"Barton’s legacy is the most exhilarating tribute one can pay to Shakespeare."
Maximianno Cobra - Shakespeare Network - Founder and Artistic Director
The Royal Shakespeare Company founder John Barton holds a masterclass featuring:
- CAST -
JUDI DENCH
IAN MCKELLEN
PATRICK STEWART
BEN KINGSLEY
DAVID SUCHET
PEGGY ASHCROFT
and members of the RSC:
Tony Church, Sinead Cusak, Mike Gwilym, Susan Fleetwood, Sheila Hancock, Terry Hands, Lisa Harrow, Alan Howard, Barbara Leigh-Hunt, Jane Lapotaire, Michael Pennington, Richard Pasco, Norman Rodway and Donald Sinden.
Playing Shakespeare - The series features nine master classes on Shakespearean performance.
First group - Objective Things:
- Part One: The Two Traditions - Elizabethan and Modern Acting
- Part Two: Using the Verse - Heightened and Naturalistic Verse
- Part Three: Language & Character - Making the Words One's Own
- Part Four: Set Speeches & Soliloquies - Taking the Audience with You
Second group - Subjective Things:
- Part Five: Irony & Ambiguity - Text That Isn't It Seems
- Part Six: Passion & Coolness - A Question of Balance
- Part Seven: Rehearsing the Text - Orsino and Viola
- Part Eight: Exploring a Character - Playing Shylock
- Part Nine: Poetry & Hidden Poetry - Three Kinds of Failure
John Bernard Adie Barton, CBE (26 November 1928 – 18 January 2018), was a British theatre director and teacher whose close association with the Royal Shakespeare Company spanned more than half a century.
Co-founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company, John Barton was, with Trevor Nunn and Peter Hall, one of the legendary theatre directors whose work and acting collaborations in the mid twentieth century would effect the course of Shakespeare on stage in successive decades. His biography includes a range of landmark production through the sixties and seventies (including the 1969 Twelfth Night with Judi Dench as Viola, and the 1970 A Midsummer Night's Dream with Patrick Stewart as Oberon), and with his abilities in helping actors through workshops, his presence and influence are felt even further.
This recording is for educational purposes only and is covered under Fair Use doctrine - Copyright - All rights reserved to their respective owners.
Read the unabridged plays online: https://shakespearenetwork.net/works/plays
_______________________________
FUNDRAISING CAMPAIGN - DONATIONS - Shakespeare Network Website and YouTube Channel:
Donate with PayPal or GoFundMe today:
https://shakespearenetwork.net/company/support-us/donate-now
_______________________________
Screen Adaptation - Co-Production : MISANTHROPOS – Official Website - https://www.misanthropos.net
Adapted by Maximianno Cobra, from Shakespeare's "Timon of Athens", the film exposes the timeless challenge of social hypocrisy, disillusion and annihilation against the poetics of friendship, love, and beauty.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6946736/
Maximianno Cobra - Shakespeare Network - Founder and Artistic Director
The Royal Shakespeare Company founder John Barton holds a masterclass featuring:
- CAST -
JUDI DENCH
IAN MCKELLEN
PATRICK STEWART
BEN KINGSLEY
DAVID SUCHET
PEGGY ASHCROFT
and members of the RSC:
Tony Church, Sinead Cusak, Mike Gwilym, Susan Fleetwood, Sheila Hancock, Terry Hands, Lisa Harrow, Alan Howard, Barbara Leigh-Hunt, Jane Lapotaire, Michael Pennington, Richard Pasco, Norman Rodway and Donald Sinden.
Playing Shakespeare - The series features nine master classes on Shakespearean performance.
First group - Objective Things:
- Part One: The Two Traditions - Elizabethan and Modern Acting
- Part Two: Using the Verse - Heightened and Naturalistic Verse
- Part Three: Language & Character - Making the Words One's Own
- Part Four: Set Speeches & Soliloquies - Taking the Audience with You
Second group - Subjective Things:
- Part Five: Irony & Ambiguity - Text That Isn't It Seems
- Part Six: Passion & Coolness - A Question of Balance
- Part Seven: Rehearsing the Text - Orsino and Viola
- Part Eight: Exploring a Character - Playing Shylock
- Part Nine: Poetry & Hidden Poetry - Three Kinds of Failure
John Bernard Adie Barton, CBE (26 November 1928 – 18 January 2018), was a British theatre director and teacher whose close association with the Royal Shakespeare Company spanned more than half a century.
Co-founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company, John Barton was, with Trevor Nunn and Peter Hall, one of the legendary theatre directors whose work and acting collaborations in the mid twentieth century would effect the course of Shakespeare on stage in successive decades. His biography includes a range of landmark production through the sixties and seventies (including the 1969 Twelfth Night with Judi Dench as Viola, and the 1970 A Midsummer Night's Dream with Patrick Stewart as Oberon), and with his abilities in helping actors through workshops, his presence and influence are felt even further.
