“Speed and Rhythm in the Speaking of Iambic Pentameter"
First published in Standard Speech, editor Rocco Dal Vera (2000)
1.
IAMBIC PENTAMETER. i-am-bic pent-am-et-er. The very sound of it strikes a note of dread in me, even after nine years of working with Illyria, a company I formed in 1991 to explore the Elizabethan performance style of Shakespeare’s plays.
At high school the rules were pumped into us: 10 syllables per line, 5 strong beats and 5 weak beats in a de-DUM-de-DUM-de-DUM-de-DUM-de-DUM formation. At drama school in London the rules were elaborated: sometimes you have “feminine endings” ie: an extra “de” after the last DUM. Sometimes where a line ends before the sentence ends you have a sort of pause or a lull which carries you on to the next line; sometimes if a sentence ends mid-line you have a kind of slur which carries you on to the rest of the line. (Both of these had technical names which meant nothing at the time and even less now, and so I can’t be bothered to look them up.)
“It’s all to do with the rhythm of the language,” I was told by a grand dame of British Theatre at drama school.
“OK,” I said, eager to learn but still completely confused, “but what about ‘To be or not to be, that is the question’?”
“Not every line fits the de-DUM-de-DUM-de-DUM-de-DUM-de-DUM formation,” said the grand dame. “In fact, very few lines work like that. Most are a variation on it.”
“So the poetry is irregular?” I said.
“That’s right, dear,” said the grand dame with a beatific smile. “Practically every line will have 5 beats because that is the way the language is naturally spoken. The actor’s job is to stress the 5 beats. That is what pent-ameter means.”
I frequently identify with the way Christopher Robin feels when Eeyore unwittingly gives away Piglet’s house: I knew a question needed to be asked, but was unsure how to ask it. Now, twelve years later, I think I know how I would continue: “So you’re saying the actor should simply stress the 5 beats, wherever they are in the line?”
“Yes, dear.”
“To reflect the rhythms inherent in the language?”
“Yes, dear.”
“To make it sound as natural as possible.”
“That’s right, dear. You’ve got it at last.”
“Then in what way is the spoken poetry different from the spoken prose?”
The $64,000 question.
2.
“Listen to Sir (sic) Larry [Olivier], love; you’ll hear the poetry.” Thus, the grand dame. Well, I did. And I didn’t. Subsequently I read that the great critic Kenneth Tynan made the same complaint many years before - at least I was in prestigious company. So I widened the search: I got a recording on vinyl (!) from the library of another knight of the theatre giving his Lear; I bought audio cassettes; I hired videos; I went to the theatre and sat in restricted view seats in the gods as often as poverty-stricken drama students can do; I saw the movie of Henry V - I even got a job in a local theatre as a stagehand so I could see the RSC’s up-and-coming star (who now runs Shakespeare’s Globe in London) in Hamlet. All I ever actually heard was beautiful lines which were supposed to be verse, but which were spoken no differently from the prose.
3.
Let’s fast forward. I’m going to declare my full hand. I believe (and I emphasize that it is scarcely more than a suspicion) that we speakers of English have forgotten how to speak Iambic Pentameter effectively. More importantly, I suspect we no longer know how to hear Iambic Pentameter effectively. Language by its very nature develops over time. So, of course, it may well be that it is not we English speakers who have lost a linguistic and aural skill, but rather the language we use which has evolved in such a way that the Iambic Pentametrical form simply doesn’t work any more. I think this is a very real possibility. If it is the case then my paper ends here. After all, the plays stand up perfectly well without an audible poetry/prose distinction.
But rather then end here I want to share a handful of ideas which may prompt debate and may help those who are as perplexed by Iambic Pentameter as I am.
I do not come from an academic background, but a theatrical one. I am not an intellectual theorist but a practitioner. Very little of what follows has emerged from textual research; almost all of it has come from a determination to use the same material (Shakespeare’s plays) in the same way (performing it professionally in theatres) to achieve the same ends (to entertain the paying public) that Shakespeare did with his own company. My conclusions are drawn from experiments made over the past 9 years of touring with Illyria. Some experiments worked, some didn’t, but as a company we found out the hard way: by putting on the frock and going out there in front of a live audience baying for blood.
