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People who treat Shakespeare like Holy Writ don't know what the hell they're talking about
posted by Melissa on Thu, Mar 8, 2007
in
I'm so tired of people acting like every syllable Shakespeare ever wrote down on paper is sacrosanct; that cutting and pasting Shakespeare's plays is some kind of sin; that scansion should be preserved at all costs; and that the plays should be performed as written because that was "Shakespeare's intention." Ahem. BULLSHIT.
Recently I had an actor turn down a role I offered him in Measure for Measure. Now this, in and of itself, isn't out of the ordinary -- actors turn down roles all the time -- but this particular actor turned down his role after discovering that I have no problem cutting lines regardless of the results to the scansion if it makes the line or the scene clearer. I privilege narrative over poetry every single time, because the backbone of theatre is storytelling, not verse. He then argued with me in his audition about the basically sacred nature of iambic pentameter and how it needs to be preserved because it so closely mimics the natural rhythms of human speech.
I actually liked the fact that he argued with me in his audition -- I'm the kind of person who enjoys a good debate -- but I didn't have time to explain to him why he -- and every misguided purist like him who has argued this with me over the years -- is completely and utterly full of shit.
Now I do have the time.
Let me first take out my academic penis: I have a PhD in this, so I'm not just pulling this opinion outta my ass. Shakespeare, however, is for everyone -- not just huge dorks with PhDs like me. Getting a historical perspective (as opposed to "an historical perspective," which is straight-up intolerable) will prove my point.
1. There were no period costumes or period sets in Shakespeare's time. Sure, there were costumes and sets that were designed to indicate certain settings or periods, but they were indicative and not representational -- the costumes and sets were basically Renaissance with a veneer of the period intended. It was rather Brechtian, if you ask me -- you never lost touch with where and when and who you as an audience member were. The plays are also filled with contemporary references -- reference to the people, places, things, and events of Renaissance London -- regardless of the setting of the play. Cleo-freaking-patra has a line about the London boys' theatres. The Renaissance costumes, sets, and references continually provided the Renaissance audience with points of entry into the text, and, unlike what Brecht (imagined incorrectly he) was doing, refused to allow the audience to distance itself from the narrative or, more importantly, emotional content of the play -- no "Oh, that happened a long time ago to someone else somewhere else." Shakespeare worked overtime to make that distancing impossible, and it's a fucking slap in his face to work overtime to do the exact opposite.
The plays are deeply universal, examining for the first time in western history the many facets of what it means to be humans in social relationship, as opposed to previous writing about humanity's relationship with God or the gods. These incrediible examinations into literally what it meant on every level to be a human being in social relationship belong to all people in all periods, and all of these people deserve to see these plays as they were intended to be seen -- reflective of themselves and their experiences as human beings, despite, or perhaps even enhanced by the play's historical framework or characters.
Therefore: The plays are at their best (and closest to Shakespeare's intent as far as that is knowable) when staged contemporaneously to the audience viewing them. If it's Bay Area 2007, the plays demand to be staged Bay Area 2007. If you're planning to change that, you need a damn good reason.
2. Shakespeare cut and pasted and rearranged and rewrote his plays all the time. First of all, and people love to ignore this fact: Shakespeare's theatre had to make money or it would close. It was a commercial enterprise. Sponsorship from this or that noble wasn't the same kind of granting government sponsorship that you're thinking of when you hear the term "sponsor." Shakespeare -- and every other playwright in Renaissance London -- was working in a very competitive entertainment industry, and if they didn't get butts in seats, it was all over. Shakespeare and his contemporaries would be appalled -- or, on second thought, much more likely amused -- to see people refusing to change text regardless of the effect on the audience's reception. Renaissance theatre was full of "Joke's not funny? Cut it." "Can't make the quick change? Let's throw in a monologue or a song."
3. Scansion, iambic pentameter, and metered text of all types were an enormous Renaissance fad. The people of the English Renaissance loved wordplay. The English language was settling down and coming into its own after being dominated by French for so long, and after taking a large amount of time to evolve into its Renaissance complexity as well as into straight-up coolness -- English was considered very downmarket until just before Shakespeare was born. Of course, the idea that French is cooler and classier than English still persists to this day, somewhat, but it wasn't until well into the Middle Ages that British monarchs considered themselves British as opposed to French princes who also ruled backwater England. It wasn't until fucking 1399! King Henry IV was the first English king to speak English. By the time Shakespeare was born 164 years later, modern English was just getting off the ground, and all these amazing writers were using it as their playground. Words and wordplay became super-popular. The challenge of writing poetry in this or that complex verse style was like a fun game to them. Iambic pentameter settled into the verse style used most often for Renaissance theatre because it most closely mimicked human speech -- or so the story goes, and there's really no point in contesting it.