This recording is for educational purposes only and is covered under Fair Use doctrine - Copyright - All rights reserved to their respective owners.
Read the unabridged plays online: https://shakespearenetwork.net/works/plays
_______________________________
FUNDRAISING CAMPAIGN - DONATIONS - Shakespeare Network Website and YouTube Channel:
Donate with PayPal or GoFundMe today:
https://shakespearenetwork.net/company/support-us/donate-now
_______________________________
Screen Adaptation - Co-Production : MISANTHROPOS – Official Website - https://www.misanthropos.net
Adapted by Maximianno Cobra, from Shakespeare's "Timon of Athens", the film exposes the timeless challenge of social hypocrisy, disillusion and annihilation against the poetics of friendship, love, and beauty.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6946736/
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:30In our first programme, we suggested that the main problem in acting Shakespeare is
00:53how to marry an Elizabethan text and acting tradition with a modern acting tradition.
01:00Two of the main points we made were first that the heightened language has to be found by the
01:06actor and not just taken for granted, and secondly that a right balance has to be found between
01:12naturalistic and heightened elements in the text. But most of the plays are also in verse,
01:19or else very often in heightened rhetorical prose. Blank verse is probably the very centre of the
01:26Elizabethan tradition and perhaps the most important thing in Shakespeare that an actor
01:31has to come to terms with, or rather I should say that an actor needs to get help from.
01:37I stress that because many actors, particularly if they're not familiar with Shakespeare,
01:42very understandably look at the verse as some kind of threat. They know they will somehow come
01:48to grief if they ignore it or be chastised if they do it wrong. It becomes a mountain to be
01:54climbed or else an obstacle to be avoided. But no, it's there to help the actor. It's full of
02:02little hints from Shakespeare about how to act a given speech or scene. It's a stage direction
02:08in shorthand. So let's try to find out how his verse works. Don't let's ask what it is,
02:16for it's nothing static, but let's ask what goes on in it. Shakespeare was an actor and his verse is
02:23above all a device to help the actor. It doesn't necessarily always have something to do with
02:30poetry, though it often does. But at the beginning we can forget that. Now how do you all think that
02:36it helps you as actors? It helps the actor to learn the lines. It helps to give him his phrasing.
02:44Blank verse makes a pattern on the page which is easier for the mind to retain. It's also full of
02:50directorial hints. And because verse is a more economical way than prose of saying something,
02:58it's likely to be more concise and more particular and exact. And at the same time, because a verse
03:03has a rhythm to it, a flow, it's perhaps more attractive to the audience to listen to and helps
03:08the actor to keep the attention of the audience. And punctuation gives you your naturalistic
03:13breathing spaces, which also helps to release the meaning of the line and also gives you clues to
03:18the emotional state that your character is in. So it gives you a lot. Yeah, but you're all talking
03:23about verse, but what we mean is not verse in the usual sense of rhymes or couplets or other verse
03:30forms which Shakespeare only uses very rarely, but blank verse. Good, blank verse, quite right.
03:36Shakespeare's verse is sometimes called iambic pentameters, which is a horrible phrase and I
03:42don't like to use it. But what it means and what blank verse means is basically alternating light
03:49and strong stresses, like this rhythm, de-dum, de-dum, de-dum, de-dum, de-dum. Now it's often
03:57been pointed out that this verse form approximates more closely than any other verse form to our
04:03natural everyday speech. In fact, it's actually quite easy to pick up blank verse in everyday
04:10conversations or in a book, a paper, or a telly. You've just said one. Or in a book, a paper, or
04:17a telly. Well, that's not a very immortal line. But as we've said it, I suppose I should point out
04:23that it's a line with an extra light stress at the end, which we call a feminine ending. So that's
04:30part of our equipment. Let's now look at two examples of unconscious blank verse in context
04:39of speech and literature. First of all, here is Mrs. Siddons, the 18th century actress, commenting
04:46on the drink she has ordered. I asked for porter and you gave me beer. And now, from Dickens,
04:55the very end of David Copperfield. Oh Agnes, oh my soul, so may thy face be by me
05:07when I close my life indeed. I suppose the best way to show why blank verse is such a good verse
05:15form for dramatic speech is to just to look at one or two of the verse forms used in English
05:20drama before Shakespeare. Mike, give us a bit of a miracle cycle. All hail, all hail, both blithe
05:29and glad, for here come I, a merry lad. Pray cease your din, my master bad, or else to devil will you
05:38speed. Doggerall, not speech. Those lines have eight syllables with four strong stresses, which
05:46is a bit short to accommodate our normal speech rhythms. So now let's hear another rhythm.
05:54Oh doleful day, unhappy hour, that loving child should see his father dear before his face,
06:02thus put to death should be. A rollicking jingle. Again, not speech. There are 14 syllables there
06:09and seven strong stresses. The lines are obviously much too long for our normal speech rhythms.