4.
Fast rewind to 1623. The compositors of the First Folio edition of Shakespeare’s complete works are furiously preparing the printing plates. As I sit at my desk tapping away I often wonder what those 17th century printers would think about my conviction that I’m hard at work; for they of course are bent over their plates with a pair of tweezers, endlessly digging in wooden boxes for individual letters and lining them up to perfection on the plate. What were their names? Traditionally we even delegate them to mere letters. “Oi! B!”. “What?” “I’m out of Z’s.” “Stick an N on its side.” “Sod U.” “Ask C.” “He’s havin’ a P.” “Where’s D?” “Gone down to B&Q.” “OK.”
The point is that despite the laborious process, the compositors made the effort to lay out the verse passages in verse. (Yes, errors were made, but not that many.) Surely it’s much easier to print in prose, where you don’t have to worry about lines beginning with capital letters and where most of the lines are the same length. Surely it’s much cheaper to print in prose, because you don’t use up so much of the compositors’ time. Surely it’s more cost-effective to print in prose, because prose would generally take up less space on the printed page. Shakespeare’s cohorts who were paying for all this were nothing if not shrewd businessmen. Besides, the texts were being prepared for people to read, and I cannot believe that the compositors were asked to print the verse as verse solely because it looked nice. The compositors were probably working from prompt copies, perhaps in some cases even actors’ copies or Shakespeare’s own foul papers, and they too, all hand-written, distinguished verse from prose.
I think it is reasonable to infer that the verse was not only hand-written but then painstakingly printed as verse because it was simply deemed unthinkable to write or print it as prose. Whereas today, I as a theatregoer cannot distinguish one from the other unless I see it in a script. Furthermore, it cannot in the 17th century have been an arbitrary or minor distinction, or the compositors might have made more errors or Shakespeare’s colleagues might have saved money. It was an astoundingly obvious difference, one which really mattered.
5.
So, just what was this difference?
For a start, we all know in what scenes verse was invariably used: love scenes, scenes involving royalty or nobility, devotion to God or some high principle, moments of great drama, orations etc. In general, verse is used where emotions heat up or where heightened language is more appropriate than everyday discourse. Now I suppose it could be argued that the verse is actually defined by these situations and by the very language they demand. If that were so, it would explain why I so seldom hear the distinction between verse and prose. The distinction would have to be made simply by appreciating each situation and the language therein.
But that still begs the question: Why did the compositors go to such lengths to print these scenes in verse if verse is only defined by the quality of the language? We would be able to see the quality of the language on the page; we would not need to see it neatly broken down into lines of (generally) 10 syllables. No, I suspect that although the language itself might give us a clue, what should tell us that a scene is in verse is the sound of the language, the way it is spoken. Good old-fashioned things like rhythm and rhyme, distinct from the meanings of the words, but which in many ways add so much more.
Take a look at this and spot something odd about it:
“I am the very pattern of a modern Major General. I’ve information vegetable, animal and mineral; I know the kings of England and I quote the fights historical from Marathon to Waterloo in order categorical. I’m very well-acquainted too with matters mathematical: I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical; about binomial theorem I”m teeming with a lot o’ news, and interesting facts about the square on the hypotenuse; I’m very good at integral and differential calculus. I know the scientific names of beings animalculus - in short, in matters vegetable, animal and mineral I am the very pattern of a modern Major Gineral.”
No prizes for spotting the hand of WS Gilbert. We Brits have a tradition of poets and song-writers who take complex poetical forms which scan and rhyme to perfection, but which contrive to do so against all the odds. (How many rhymes can you think of for ‘calculus’?) One of my favourites, another of WS Gilbert’s, is this insanely complex 23-syllable-per-line monstrosity:
“When you’re lying awake with a dismal headache and repose is tabooed by anxiety I conceive you may use any language you choose to indulge in without impropriety.”
