Here the pentameter is nearly lost. The characters are clearly tense and disturbed, which makes sense since Macbeth has just slaughtered King Duncan. The characters are thinking and acting with such speed that they literally finish each other's lines. Count it out!

Here's another one from the same play:

I:IV

...Thou art so far before,

That swiftest wing of recompense is slow to overtake thee:

Would thou hadst less deserv'd,

That the proportion both of thanks and payment

Might have been mine! only I have left to say

More is thy due than more than all can pay

This speech shows clear and measured pentameter that ends neatly with a rhyming line. This is Duncan's speech thanking Macbeth for his service against the rebel Thane of Cawdor, a position that he is about to fill with a similar (but more successful) betrayal of the naïve king.

Looking at just these two examples one can see distinct differences in mood indicated by differences in the pentameter. This is important for the actor to notice, since it gives important clues about a characters' frame of mind.

Shakespearean Punctuation

The bottom line here is that Shakespeare wrote punctuation for a speaker, not a reader. Many modern editors have altered the punctuation of the Folio editions in order to make them easier to read. Use the Folio punctuation. Shakespeare means for periods to be full stops, for commas to be tiny breath points, and for colons and semi-colons to be speedy changes of thought with barely a pause at all.

The structure of Shakespeare's punctuation allows you to follow a character's thought process much like pentameter. In fact, they work side by side.

Take this bit from Julius Caesar:

Why man, he doth bestride the narrow world

Like a Colossus, and we petty men

Walk under his huge legs, and peep about

To find our selves dishonorable graves.

Men at sometime, are masters of their fates.

The pentameter flows easily and quickly through the text, for Cassius is a practiced speaker who knows what to say, and his rhetorical style makes quick work of a complicated simile that effectively draws Brutus in to listen to the rest of his monologue. The period at the end of that simile delineates the stopping point of his first rushing thought, only to proceed more calculatingly to his next (much shorter) phrasing.

The punctuation and pentameter together give us an image of Cassius as a powerful and self assured individual who knows how to talk like the very best of politicians.

Speaking Shakespeare

Shakespeare for all its heightened language is still conversational and should be treated as a conversation, be it with another character or an audience. The characters are real people who feel real things and have real problems, just like in any contemporary text. However, this does not mean that all of the elements discussed above mean nothing when speaking the text. Rather all of these elements should be integrated with the text in rehearsal, learned by the body, and then forgotten in performance. What is meant by this is that the body should be given a physical memory so that in performance you can be free to react with fellow players, not caught up in technique or mechanics.

The most important thing about Shakespeare is not do line-readings, accents, or exaggerated gestures. These are symptomatic of poor acting. DO NOT memorize the way that you will say text. Instead, let it flow freely from you in reaction to the actors around you. Many people become stiff when they read Shakespeare, as if the Bard was looking over their shoulder. The reality is that Shakespeare is powerful, fun, and bawdy. Use the text to get what your character wants, and allow your rehearsal to take care of the mechanics.

Following these steps toward performance and reading further about the way actors approach the text is the most useful and effective way to teach and understand Shakespeare. Theory and criticism can only come after a full appreciation of the text in performance. After all, the "play is the thing..." and to separate a play from itself makes for boring times. Happy reading!