06:15Thank you, John. Yet father, give me blessing thine, and let me once embrace
06:20thy comely corpse in folded arms and kiss thy ancient face. Thank you. Blank verse with its
06:2910 syllables is much closer to the way that we actually talk. In fact, Shakespeare often uses it
06:36as a vehicle for naturalistic speech, as in Antonio's, Insooth, I know not why I am so sad.
06:43As I've said, blank verse doesn't necessarily lead to anything to do with poetry, though it
06:49often does. Its natural bias is, I believe, towards the naturalistic. I said that a blank
06:55verse line normally goes de dum, de dum, de dum, de dum, de dum, but actually with Shakespeare that
07:02often isn't true. It sometimes does, but perhaps more often it doesn't. Mike, give us a line that
07:08doesn't. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more. Now try to scan it as an iambic
07:16pentameter. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more. Which is totally unnatural.
07:22Obviously it's not written that way, so how do the stresses come naturally? Once more
07:28unto the breach, dear friends, once more. Seven strong stresses. What is Shakespeare doing there?
07:37Well, we can ask ourselves what Henry V is doing. What's his intention? To persuade his soldiers to
07:44go back into the breach. A tired, out of breath leader, desperately trying to reach out to and
07:50rally his men. And the strongly overstressed lines reinforce this. It's what I'd call a piece of
07:57direction by Shakespeare. Do it again. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more. Or close
08:08the wall up with our English dead. Good. Now the point I want to make is that blank verse as such
08:15is neutral. Shakespeare gets his dramatic effects by setting up a norm and then significantly
08:22breaking it. Where he breaks that norm, an added stress is provided. Let's take the speech now a
08:29few lines further. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more. Or close the wall up with our
08:40English dead. Walls up stressed. In peace there's nothing so becomes a man. A regular line. As modest
08:54stillness and humility. Also pretty regular. But when the blast of war blows in our ears. Blows,
09:05especially stressed there. Then imitate the action of the tiger. Pretty regular with a feminine ending.
09:15Stiffen the sinews. Summon up the blood. Stiffen and summon strongly stressed on the offbeat
09:23position. Part of Henry's pleading. Disguise fair nature with hard favoured rage. And there there's
09:33an antithesis between fair and hard favoured by putting put in the offbeat position. John, don't
09:39you think you better explain what you mean by antithesis? Quite right. It's a key word and we're
09:44going to come up against it a great deal. By antithesis I mean the setting of one word against
09:51another. Disguise fair nature with hard favoured rage. The setting up is of one word against its
09:59opposite meaning. For instance to be or not to be. You see now how it works. The iambic pentameter
10:10is the norm which Shakespeare keeps more or less going back to. But an extra stress is provided by
10:17putting the stressed word in an offbeat rather than the normal position. So we get the rhythm
10:23rather than counterpoint. It's like in contrapuntal music. So we can say Shakespeare
10:30uses blank verse by first setting up a norm and then significantly breaking it. There's a very
10:38heavily stressed line in Winter's Tale of Paulina where Leontes is questioning the goodness of
10:43Hermione and he says mockingly good queen and she says good queen my lord good queen I say good
10:51queen. Yes that's a very special line because I would argue that that has ten strong stresses
10:58out of ten. Good queen my lord good queen I say good queen. And you see that the three goods
11:07are given extra stress by being put in what I've just called the contrapuntal position.
11:13Good queen dumb dumb. Yes but of course there are some occasions where you get
11:20fewer stresses and the words become stronger because there are fewer strong words to notice
11:26in a line. There is a tide in the affairs of men.
11:33See this is a regular line except that there are only four strong stresses. There is a tide in the
11:40affairs of men. Four not five. Let's take another example. To be or not to be that is the question.
11:49Whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
11:56or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them. There in the second and the
12:04third and the fourth lines there are only four stresses not five and at the end of the first
12:11four lines there's also an 11th syllable a feminine ending. Sometimes Shakespeare uses this extra
12:19syllable as a light stress and not as a strong one and therefore it's a miscantion to give a
12:24feminine ending a strong stress. Let's have an example of that. How might a prince of my great
12:31hopes forget so great indignities you laid upon me. It just sounds wrong to stress the feminine
12:39ending here. Try. As in so great indignities you laid upon me. Good. Now there are a number of
12:46other Shakespearean usages which are even more telling. One is a short verse line. If a line is
12:54only say six or seven syllables we can be pretty sure that the missing syllables are taken up by a
13:01pause of some sort. But I mustn't lecture about it. Let's open up things a bit now and start
13:06acting some of the passages rather than talking about them. So spread yourselves out a bit and
13:12David and Lisa let's do a few lines from the trial scene in The Merchant of Venice. Okay. The trial.
13:21Oh wise and upright judge how much more elder art thou than my looks. Therefore lay bare your bosom.
13:27Aye his breast so saith the ponder that not noble judge nearest his heart. Those are the very words.