I have chosen these extracts because they are both historically and syntactically closer to us than Shakespeare’s English. What is odd about their presentation here is that they are manifestly verse structures printed as prose. Again no prizes. But here’s the interesting bit: just try to speak these extracts out loud without stressing the principal beats of each line, and also glossing over the extraordinary rhymes. It can be done, but it’s bloody difficult, and it just sounds weird. It systematically strips the pieces of their charm and wit, not to mention the personalities of the characters who sing them. Worst of all it violates the principle which should be at the top of the theatrical decalogue: Thou Shalt Not Be Boring. (It also takes significantly longer to speak it. More of this later.)
Now I don’t propose that either of these rhythm structures has anything to do with Iambic Pentameter; these rhythms and rhymes are clearly far more regular. My proposition is that perhaps it was as obvious to Shakespeare’s contemporaries that Iambic Pentameter had to be written as verse as it is to us that these lyrics of WS Gilbert should be written as verse. Furthermore, perhaps this is because the rhythms and rhymes within the verse AS IT IS SPOKEN were as abundantly clear to them as those of the Modern Major General are to us, and provided the same amount of dramatic and emotional information.
6.
So, if the de-DUM-de-DUM-de-DUM-de-DUM-de-DUM formation isn’t the rhythmic key to every line of Iambic Pentameter, as even the grand dame admitted, just what is the rhythm? More importantly, does it matter?
If I felt like being sycophantic I’d say yes it bloody well did matter because that is the way the great man saw fit to write it. The truth for 20th century audiences I suspect is closer to No, it doesn’t matter. I’ve seen some (emphasis on fewer rather than more) productions which dramatically worked very well indeed, although the verse was spoken as though it were prose. Third Party’s production of The Winter’s Tale, a case in point, was electrifying; I have managed to keep myself completely ignorant of a few of Shakespeare’s plays so that I can see them the first time and enjoy them completely fresh - and the ending of this Winter’s Tale had me holding my breath, verse, prose or who cares what. At the opposite end of the spectrum was the Royal National Theatre’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream directed by Robert Lapage. I doubt that anything could have saved this steaming pile of excrescence. This play, which is so dominated by verse, was spoken by Lapage’s actors (when they were not face down in the mud) as though it were prose throughout - which made it no worse than it already was.
Between these 2 memorable extremes the RSC, Illyria’s neighbours in Stratford-upon-Avon, seem at the present to be excelling in performances which attract mixed reviews with regard to the productions, and hefty criticism with regard to the verse-speaking. Not, I hasten to point out, that the esteemed critics offer any illumination as to what constitutes good verse-speaking. I certainly found nothing which sounded like verse in their recent Twelfth Night; no, not even in the famous (sic) Basketball and Shower/Locker Room scene. (Act One scene 4, stupid.) Their production of Coriolanus in 1994, the last RSC production for which I never saw one single unenthusiastic review, I found to be as barren of audible verse as their magnificent production of The Cherry Orchard in 1996. Shakespeare’s Globe under the Artistic Directorship of Mark Rylance attracts criticism in the UK press which is, in my humble opinion, unjustly vitriolic and largely erroneous. (And not just in the press: at a Shakespeare conference I attended just 3 months ago, 2 directors from the RSC snootily lambasted the Globe for its boldness of style. Poetic justice does, however, exist: one of the said directors has just directed a Shrew, and I’m here to tell you it’s been critically roasted.) The Globe company attacks the text, and squeezes the blood and sweat out of the play. Perhaps in the spirit of Robert Greene’s famous remarks about Shakespeare in his 1592 pamphlet Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit, the company “bombast out a blank verse as the best of you”. Bombasting the verse is good: in my opinion it paradoxically highlights more of the subtleties than gently-spoken studio performances. But I’m still not hearing from them anything like a pronounced rhythm, and I’m finding it hard to pick up on the rhymes.
