Shakespeare William - Speaking Shakespeare

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To W.S. and A.F.

Haply I think on thee and then my state,

Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth, sings hymns at heavens gate:

For thy sweet love rememberd such wealth brings

That then I scorn to change my state with Kings.

Conversations and insights with Ralph Fiennes, Antony Sher, Greg Doran, Ruth Padel, Kristin Linklater, Tina Packer, Michael Howard, John Roberts, Judi Dench, Cicely Berry, Daniel Grans, Di Trevis, Fiona Shaw, Harriet Walter, Simon Russell Beale, Alakanada Samarth, Nick Hytner, Cecil ONeal, Brigid Larmaur, Deborah Warner, Sam Mendes, Trevor Nunn, Olympia Dukakis, Wallace Shawn, Sue Lefton, Jane Gibson, Genista McIntosh, Jonathan Kent, Terry Hands, Ronald Eyre, Jude Law and Declan Donellan.

Complete support from Lesley Murdin, Antonia Francheschi, Mary Carter, Paula Chitty, Wendy Allnut, Angie Fairclough, Robert and May Freeburn, Rick Scott and Elizabeth Ingrams.

And finally this book wouldnt exist if not for all my students past and present at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and my brilliant editor Max Eilenberg.

Speaking Shakespeare is based on the following principles:

To understand any play text fully you have to speak it.

To release its full power you have to commit through the body, breath and word.

You have to trust the words and know what those words mean.

To access the power of a play you have to know how its constructed.

You cant act Shakespeare until you can speak him.

The book was born several years ago, one Monday afternoon in a rehearsal room at the Royal National Theatre.

Forty-five actors had gathered to work with a brilliant Shakespearean director, whose insights into the playwrights intricate forms and language were inspiring and illuminating. As the afternoon progressed, however, it became clear that many of the younger actors were growing restless. They seemed inattentive, and even bored. This struck me as not just curious but strangely graceless, and so I questioned their apparent indifference later that week. It transpired that they were bored because they had no idea what the director was talking about. He was referring to things beyond their ken. They had no idea of what an iambic or an antithesis was, or the difference between a thought and a line; and they didnt seem to have realised that such knowledge might be necessary.

Few of those actors had ever played Shakespeare as part of their training; and if they had, it seemed to have involved little or no discussion of the mechanics of Shakespeares writing.

As a result, I realised, they couldnt follow the director because they had never been given the basic tools even to start work on Shakespeare. In place of that basic training, they needed a manual.

Speaking Shakespeare is an attempt to address that need. A practical training guide on how to begin to speak and understand Shakespeare, it lays out the work that an actor should ideally have done and come to know before even entering a rehearsal space and facing a director.

Take pains; be perfect.

( A Midsummer Nights Dream, I. ii)

At the Guildhall School of Music and Drama I dont teach my students Shakespeare until their second year. The reason is pragmatic: until the body, breath, support, voice and speech muscles are thoroughly worked and tuned it is extremely hard to realise and release such physical and sensual texts.

First year work on language sensitises the students to structure, rhythm, imagery and poetry. Language must be important to them a powerful tool. This means they have to explore how they use language and how language affects them. Many of them have to rediscover the potential of language to make concrete and transform inner and outer worlds. Within a year of language-based exercises they begin to understand how powerful and poetic their own language can be. They realise what an armoury they have at their disposal.

In the first year they learn to memorise accurately and effortlessly so that the momentum and precision of great texts is honoured. There is no substitute for learning texts fully and completely. My students learn passages from complex texts every week. They learn mediaeval, Elizabethan, Metaphysical, eighteenth-century and Romantic texts: they touch base with Chaucer, Spencer, Donne, Milton and Pope. The important part of this training is to learn accurately and to practise regularly. I want them to feel the language the words, thought structures and images flowing in their bloodstreams, a familiar part of them rather than something baffling, strange or difficult.

This grounding in language is particularly important for Shakespeare. The passionate exchange of ideas and feeling through words has always been the blood and oxygen of English-speaking theatre, a theatre built on heightened poetic text. In this Shakespeare is the master. His plays are highly structured works in which the forms support and the words release the action. The language is active and intense: here the action is in the word not merely described by it, not behind it or under it. The words create the world of the play through the articulation of sound, rhythm, structure and sense. As they are spoken, they bring the world into being. They must be spoken before they can be acted.

Speaking Shakespeare requires more than simply memorising texts. It needs a profound understanding of language and how it works. Actors have to engage fully with language before it can engage an audience. They must be able to connect to, experience and imagine the words concretely. They need to understand and internalise the physical operation of certain structures in rhythm and form, and work to realise them. The language must penetrate them, filling them with its power. The production and release of the word has to be so ingrained in their bodies, voices and imaginations that they can access the play, the character, the thoughts and the story without effort. Think of an actor as a swan that is crossing a river. The webbed feet are working away underneath the waterline whilst the grace of the bird appears above it. But to do this the actor needs to prepare body, voice and speech muscles to acquire highly developed speaking skills; skills in body work, voice production and articulation; skills that enhance the text, not block it.

These are the areas this book will explore and develop.

Much of the work is basic and to older actors those over forty may be so obvious as to seem patronising. But it is necessary because so many younger actors believe loose concepts or generalised emotions are enough to guide them through Shakespeare. They have no sense that the heart of the plays lies in the concrete detail of the language. They dont know and too often dont appear to care what an iambic pentameter is, or the difference between a verse line and a thought contained within the verse.

For actors who lack basic training such as this, any proper realisation of the plays is problematic and this is ironic, for not only does Shakespeare write powerful and beautiful plays, but his forms are actor-friendly. It could be said that in the end, if you trust him, he is easier to speak than a screenplay. As you learn to decipher the text, you quickly discover that he is on your side. Hes a great support, not a hindrance.