13:32It is so. Are they balanced here to weigh the flesh? I have them ready. Have by some surgeon
13:39Shylock on your charge to stop his wounds lest he do bleed to death. You see how Portia and Shylock
13:45have two short verse lines. It is so and I have them ready. Three and five syllables respectively.
13:54Now a short line in Shakespeare usually suggests a pause. So what do both of you think the specific
14:01function of these two short lines is? Well in this in this particular case um there's there's a choice
14:08uh you can either hear pause before uh the utterance or after it. And the choice you have
14:16to take is one of which which stems out which is arising out of the actual emotional state
14:21who you are in the scene. For instance um there are there are two ways of playing Portia in the
14:25scene conventionally. One is that she doesn't know what she's doing and is is winging it.
14:30Or you can say it's a moral choice that she's desperately trying to get through to him. That's
14:33right. So it is it is decision and actor's choice in this case because Shylock because of his state
14:39his emotional state and his confidence uh is in no doubt about what he's doing at all. So he can
14:45come right in on cue. Are they balanced here to where I have them ready? Yes. Now it's up to you
14:49again. That's right. There's another interesting thing too because they actually share a line
14:54therefore lay bare your bosom I his breast he says which which is also something a shared verse line
14:59between two characters is a terrifically important point isn't it? Because what it says is pick up the
15:06cue. Don't pause. Then there's very little choice. Yeah. There is no choice. I think when Shakespeare
15:12breaks up a verse line between two speakers it almost invariably means pick the cue up otherwise
15:18he wouldn't do it. And also the pause after I have them ready the next pause that Portia's
15:22been given is interesting because she ends up letting you bleed to death. It's really the
15:26strongest clue she's giving to Shylock that actually he's heading for desperate. That's
15:31right. Clue is a good word because we can never be a hundred percent certain can we? There are
15:37clues in the text that we have to be detectives with. We can't always be a hundred percent certain
15:42but that doesn't matter. The important thing is that we ask the question and we play the detective
15:47and usually we can find the answer in the text. John when you say pick up the cue at once what I
15:54understand it to mean is think faster because I know a lot of people myself included when you
16:00first come to Shakespeare because of method acting or whatever we tend to put in a lot of pauses
16:06into Shakespeare when we think the thought and then we speak it. And I think pick up the cue
16:11at once just means speak as you think. Think faster not speak faster but think faster. Think
16:17faster that's absolutely right. I think that what you've just said is actually the most important
16:22thing that we've said so far in this program. I think it's marvellous and absolutely vital.
16:29And it's pretty certain isn't it that Shakespeare's actors played the text a good deal quicker and
16:35tighter than we do. Our naturalistic bias makes us use a larger number of pauses both at the end
16:42of the line and within it. Now let's look go on looking at the device of the shared verse line
16:48and take the famous example which is from King John when the king suggests murder to an accomplice.
16:56Death my lord a grave he shall not live enough good that's the example. Now what do you think
17:04the verse is doing there? Well what we've got are two verse lines though the first one has only got
17:09one word in it death and the second verse line is complete my lord a grave he shall not live enough.
17:14Right so what do we think about taking it as you did which I liked and the other possibility which
17:21would be doing it with pregnant pauses? Well I remember when we did do it with pregnant pauses
17:25actually. Oh not together not because I knew you wouldn't do that but uh uh we I remember
17:31Emrys was in rehearsal and Emrys was playing the king and I was I was playing Huber and uh it it
17:36started with uh um he said death and then moved moved right away and I was just and then
17:44death and then moved moved right away and I was just and then
17:48thought about it very carefully my lord and then he came round the other side
17:59it's very good that's what happened in rehearsal sometimes a grave and left and I've still
18:08he shall not live
18:09enough
18:16terribly good isn't it and I remember your comments afterwards which made us do it quickly in the end
18:20there is another choice isn't it because we've got two verse lines that you could reasonably take a
18:24pause after death at the end of the first verse oh yes uh instead of running the whole thing
18:28together can we try that see what happens if you take a pause there yes try that right
18:36death
18:39my lord a grave he shall not live enough yeah I think that's an earned pause yeah you see you
18:46spoil it if you have lots and lots of pauses but if there's one in the right place at the
18:50end of the verse line it's very very telling yes and the briefness of it is terrific because
18:54they're talking about something which cannot be described which is the murder of a young child
18:57that's why it's so terse you earn that tension after it rather than between each
19:02lengthy indulgent it's what Jane Jane said thinking on the line instead of between the lines
19:08that's right good thank you
19:14now let's look at something else the verse does what about the ends of the lines now the norm
19:22here is for the grammatical pause or the end of a clause or a sentence ie the natural place for
19:29the actor to take a little break comes at the end of the verse line when that happens the verse is
19:35described as end stopped so let's go back now to the opening speech of the merchant of venice
19:42in sooth i know not why i am so sad it wearies me you say it where is you but how i caught it
19:50found it or came by it what stuffed is made of whereof it is born i am to learn