Perhaps what I’m looking for doesn’t exist. Or perhaps it did once exist but it can no longer be heard by modern ears ill-accustomed to Elizabethan speech-patterns. All of this may be true. It would certainly explain my lifelong confusion. It would also explain why I so seldom find it in the theatre. (Never, incidentally, on the big screen. Sorry Ken.) It would even explain why, at Illyria’s auditions, actor after actor comes into the room, performs the piece of their choice, and I’m left wondering if I remembered to stipulate “verse”. The grand dame’s influence at drama schools is widespread indeed.
But maybe, just maybe, there is a holy grail out there. We were all brought up on Nursery Rhymes; the lucky ones had A.A. Milne’s When We Were Very Young and Now We Are Six; my generation and below even had Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes. The point is that we are all familiar with many different types of verse, and we can all distinguish these from prose. The distinction is so manifest that I don’t suppose anyone has ever seen fit to write a book about it. None of Shakespeare’s contemporaries appear to have done. What if, as well as using the same material in the same way to achieve the same ends, Illyria could find a way to uncover and use the same distinctions to their fullest potential?
7.
I do a lot of thinking in the bath. One November morning there I was, pondering verse rhythms and possible connections with musical rhythms, and regretting that there appeared to be no musical structure which might shed light on Iambic Pentameter. Then, in a flash, John Dankworth’s hugely influential jazz piece “Take 5” started running through my mind. Take 5. Pent-ameter. Time signature of 5-4. My Shakespeare lobes went into overdrive. I’d always considered de-DUM-de-DUM-de-DUM-de-DUM-de-DUM to be either a plodding rhythm or rather militaristic - either way it was leaden. But what if, like “Take 5”, it was given an up-beat lilt by stressing only 2 of the 5 beats. Dankworth’s rhythm is more DUM-de-DUM-de-DUM-de-DUM-de-DUM-de, ie: although there are 5 beats to the bar, the stresses fall on beats 1 and 4.
The last play I’d directed had been Richard III. So there, amidst the shampoo and the steam, I tried using just 2 stresses per line in the opening speech, and while stressing beats 1 and 4 didn’t seem to work, 2 and 5 did.
Now is the WINter of our disconTENT
Made glorious SUMMer by this son of YORK,
And all the CLOUDS that loured upon our HOUSE
In the deep BOsom of the ocean BURied.
Truth is, I wasn’t sure if I liked it. But I certainly understood it: Winter and Summer are both accented on their first syllables - which is just as well, because it is the first rather than the second syllable which differentiates them. Winter is rhythmically linked to discontent, Summer with York. Clouds rhyme assonantly with House, Bosom rhymes alliteratively with Buried.
Now are our BROWS bound with victorious WREATHS
Our bruised ARMS hung up for monuMENTS;
Our stern aLARums changed to merry MEETings
Our dreadful MARCHes to delightful MEAsures.
It was all going so well until “Monuments”. Normally the word is accented on the first syllable. Was this an inglorious premature end to my theory?
And yet there was something strangely pleasing about Brows and Wreaths and Arms and Monuments: all are plural, both the lines end on a stress, and all those S’s - perfect for Gloucester to spit out with his characteristic venom. Alarums worked beautifully in opposition with Meetings, and Marches and Measures are simply a match made in heaven.
What if it were not Alarums that teamed with Monuments but Bruised? I liked that less because in some indefinite way it just seemed to hold up Gloucester’s train of thought when there is no reason to do so. Perhaps these stresses are not meant to be quite so rigid as WS Gilbert’s. Or perhaps there is a way of saying Monuments such that the first syllable can be stressed tonally rather than gutturally: if Monuments were spat out to convey the man’s total contempt, outrage and disbelief for what has happened to the Arms, the first syllable might come out as a peevish squeak - mine certainly would. Then the final syllable can just be spoken - it doesn’t even have to be stressed gutturally; it’s mere utterance keeps the rhythm going.