However. Shakespeare wrote many characters entirely in prose -- all of his lower-class characters speak in prose, and all of his upper-class characters speak in metered verse, which was common for the time period. His upper-class characters speak in prose when speaking to lower-class characters -- not the other way around. Why did Shakespeare use iambic pentameter? What did he think it would do? No one knows the answer definitively -- we have only our best guess. What we DO know, however, is that he was not above writing in prose if the occasion warranted; he was very concerned, as they all were, with audience reaction, and he didn't take his own text to be sacrosanct by any wild stretch of the imagination. Therefore, it is very safe to assume that Shakespeare himself would be laughing his ass off if you refused to change or cut a line in order to make it or the scene clearer or funnier because it messed up the iambic pentameter.
Take this into consideration: Shakespeare fucks with his iambic pentameter all the time. "Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of York." Scan THAT iambically, bitches. Not gonna happen. The idea that scansion is some kind of Da Vinci code for acting, with hidden messages about how to act the line in every place in which the scansion is breached, is pretty much on a par with the idea that the pyramids were designed by aliens. Sure, there are forced pauses all the time with caesuras and feminine endings and whatnot right where a pause should go, and beautiful, perfectly timed out-of-rhythm bits in emotional moments, but the idea that Shakespeare only breached his perfect iambic pentameter to make a certain acting point is really just wrong. Shakespeare's scansion is cool, but not sacrosanct, least of all to him.
4. There is no definitive text for ANY of Shakespeare's plays. Period. The plays we have are our best guesses. Let me quote Dr. Debora Schwartz here:
The Shakespearean texts that we read... do not correspond exactly to any sixteenth- or seventeenth-century printed versions of the plays, nor are they "authentic" in the modern sense (i.e., a final product viewed as definitive and unchangeable by its author). The modern Shakespearean text is the product of a series of editorial decisions: which printed form (if more than one exists) should one choose as the base text? what changes should be made to that copy (inclusion of passages found in other printed versions, correction of obvious or less obvious misprints, etc.)? What about act and scene divisions, indications of setting, and stage directions (sparse or lacking in most printed versions)? How about line numbering? Modernization of punctuation and spelling? Just as each production of a Shakespearean play is the result of decisions made by the director and the actors, the editor's text is based upon a series of decisions informed by his or her knowledge of Shakespeare.
There was no such thing as copywright in the 16th and 17th century, so playwrights generally (until Jonson) worked hard to keep their plays out of print while they were still economically viable as performance texts. Long story short, no play of Shakespeare's was published until after his death, and scholars are still arguing about this or that passage -- for example, it's certain that Shakespeare didn't write the Hecate scene in Macbeth; there's contradictory text in one scene of Measure for Measure that came from two versions of the same play and somehow got into the folio that way; etc., etc. The texts we have today aren't definitively authentic. They're a best guess, and scholars are still working on it.
If you think the plays should be performed exactly as Shakespeare wrote them, then, bigmouth, you will have to get that text yourself, because no one else has been able to come up with it. Sherman, set the Wayback Machine for Renaissance London!
So, if you're a Shakespeare "purist," I have this to say to you:
You're wrong.
You're no fun.
Lighten up.
The End. :-)
Comments
My most immediate and violent reaction to this post is not about Shakespearean theory (though I will get to that later), but more to the fact that an actor refused to consider the idea of working differently. Period.
Dude, there is no singular correct way of doing a text (Shakespeare or not). Some directors will preserve every syllable of Shakespeare, and others will shred it to pieces. Some directors cut and ignore stage directions, some don't. The point is, why go around presuming that every way other than your way is unacceptable?
If this actor is young, he's denying himself the potential for new experience. Some of the best work I've done and seen was in violation of convention. If this actor is experienced, then he's become arrogant and dogmatic in his approach.
Besides, don't we have a reputation as a company that explodes classical text? Didn't he know this coming into the audition? I personally go around tooting Impact's horn by saying that nowhere else can you see Shakespeare with guns while eating pizza and drinking beer. That alone gets me excited to work with this company.
Now, I admit that I am a bit of a scansion freak because I do happen to think that there are certainly clues to the acting as well as the character's emotional state hidden in the rhythm of the text. This kind of thing is helpful for novice actors because it at least gets them into the complex language. It's simply a way (not the only way) in so that you're not stuck facing this giant monolith of a play and scared shitless. Scanning the text might help an actor find operative words, comparisons, structure of ideas, etc. Because actors are lazy and will not look up the meaning of the words. Instead they will try to contextualize and play what they think is the emotional state of the character rather than the clarity of thought.
As Jon Jory often says, "Your first job when acting Shakespeare is to make the text FUCKING CLEAR."
When I started doing Shakespeare, I clung to this purist theory like it was my lifesaver--because I had no other way to approach the work. And I still do that, a little. I've at least stopped drawing those stupid little dashes above every syllable of my script because I can intuit the scanning better.
I think with experience, actors will simply think of it as a tool rather than gospel. I don't think that this scansion stuff is supposed to be laid out like holy scripture, nor do I think Shakespeare racked his brain for hours trying to decide when scansion should be broken. I think the guy just happens to be a genius poet with amazing intuition for emotional rhythm. Contemporary playwrights do it all the time, and we don't go around scanning Mamet's words.