19:58four end stop lines and then a short half line i am to learn what is that half line suggest you
20:07i think when the rhythm of the blank verse enters an actor's soul as it were uh and that rhythm is
20:15interrupted because there are no words to complete the line in i am to learn did dumb did dumb did
20:24dumb it just indicates that the mind is going on ticking although words are not coming out
20:29to explain what the thoughts are that's right then of course you come in with the next line
20:33with a bit more of a push because of that yes i think that's what the short lines do
20:38nine times out of ten this is also a good example of end stopped verse the thoughts and the lines
20:46go together and that's very helpful to an actor when he's learning at speed and mapping it all
20:51out in his mind isn't it yes and if the speech uh is a long one and the punctuation indicates that
20:57the uh the thoughts are flowing uh and it is all in fact one sentence uh the end stoppedness of
21:05the verse may indicate to points where an actor can breathe if not actually stop speaking when
21:10you have to stop speaking when you breathe but just fractionally stop speaking yes sometimes
21:15there are sentences which take up 14 or 15 lines of verse and they'd actually be impossible to say
21:22if they weren't phrased for us by the verse let's listen now to a sonnet which is all one sentence
21:34when in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes i all alone beweep my outcast state
21:42and trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries and look upon myself and curse my fate
21:48wishing me like to one more rich in hope featured like him like him with friends possessed
21:55desiring this man's art and that man's scope with what i most enjoy contented least
22:02yet in these thoughts myself almost despising happily i think on thee
22:10and then my state like to the lark at break of day arising from sullen earth sings hymns at
22:18heaven's gate for thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings but then i scorn to change my state
22:29with kings now it would be virtually impossible to say that if it wasn't phrased by the verse
22:36the speaker wouldn't know how to phrase so long a sentence but what you did there sheila and what
22:41the verse did was to carry us with you made us listen go with the story and actually it didn't
22:48seem too long even though it was a very very long sentence indeed it didn't seem like it felt it to
22:53me no there is one line there isn't there where you uh where i i don't quite know what you should
22:59do is um lark arise um from sullen earth where it is actually a rising end of line from sullen earth
23:08sings hymns at heaven's gates so what do you do there should you run on should you not well i
23:13would just say what i've just been saying ask yourself the question and decide which is better
23:18if it's better for you to run on run on if the phrase with it actually helps you then you must
23:24do that let's look at an extreme example in a late shakespeare play the winter's tale
23:31now in his later plays shakespeare's verse is much less end stopped and the lines continually
23:37overrun here's leontes who is mad with jealousy of his wife and friend
23:44gone already inch thick knee deep or head and ears a forked one go play boy play thy mother plays
23:54and i play too but so disgraced a part whose issue will hiss me to my grave now john uh there's
24:02one line there which is run on my mother plays and i play too what about that it's natural to run it
24:08on well is it that's the question you have to ask that question and decide yeah now it's possible
24:13to stress the end of the verse line and for it to sound natural like spontaneous speech if you
24:19stress it here it begins to sound slightly unnatural for instance thy mother plays and i
24:25play too and yet um to stress it in that way might be telling us something about beyond these well
24:33telling us something about beyond these well of course you could stress it that way if you went
24:38for the play and said and i play too if you picked out that theater metaphor go play boy play yeah
24:45thy mother plays and i play too that's possible isn't it it is possibilities there aren't laws
24:51that all i'm saying is one has to judge it and ask the question each time and then decide
24:57it this passage also contains another very common shakespeare usage which is a pause in the
25:04half line a grammatical pause in the middle of a verse line go play boy play yes full colon
25:10thy mother plays and i go play boy play colon now what do we do about that do we pause there
25:18or do we run on there yeah well i think that the answer is common sense and it's to do again with
25:24character that if the general tenor of the speech is to do with rapid teeming thought then the actor
25:30should run it on after all we often do when we speak that's right so all the time it's this
25:36if you ask the question you can find an acting reason for the answer yes invariably well now
25:41let's see what happens if we take the whole speech and have to decide what we do with both the
25:49and the ends of the lines whether to run on or not and see what happens if on the whole you
25:54phrase it so that you run on at the half line at the caesura but take your phrasing on the whole
26:00at the ends of the lines and see if it's it sounds natural to you or whether it's a forced exercise
26:06yeah when do i breathe when you breathe that's the point you breathe at the end of the verse line
26:11very often i believe shakespeare put in things in blank verse to help actors phrase out of doors
26:17where they needed their breath needed control more than in an indoor theater people said that's
26:21one reason why verse was used all right and if i'm going to do that i'm going to need great breaths
26:25because i'm going to run on a lot of lines on one breath that's right have a go all right
26:33gone already inch thick knee deep or head and ears a forked one
26:40go play boy play my mother plays and i play too but so disgraced a part whose issue will hiss me
