Shakespeare for American Actors and Directors

By Aaron Frankel

Fear grips many American actors and directors faced with the opportunity to perform Shakespeare live. The challenges of Elizabethan British speech patterns, the thought of using verse for hours, the debate over staging a period piece versus “updating” the Bard of Avon – all can cause psychogenic trauma on this side of the Atlantic. Let Broadway legend Aaron Frankel show the way in Shakespeare for American Actors and Directors. This book views Shakespeare's work through the lens of American performance, catering specifically to the learning sensibilities of American-bred talent. Its streamlined size and reader-friendly presentation make it a practical tool for actors and directors wishing to learn Bard-based performance tactics. Aaron Frankel plunges readers into the meanings of scenes so they can envision the interplay of characters and step into a role to experiment with ways to convey those meanings. He provides scene examples through which to apply performance techniques. To capture the spirit of the book in Frankel's words, “What is totally current is that Shakespeare's dramatic forte, which is the involvement of his characters with each other, and the core of American acting, which is actors affecting each other, make a perfect match.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: RowmanLittlefield
• Release date: Feb 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9780879108823

Book preview

Copyright © 2013 by Aaron Frankel

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, without written permission, except by a newspaper or magazine reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review.

Published in 2013 by Limelight Editions

An Imprint of Hal Leonard Corporation

7777 West Bluemound Road

Milwaukee, WI 53213

Trade Book Division Editorial Offices

33 Plymouth St., Montclair, NJ 07042

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

ISBNs: 9780879108816 (epub) | 9780879108823 (mobi)

www.limelighteditions.com

For Abetha

Flights of angels have sung thee to thy rest

Contents

Prologue. So Please Your Grace, the Prologue Is Address’d

The American Way

1. The Play’s the Thing

How to Read a Play

Language as Action

2. Trippingly on the Tongue

Key Words and Units of Thought

3. Suit the Action to the Word

Action and Its Tools

Sonnet 29: Two Scenes

Sonnet 116: Another Scene

Sonnet 116: Soliloquy

4. Sirs, Take You to Your Tools

Rhythm

Role

5. How Apply You This?

Richard III, I, ii: Gloucester (Richard) and Lady Anne [with Gentlemen attending]

The Taming of the Shrew, II, i: Petruchio and Katharina

The Two Gentlemen of Verona, I, ii: Julia and Lucetta (her maid)

Romeo and Juliet, III, v: Juliet, Romeo, and Nurse

The Merchant of Venice, IV, i: Shylock, Portia, et al.

Much Ado About Nothing, IV, i: Benedick and Beatrice

The Life of King Henry V, V, ii: King Henry, Princess Katharine, and Alice (her lady-in-waiting)

As You Like It, III, ii: Rosalind and Orlando [with Celia]

Julius Caesar, IV, iii: Brutus and Cassius

Twelfth Night, I, v: Viola and Olivia [with Maria and Attendants]

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, III, i: Hamlet and Ophelia

Troilus and Cressida, III, ii: Pandarus, Troilus, and Cressida

Othello, the Moor of Venice, IV, iii: Desdemona and Emilia

King Lear, I, ii: Edmund and Edgar

Macbeth, I, vii: Macbeth and Lady Macbeth

The Tempest, III, i: Ferdinand, Miranda, and Prospero

Epilogue. My Way Is to Conjure You

Prologue

So Please Your Grace, the Prologue Is Address’d

—Philostrate, Master of the Revels

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, V, i

The American Way

Jamestown, 1607. Plymouth, 1620. What peculiar English sounds arrived on these shores, one to become a Southern accent; the other, a New England one? What was spoken then that resembles today’s English accents? The nearest to the Elizabethan sounds that Shakespeare heard endure now, if at all, in Appalachian mountain or backwoods dialects.

What is totally current, however, is that Shakespeare’s dramatic forte, which is the involvement of his characters with one another, and the core of American acting, which is actors’ affecting one another, make a perfect match—a mutual emphasis on a chief acting essential, relating. To crown it, rely on General American speech, the speech still spoken on radio by announcers nationwide, in which regional or local accents are no longer discernible.

An alternative is proffered, called Standard English, also Middle American, thought fit for mixed American and British ensembles. I hear it as manufactured speech, neither fish nor flesh, nor good red herring, frequently sounding artificial or affected. By the same token, some American actors, intimidated by Shakespeare, either in thrall to an inferiority complex or in worship of false gods, take on automatically (and not always successfully) an English accent. Shakespeare, the realest of all playwrights, is falsified, and all the native hue and resolution of American speech is forgone.

Shakespeare is not advanced but basic training. Play Shakespeare well, and you can play anything. The French have a better word for acting: jouer, to play. Shakespeare makes the player, and the player makes good the words.

The second part of this book’s title, and [American] Directors, is a corollary. Directors, obviously, bring their own unique sources and resources to their work, but nationality is incidental. The only factor here is that some American directors, like some American actors, shy away from Shakespeare; perhaps this book may encourage them to be bolder, and discover or enrich their enjoyment of playing him. Assuredly, this book arises from a director’s viewpoint, but the main aim is to focus on the director’s work with the actor. I can only add that my experience leading a professional Shakespeare workshop for over thirty years at the Uta Hagen–Herbert Berghof (HB) Studio in New York City gave me a distinct advantage. No production ideas needed to be taken into account: the entire concentration could be on the actor.