I felt like I’d stretched the rules a bit. But the piece was sounding good.
Grim-visaged WAR hath smoothed his wrinkled FRONT
And now - inSTEAD of mounting barbed STEEDS
To fright the SOULS of fearful adverSARIES
He capers NIMBly in a lady’s CHAMBer
To the laSCIVious pleasing of a LUTE.
“Grim-visaged war hath smoothed” is one hell of a mouthful; besides I can feel a temptation to stress Grim and even Smoothed. But perhaps both of these could again be tonal stresses - a growl of caricature for Grim, a soothing light tone for Smoothed - while the rhythmic stress stays on who and what is talked about: War and his Front. Instead and Steeds, Nimbly and Chamber, Lascivious and Lute just shimmer with perfection. The fly in the ointment now was Souls and Adversaries. I’ve heard Adversaries stressed variously on the first or the second syllable, never on the third or fourth - although the third and fourth are sometimes telescoped together into one syllable when the word’s first syllable is stressed.
But perhaps it is not Souls that is teamed with Adversaries - Fright seems to be a much more pro-active word in this line. If this line were to be stressed on beats 1 and 4, instead of the 2 and 5 which seems to work for the rest of the passage, it has the effect of allowing the sound of the word Fright to enhance its own meaning - illustrating it, you might say, by breaking the rhythm and causing a surprise.
Grim-visaged WAR hath smoothed his wrinkled FRONT
And now - inSTEAD of mounting barbed STEEDS
To FRIGHT the souls of fearful ADversaries...(pause, to regain rhythm)
He capers NIMBly in a lady’s CHAMBer
To the laSCIVious pleasing of a LUTE.
8.
OK, I am in no way stating that this is categorically the way this speech or any other should be performed. That is a decision for the actor and his/her director. But I confess myself to be intrigued by the way this system is easy to speak because it tends to emphasize so many of the pertinent words, and by the way it is easy to hear for exactly the same reason. It is also easy to hear because of the rhythm it endows the language; far from some absurdly complex “natural rhythm of the language” which only the finely-tuned ears of the grand dame could appreciate, or a leaden series of de-DUMs hammering away all night, the ear is massaged with a gentle swaying of words. Not the rhythm I was expecting, and certainly not the rhythm (if you can call an irregular natural rhythm of the language a rhythm) I was ever taught; but at long last, a real bloody rhythm!
The most exciting thing of all was how this rhythm seemed to give Gloucester a drive, a focus and a sense of ferocious wit. The rhythm reveals things to us long before Gloucester reveals them even to himself. The possible changes in the rhythm of the subsequent section of the speech (But I that am not SHAPED for sportive TRICKS...) herald a new gear: Gloucester presents the audience with something of a sob story, which is so overdone that it is clearly a deliciously indulgent lie designed to fool the gullible and amuse the canny. Henceforth we, the audience, are in on the gag as he uses the same technique, invariably with the same rhythm, time and again throughout the play.
Another benefit is that it enables the text to be spoken considerably more fluidly, and - I hardly dare to put this in print - more speedily. This fact was especially intriguing to me, because no-one, not even the grand dame, has ever been able to answer my simple but burning question: “Why, if the traffick of the stage is only supposed to take 2 hours, am I never let out before at least 3 and a half?”
Furthermore when there are only 2 or 3 stresses per line as opposed to the grand dame’s 5, the stresses tend to occur much more closely in conjunction with the heartbeat of an inactive human being - a person sitting in a theatre watching a play, say.
9.
The bath water was getting cold now. My fingers were wrinkled. It was time to go and try the system out on the next play I was to direct: The Taming of the Shrew.
I could at this point offer an exhaustive set of examples of how the system does or does not work. I won’t do that: it’s more fun for you to go out there and test it for yourself. I’ll tell you now that I know for a fact that it is not water-tight. Suffice it to say that, very broadly, lines of Iambic Pentameter appear to fall into either the 2-5 model, the 1-4 model, or occasionally a 3-stress model, with stresses falling on beats 1, 3 and 5. Let’s look at the scene where Petruchio woos Kate. It begins:
Baptista: Signior PetRUCHio, will you go with US,
Or shall I SEND my daughter Kate to YOU?