26:46to my grave contempt and clamor will be mine now go play boy play there have been or i'm much
26:53deceived cuckolds air now and many a man there is even at this present now while i speak this
26:59holds his wife by the arm little thinks she has been sluiced in his absence and his pond fished
27:03by his next neighbor by sir smile his neighbor nay there's comfortant whilst other men have gates and
27:09those gates opened as mine against their will should all despair that have revolted wives the
27:14tenth of mankind would hang itself physic for it there's none it is a bawdy planet that will strike
27:19where it is predominant it is powerful think it from east west north south be it concluded
27:25no barricado for a belly i thought that was a wonderful use of verse because you both had a
27:33control and a driving rhythm and the verse carried us and yet you weren't tied to it totally you
27:39you kept a balance between the two as if one observes it slavishly that's a bad thing if you
27:45ignore it totally that's a bad thing how did it feel i thought it was pretty good uh it uh it it
27:52gave me the sensation of somebody who was beginning to spiral out of control and in fact it's it is
27:59characteristic of the play that as leontes verse fragments and disintegrates and becomes less and
28:06less irregular so the man himself is breaking up fragmenting and becoming uh less and less rational
28:13i think that's very good but i wonder how much i wonder how much an audience might have followed
28:18that because it seemed to me to be very fast and there's it's a complex speech how much can they
28:23possibly take out of it i wonder i think that in all honesty an audience wouldn't have totally
28:28followed what you did but i thought it was a very healthy stage of work grappling with a really
28:34difficult bit of verse and i thought that the basic balance between going with the verse and
28:39having a freedom from it which you have to have in a late play was pretty good good well done
28:48now i believe i listed all the main points that an actor needs to know about shakespeare's verse
28:55it's been a crash course so i'll come back to them all later on in other examples but there are some
29:01other minor points as well which we may as well clear up judge can we start with elision yes
29:07elision very often a line seems to have more than 10 syllables but where two vowels come together
29:15in a sentence or in a word one vowel is scarcely pronounced and so then in the scansion of the line
29:23the number of syllables comes down again to 10 as the total number of syllables in the line
29:30here are some lines of emergence from cymbeline a late play she's waking out of a drugged sleep
29:37and she finds a headless body lying beside her there is your headless body thank you john
29:44yes sir to milford haven
30:01which is the way
30:05i thank you by by yon bush pray how far through that
30:11i've gone all night faith i'll lie down and sleep oh but soft no bed fellow
30:33oh gods and goddesses
30:34these flowers are like the pleasures of the world this bloody man the care aunt
30:47oh i hope i dream for so i thought i was cave keeper and cook to honest creatures
30:57but it is not so good well you did that beautifully you see there's a very difficult
31:07bit of late verse but if you go with it as you did it's actually an opportunity for a piece
31:12of naturalistic acting about somebody waking up in an extraordinary situation but let's just look
31:18now at the illusions that are in that text because there's a number of them first of all yes sir
31:24milford haven which is the way haven as we say it becomes one word in the scansion of the line
31:30it's not haven it's haven that's the first one then the second one again in the way we actually
31:36speak i have gone all night turns out to be i've gone all night yeah and then the next one i'll lie
31:45down and sleep instead of i will lie down and sleep you see elision sounds a pompous word but
31:50actually it's to do with naturalistic speech not something grammatical and abstract then the next
31:57one is but soft no bedfellow oh gods and goddesses goddesses two light stresses after god this is
32:05the two go together goddesses isn't it well you did actually say quite close to that when you did
32:10the speech then the next one is this bloody man the care aunt instead of on it this bloody man
32:16the care aunt and the last one very simple one but it's not so for but it is not so now the
32:24interesting thing is that virtually all those you would yourself naturally elide and make an illusion
32:32yourself if you were saying them in a naturalistic play good some words keep cropping up in shakespeare
32:41which were pronounced differently in his day yes and i think this often gives shakespeare
32:48actors a bad name with the public who don't quite understand why we do use what are now
32:52archaic pronunciations for instance there's a line in richard ii where he's uh divesting
32:57himself of his majesty and he says my manners rents revenues i forego um we're familiar enough
33:06with the word revenue inland revenue and english tax terms but you can't say my manners rents
33:12revenues i forego because although it has its own sort of rhythm it's contrary to the rather
33:17stately rhythm of the regular blank verse so if you hear a shakespearean actor mispronouncing a
33:23word he's actually mispronouncing it because it's what shakespeare wants rather than what he wants
33:29well it's argued that the old stress is hard for the audience to follow but is it i personally
33:36believe we should use the old pronunciation partly because the rhythm of the line sounds
33:41better but partly because in context the old pronunciation is often actually easier to say
33:48a good example is in anthony and cleopatra when anthony is dead and cleopatra says she'll kill
33:56herself show us rather a ditch in egypt be gentle grave unto me rather on nihilist mud
34:06lay me stark naked and let the water flies blow me into a pouring rather make my country's high
34:14pyramides my gibbet and hang me up in chains we may be used to saying pyramids but pyramides is
34:23clear enough and the alternative would be a tongue twister try doing it as pyramids to see