Chapters 1 through 4 will therefore follow up the first premise of this book: to define and assert the acting tools by which American actors may freshly and truly illuminate Shakespeare. Chapter 5, applying these tools to example scenes, will unavoidably include director choices. But choices by actor, writer, and director are the juice of the theater. What the American actor in the execution of choices may particularly bring to Shakespeare is still the main aim.

1

The Play’s the Thing

—Hamlet, II, ii

How to Read a Play

The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

I, i. Elsinore. A platform before the castle.

(FRANCISCO at his post. Enter to him BERNARDO.)

BERNARDO: Who’s there?

FRANCISCO: Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself.

BERNARDO: Long live the king!

FRANCISCO: Bernardo?

BERNARDO: He.

FRANCISCO: You come most carefully upon your hour.

BERNARDO: ’Tis now struck twelve. Get thee to bed, Francisco.

FRANCISCO: For this relief much thanks. ’Tis bitter cold,

And I am sick at heart.

BERNARDO: Have you had quiet guard?

FRANCISCO:      Not a mouse stirring.

BERNARDO: Well, good night.

If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus,

The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste.

This is the play’s full title, place, and the first thirteen lines. For the actor, these are all keys to what to play, to do. The play’s the thing is different for actors than for other readers. It is a set of cues.

The title begins with Tragedy. What’s tragedy to the actor, or the actor to tragedy? It is more than falls from heights and fatal flaws. It is the here and now, and life or death. Try the utmost, he or she with the most to gain loses, he or she with the most potential fails. That is tragic.

The rest of the title is Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. It is not Hamlet, Son of Gertrude or Hamlet, Melancholy Dane or Hamlet, Prince of Madness. Its meaning is basic, instant, and pivotal. The play is about power politics, two mighty contending forces. The heart of the matter here is absolute. How will Hamlet play the role, prince of Denmark?

Thereby the key to Shakespeare’s core grasp of character. How well does every character play his or her role? Or not?

Second, the place, which includes the time. The site is the king’s castle in Elsinore, a city on a peninsula jutting into the North Sea, a sea notoriously stormy. Poetic truth reigns now, let the fancy fly. The castle sits high on a cliff sheering up from pounding seas. Howling winds, forbidding rocks, shrouding mists, sudden deadly calms. It is midnight. The witching hour. Of course. A ghost. The play is haunted.

The scene is an exchange between two soldiers of the King’s Guard, toughest in the ranks. Before the first line, Shakespeare roils the mix. The hour is the changing of the guard. But the play begins with an empty post. Alarm! Not the guard on duty but the guard arriving on relief calls out the challenge. What sight or sound so startles Bernardo in the murky, buffeting night? Suddenly raising his weapon, it is he who cries, Who’s there?¹

From another part of the post, his weapon up now, too, on rushes the duty guard. But Francisco overreacts; he asserts himself twice. First, Nay, answer me, then repeats, Stand and unfold yourself.

Bernardo responds at once. Long live the king!, the watchword of the night. Then Francisco commits a breach of military etiquette any service veteran will recognize. He identifies his relief in person. Bernardo? Alarm again! Something most chilling must hang over the night for a crack guard to break the rule. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

Bernardo replies in a single word, a two-letter breath, He. Another gift for an actor! How many ways to say it, each revealing a different character. Cut short, scorn. Guttural, bullying. Cadenced, reassuring. Other actors, other choices.

Bernardo and Francisco separate more. Whatever the note in Bernardo’s voice, Francisco detects it. Some mettle returns, and he answers back. You come most carefully upon your hour. Carefully: warily, stealthily. How brave are you?! Promptly and obviously Bernardo responds, ’Tis now struck twelve.

And pause. The third alarm! The routine reminder of midnight turns into a startling reminder of dread. The ghost is due—for the second night. Suddenly Bernardo becomes Francisco’s sergeant: Big brother, he takes over and dismisses him, bullying or babying him. Get thee to bed, Francisco.

But Francisco suddenly answers most personally. For this relief, much thanks. ’Tis bitter cold, / And I am sick at heart. More breaches: Francisco thanks his relief, then strangely adds a word about more than the weather. To be bitter cold is to be sick at heart. It sounds like Hamlet. There are Hamlets everywhere.

Mounting in ill omens, the scene mounts in tension—and into blank verse. Making amends, or bucking himself up, Bernardo checks. Have you had quiet guard?

Not a mouse stirring. Too quiet!

That stops even blunt Bernardo. Well, he says. Another one-word actor’s treat. How many ways to say it? Curt comes out dismissive. Long, speculative. Sing-song, sparring. Loud, brow-beating. Soft, excusing. Rising, defiant. Falling, resigned. Straight, commanding. And so on. Another feast.

But finally, quickly, decision: I’ll handle this. Good night. No sooner said, Francisco starts to leave—and last turnabout. The line is short—in fact, three pentameter beats short. In silence Francisco takes three steps, and Bernardo calls out after him, If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus, / The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste. On that grim little joke, our demonstration ends.

Yes, other readings, other choices, always. How to read a play.

Language as Action

Granted all its other mighty powers, for the actor Shakespeare’s language defines the actions