Petruchio: I pray you DO; I will attend her HERE,
(Exeunt Baptista, Gremio, Tranio and Hortensio)
And WOO her with some SPIrit when she COMES.
Say that she’ll RAIL; why then I’ll tell her PLAIN
She sings as SWEETly as a nightinGALE:
Say that she FROWN; I’ll say she looks as CLEAR
As morning ROSEs newly washed with DEW:
Say she be MUTE and will not speak a WORD;
Then I’LL commend her voluBIlity,
And SAY she uttereth piercing ELoquence;
If SHE do bid me PACK I’ll give her THANKS
As THOUGH she bid me STAY by her a WEEK:
If she deNY to wed I’ll crave the DAY
When I shall ASK the banns and when be MARRied.
But HERE she comes; and NOW Petruchio SPEAK.
Again, I make no claim that this is the only way this scene can be performed. But I think you will agree that it is at least one of the ways it could be performed. The language has not been stretched (with an arguable exception of Nightingale) to accommodate this form. If anything it has been relaxed - there are no enforced 5-beat rhythms going on, but likewise there is an identifiable poetic rhythm at work. I like the way this piece falls neatly, naturally, into groups of 2 lines. Baptista speaks to Petruchio with a regular couplet, but Petruchio breaks his couplet up into an irregular one, once Baptista leaves. Then from Rail and Plain we have three regular couplets on the 2-5 model, followed by a 1-4 couplet, a 1-3-5 couplet, back to a 2-5 couplet, and finishing on an odd single 1-3-5 line as Kate makes her entrance.
The cast of Illyria’s production of Twelfth Night were also asked to use this system. It was particularly interesting to compare the lines of Viola with those of Olivia. Viola, presumably being played in Shakespeare’s company by a younger, less-experienced boy actor on Shakespeare’s stage, has very few lines which stray from the 2-5 model; whereas those of Olivia, performed by the more experienced actor, are considerably more complex.
The one speech nobody in the company could fathom was Viola’s revelation of her true identity. The actress playing the role asked me for some help with it, and at the time I didn’t have a clue as to how to make this sound like the verse it is purporting to be. This is the best I have been able to come up with subsequently:
If nothing LETS to make us happy BOTH
But this my MASCuline usurped atTIRE
Do NOT embrace me till each CIRCumstance
Of PLACE, time, fortune, do coHERE and jump
That I am VIola: which to conFIRM,
I’ll BRING you to a CAPtain in this TOWN
Where lie my MAIDen weeds: by whose gentle HELP
I was preserved to SERVE this noble COUNT.
All the ocCURrence of my fortune SINCE
Hath BEEN between this LADy and this LORD.
Perhaps I’m reading these rhythms into this piece, but they do seem to fit. The structure is a pleasingly balanced 2-5; 2-5; 1-4; 1-4; 2-5; 1-3-5; 2-5; 1-3-5; 2-5; 1-3-5. In a scene which contains a good deal of soul-baring and emotional upheaval, the rhythms of this piece seem to respond to rhythms brought in by all the other characters. Considering that Viola has spent most of the play in a straight 2-5 mode, might the verse genius behind the writing be pointing out how she has begun to open up to all the people around her by echoing their complex rhythms?
10.
I do not think this system is in any way a miracle cure. Far from it. Those who have not warmed to it so far may have the added assurance that not all of the actors who have worked with Illyria are particularly comfortable with it. Most, though, have found it helpful.
And I have to say that the more I listen to it the more I like it. The 5 de-DUMs are still there in the background, many of the DUMs even getting acknowledged by tonal stresses rather than guttural ones. Perhaps the grand dame had a point after all. A musical analogy might correspond the DUMs to the beats of a waltz (3 per bar) but only one is stressed (the first). Can you imagine how the Blue Danube would sound if it were played as muzak, perfectly in time but without the first beat stressed?