34:28what happens rather make my country's high pyramids my gibbet and hang me up in chains
34:36actually not so easy is it it's difficult it's difficult to think of the word in the wrong way
34:43i suppose because the blank verse sets up such a rhythm that to go against it you really have to
34:48consciously think of going against it that's right once one surrenders to it it's actually
34:54easier all the time to go with it and harder to actually break the law against it i mean let's
34:59let's take another example and go to another play and do crescita in trellis and crescita
35:06where she's desperate because she's being taken from trellis whom she loves from be moderate
35:12be moderate why tell me of moderation the grief is fine full perfect that i taste
35:22and violent is in a sense as strong as that which causes it yes the crux is violent death
35:29which you found very difficult to say i really have to stop in my line of thought when i get
35:34to that word to do it that way let's just just listen to it again the verse line is
35:40and violent death in a sense of strong it sounds wrong doesn't it but if we scan it
35:46as shakespeare scanned it it falls into place so now do it the right way it sounds hurried you see
35:52when you do it the wrong way and it's like they're snatching at the word and you can't hear what it
35:56is violent death in a sense of strong sounds like a tongue twister but see what happens if you say
36:01lentith which is shakespeare's way why tell me of moderation the grief is fine full
36:11perfect that i taste and violent death in a sense as strong as that which causes it
36:18yes well it is easier isn't it that's a very very good example seems to flow much better yes
36:24very good one sometimes there are single bits of pronunciation where which don't actually affect
36:30the verse like that does but which actually sound better aren't they in trollis well i remember you
36:35saying that um about troilus and crested that there's a character that in modern parlance we
36:41call hector but the elizabethans would have said hector which is a much richer much more powerful
36:48sound than hector yes they also pronounce what we call troilus as troilus which sounds more romantic
36:56which probably befits his character and in that case trollis shakespeare sometimes scans the word
37:03as two syllables and sometimes as three and it depends on how he uses the word in the verse
37:09line at a given moment so ian come in and do a bit of trollis with your crested death
37:17and is it true that i must go from troy a hateful truth what and from trollis too
37:25from troy and trollis is it possible it is possible we've never acted together
37:36you see it scans differently in the two verse lines a hateful truth water from trollis too
37:42where it counts two syllables and then in the next verse line from troy and trollis is possible
37:50it's another verse line and shakespeare often does that with his names he scans them
37:56to convenience in his first line so maybe there there was a bit of correcting of one another on
38:02the pronunciation maybe that's why we laughed maybe she would laugh do you do you think it's
38:07like in elizabethan times people didn't pronounce their names constantly and had different
38:12pronunciations no it's really as in the laws of english poetry most poets take this license don't
38:18they and sometimes scan a word one way and sometimes another very good thanks
38:28here's an example of how the scansion of the verse makes a big difference to the pronunciation
38:34from the opening soliloquy of richard iii
38:36now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by the sun of york
38:49and all the clouds that lowered upon our house in the deep bosom of the ocean
38:55buried i look at the last line and how it scans in the deep bosom of the ocean buried
39:02there are 11 syllables here not 10 buried therefore happens to be a feminine ending
39:09and ocean in the ocean buried scans simply enough as ocean but now let's look at a bit
39:16from another king king henry the fifth in his once more into the breach speech
39:22then lend the eye a terrible aspect let it pry through the portage of the head like the brass
39:27cannon let the brow or whelm it as fearfully as tougher gall it rock or hang and jutty his
39:34confounded base swilled with the wild and wasteful ocean now something funny happens there swilled
39:42with the wild and wasteful ocean rousing stuff but it seems to peter off at the end so if we dig into
39:48that last line how does swilled with the wild and wasteful ocean scan what happens to the word ocean
39:55ocean maybe ocean that's right so it looks like a nine syllable line which is unusual
40:03and if we're to have 10 syllables we have to make ocean three syllables and surely we're glad to do
40:09it in the context because it sounds much better the whole line is obviously onomatopoeic and we
40:14get the sound of the words giving us the sound of the surge of the sea swilled with the wild and
40:20wasteful ocean that's right john what about that vexed question of whether we pronounce ed or not
40:27well you have to do a little mathematical sum with the verse line don't you you have to see
40:32how it scans as 10 syllables and then you have the answer if we take two lines from a speech
40:38we've just looked at let's have disguise fair nature with hard favored rage a favored is two
40:47syllables now listen to another as fearfully as doth the galled rock you have to say galled
40:55if the line is going to scan properly it's not just a matter of purism again as with what we
41:00did with cresida and jane if you misscan it it's going to sound odd as fearfully as doth the gold
41:07rock sounds like a bit of a hiccup again doesn't it as we've had lots of little examples let's
41:13watch and listen to some swift flowing passage let's take a piece of ding dong dialogue where
41:19two actors will get lost if they don't go with the rhythm of the text richard iii is wooing the lady
41:26anne over the dead body of king henry vi did thou not kill this king i grant he yay just grant me