Not only do I like the way the verse sounds spoken this way, but I know from experience that it gives the whole play a sense of pace and energy which I have seldom found in performances of Shakespeare. Besides, you know how I feel about hanging around in theatres for over 2 hours. Something I discovered very early on in the creation of Illyria is that when Shakespeare’s lines are drawn out, two interesting things happen: (i) Many of his sentences are so long for modern ears that by the time a performer has reached the end of one, the audience have forgotten what was said at the beginning. (ii) Consequently the play gets drawn out and becomes much too long. Either way the poor audience switch off. Now for all I know there may already be some psychological research to confirm or deny this idea, but I wonder if there is such a thing in the human mind as a “sentence-timespan-limit”. I.e: if your sentence exceeds it, your listeners get lost. Theatrical heresy it may be to suggest this, but the mere act of getting on with it might be the answer to a lot of problems. This system not only steps on the gas, it highlights the important words - either emotionally, rhetorically, dramatically and theatrically.
Illyria has always had “complaints” from some members of its audiences that we really shouldn’t take Shakespeare’s lines and re-write them to make them easier for modern audiences to understand. The complaints have increased over the last two years (i.e: since I have used this system). I like to thank these people by presenting them with a copy of the text for them to keep.
(Incidentally, the running time for The Taming of the Shrew was 2 hours 12 minutes; for Twelfth Night, 2 hours 5 minutes. Both performances were uncut.)
11.
I suppose it could be argued that in an age of advanced theatrical technology we no longer have any need for fancy linguistic effects: we can create all the pomp of state occasions with computer-operated hydraulic sets, the tenderness of love-scenes with sophistcated lighting-rigs, the effects of great rhetoric on crowds with digital sound. The Elizabethans had stage machinery too, but largely relied on language - and after all, although today we speak of “seeing” a play, they almost universally spoke of “hearing” a play.
Shakespeare frequently reminds us, the audience, of the artificiality of what we are doing i.e: sitting in a theatre watching a play. He sometimes does it directly: as in the Chorus in Henry V or in Puck’s or Prospero’s invocation to “give me your hands”; and sometimes indirectly by referring to theatre as a metaphor: Macbeth’s poor player, Jacques’s exits and entrances in the Seven Ages or Beatrice’s teasing of Claudio “Speak Count - ‘tis your cue.” I think all these references are fascinating, but the bottom line is that they are just a trick: fictional characters talking about fiction has the paradoxical effect of feeling like reality. English speakers today are possibly less moved, influenced or stirred by their language as the Elizabethans were, but that doesn’t mean that another trick can’t work: artificially heightened language simply does convey a wealth of subtle information about situation, character, mood, status, courage, determination etc (as WS Gilbert so ably does). Paradoxically, the more artificially heightened it sounds, the more our willing suspension of disbelief works overtime to process the dramatic truths it contains.
In performances of Shakespeare today, much of this information emerges by means other than the language. Perhaps some of it has to emerge like that. In a number of performances I have seen from the larger companies the problem is not so much that language is not heightened enough, but that in the scenes which are meant to aspire to nothing higher than sex and farting the actors are directed to speak with same grandeur as those scenes set formally at court. One way to tackle both these problems is to delve into that verse and find its spoken rhythms.
12.
It is 2 and a half years since I have had the pleasure of working on my favourite play of all time: The Tempest. During another bath I took a cup of tea and a copy of the script with me, and discovered that, in the magnificent opening scene which Prospero shares with Miranda, either the rhythm system is alarmingly ineffective or it is substantially more complex than I have outlined here.
I am very receptive to any ideas, either about how the system might work in this play, or about why it is a misguided enterprise, or just any comments about the system in general. One way or another, all I ask is that spoken verse can be differentiated from prose by more than the situation of the scene or the lines in the text.
OLIVER GRAY
Artistic Director, Illyria