41:41hedgehog then god grant me too thou mayst be damned for that wicked deed
41:51oh he was gentle mild and virtuous the better for the king of heaven that hath him he is in heaven
41:58well thou shall never come i let him thank me that hope to send him nither but he's fitter for that
42:02place than earth and thou unfit for any place but hell yes one place else if you will hear me name
42:06it some dungeon your bedchamber it will rest betide the chamber while thou liest so will it
42:11madam till i lie with you i hope so no sir the gentle lady anne is not the causer of these
42:18timeless deaths as blameful as the executioner thou was the cause and most accursed effect
42:24thy beauty was the cause of that effect if i thought that i tell thee homicide
42:33his nails would rend that beauty from my cheeks his eyes could not endure that beauty's wrack as
42:39all the world is cheered by the sun so i by that it is my day my life black night or shade thy day
42:45and death my life cast not thyself that creature thou art both i would i were to be revenged on
42:49thee it is a quarrel most unnatural to be revenged on him that loveth thee it is a quarrel just and
42:53reasonable to be revenged on him that killed my husband neither bereft the lady of my husband did
42:57it to help me to a better husband it's better to not breathe upon the earth he lives to love
43:00thee better than he could name him plantagenet why that was he the same neighbor on a bed of
43:05nature where is he here why dost thou spit on me would it were mortal poison for thy sake
43:20never came poison from so sweet a place never hung poison on a fowler toad
43:30out of my sight thou dost infect mine eyes thine eyes sweet lady have infected mine
43:41good very good john all these things we've been talking about could be a bit daunting
43:47how conscious should one be of the verse in performance well i think the rule should be
43:52be very conscious of the verse in rehearsal and don't think about it in performance i suppose
43:59it should work there on the subconscious and you've got it into the system and help you that
44:03way but not consciously there is i think one other rule if you decide in rehearsal that you want to
44:09go against the verse of course you must be free to do so but if you ignore it i think an actor
44:16should do it knowingly you don't just overlook it try to ask first if following the verse
44:22actually isn't better because you must never never forget that shakespeare's put it there
44:28to help you that's what i think the center of what the verse is about anyway what do you think
44:34well that sounds a bit as though it's eliminating spontaneity and performance in a way i mean you're
44:40saying that one has to get the pattern of the verse in your head but all of acting is a balance
44:46between the worked out and the spontaneous isn't it it's part of that i think what's pretty excuse
44:51me revolutionary about what you're saying is that most people when they go and see shakespeare
44:58expect somehow to be able in the audience to hear that the actors are speaking verse
45:03and related to what they know of poetry from poems they've learned at school and of course
45:07you can sit through a whole shakespeare play without being aware that it's written in verse
45:11at all the verse you keep stressing and i absolutely agree the verse is there to help
45:16the actors and not for the audience to wallow in something vaguely poetic that's right there's the
45:23awful old idea that we come to the theater to hear a verse we don't and we don't want the audience as
45:30they're sitting through a play to be aware of all this work that we've done we must have absorbed it
45:35so that what we're saying is easier to listen to and more understandable and more beautiful and
45:40more precise that's right absolutely how often have we seen when something goes wrong
45:47when an actor forgets his lines whether it's one word or a whole speech that the ad-lib when it
45:52comes out will come out in the verse form because it has become so ingrained that although he may
45:57select different words the um the rhythm will remain constant and equally if you if you dry if
46:05you forget your words and you substitute with a one syllable word where it should be a two
46:09simple word it's like an electric shock actually i mean it's awful yeah with the verses there is
46:15that very difficult stage in in rehearsal where as you say you you start off by being aware of the
46:21verse and it's up to that moment that you break through that awareness so that it doesn't impede
46:28your actual character and your relationships with other people it can stay there sometimes
46:33too long and you've got to get rid of it to to release uh other areas of the play you know
46:39relationships and the rest of it and you've got to go through that that's right i feel very
46:43self-conscious expositing verse like the way i've been doing it because i know that's not really
46:48what it's about that's all stuff that's got to get into your subconscious and then you've got to
46:53throw it away and i think that would lead me to making one final point because i'm not for a
46:59moment of course suggesting that shakespeare worked it all out consciously himself in the way
47:03that we've been analyzing it today on the whole i'm sure that he wrote intuitively which is why
47:09sometimes his own lines misscan and it's up to us to analyze it but in the end we must trust it
47:16intuitively like he did i think that's the basic rule of the whole thing it wasn't planned it was
47:23organic i mean we have two contemporary references on his fluency as a writer which perhaps worth
47:31ending with ones by hemming and cundle the two actors in his company and editors of the first
47:38folio his mind and hand went together and what he thought he uttered with that easiness that
47:46we have scarce received from him a blot on his papers and ben johnson his friend and rival
47:53playwright wrote he flowed with that facility that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped
48:03a good moral so with the analysis of his verse sometimes it is necessary that it should be stopped
48:34so
49:01you
49:03you