Also to say that imabic pentameter mimicks human speech is a gross overstatement. Iambs mimick English speech. I don't think it mimicks French (does it?) or Hebrew (which I think sounds trochaic), and certainly no Asian language I know. This is probably why ESL kids like me take longer to deal with the text.
Oh, and this is certainly not the kind of thing you want to waste the director's time arguing about. You just bring these idea with you to rehearsal, and silently apply them. Don't involve the director and complicate his/her life more by debating technique. Just do the play.
Posted by:
Desdemona Chiang ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.impacttheatre.com/nav-commenters.gif)
| Sat, Mar 10, 2007 at 10:22 AM
I should also say that the point is to not compromise the acting for the sake of technique--which is why pure scanning and rhythm can look like bad Shakespeare.
Posted by:
Desdemona Chiang | Sat, Mar 10, 2007 at 10:28 AM
After spending a summer in London, England with the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art's Summer Shakespeare Course a few years ago, I had a rather shocking experience. The British classically trained director of my group told me that the American accent is actually how the people of Shakespeare's time REALLY SPOKE! Forced British RP accent onto Shakespeare is not "pure" Shakespeare! Take that BBC facists! Moreover, the difference between the academic and the practitioner of Shakespeare? The academic need only enjoy it for himself/herself. The practitioner needs to make it so EVERYONE ELSE can enjoy it. Which boils down to how to make it relevant for right here, right now.
Posted by:
Alaric | Sat, Mar 10, 2007 at 9:48 PM
Cocksuckers.
.... Melissa, which actor turned it down cause you cut lines?
Posted by:
ButtMuffin | Sat, Mar 10, 2007 at 11:17 PM
I think his name was Patrick Alparone. Kidding, kidding . . .
I'm not going to rat him out, you guys! Especially not publicly.
Posted by:
Melissa | Sun, Mar 11, 2007 at 6:59 AM
I recently completed a session of Gwyneth Richards' "Shakespeare Without Tears" class. I believe she'd agree with everything you said.
Posted by:
Bob | Wed, Mar 14, 2007 at 12:42 PM
I don't know who the actor is, nor will ever probably learn. Nonetheless, I've worked with people like that, in every aspect of my life. To them, there is only one way to do something. Usually they learned it on the knee of someone else with blinders on. I gotta give the boy props for one thing. At least he wants to recite the text as written. As you know, there are certain acting schools of thought that say you don't even have to learn the lines. I saw one teacher's precept that he forbids his students from learning their lines outside of class. Which is okay in a learning environment. But, it doesn't work when you need to learn an entire play with only a couple of rehearsals for each scene.
I'd be interesting in seeing the resume of the actor you had the trouble with. What's his experience with Shakespeare and the classics?
He may not have had much experience with the works. Or he's still in the mindset of "Shakespeare is sacred" and therefore kinda scary and it must be done with great reverence. I know I was there at one time.
Now I see the holes in the scripts, and the bawdy humor at times. Plus, researching Polonius and "Hamlet", I found inconsistencies. And don't get me started on repetition of lines and ideas. It's almost as if the text we are given are rough drafts.
Posted by:
John | Thu, Mar 15, 2007 at 3:24 PM
Why are you sure that Shakespeare didn't write the Hecate scene in Macbeth? If we don't have the exact text of all his play (which, due to the reasons above we don't) then the Hecate scene could be written by him. Without that scene, the cauldron scene makes no sense, in my opinion. I don't really want to argue with you but I'm Hecate in our performance of Macbeth with the drama club in my school so I'm just curious.
Posted by:
Mangaartist | Sun, Dec 9, 2007 at 2:16 AM
The scholarship on this subject is very persuasive that the Hecate scenes are interpolations of songs by Thomas Middleton. Middleton is no slouch (especially when he teams with Dekker) but I wouldn't say the additions are up to the standard set by the rest of the play by any wild stretch of the imagination. They're written in a very different style, for one thing. Additionally, there was no such thing as copyright in those days-- anyone could add or subtract anything to any play, and people often did.
The Middleton authorship of the Hecate stuff is the most widely accepted interpretation. It's not a particularly controversial position. I urge you to check out some of the scholarship on Macbeth-- there is so much great scholarship out there, and it's totally fascinating! If your school library gives you access to JStor, you are home free, but even without it, there's plenty online. :-)
While I generally don't recommend wikipedia as an academic source, this quote form their Macbeth article sums it up nicely:
"Macbeth was first printed in the First Folio of 1623 and the Folio is the only source for the text. The text that survives had been plainly altered by later hands. Most notable is the inclusion of two songs from Thomas Middleton's play The Witch (1615); Middleton is conjectured to have inserted an extra scene involving the witches and Hecate, for these scenes had proven highly popular with audiences. These revisions, which since the Clarendon edition of 1869 have been assumed to include all of Act III, scene v, and a portion of Act IV, scene I, are often indicated in modern texts.[10] On this basis, many scholars reject all three of the interludes with the goddess Hecate as inauthentic. Even with the Hecate material, the play is conspicuously short, and so the Folio text may derive from a promptbook that had been substantially cut for performance, or an adapter cut the text himself."
Posted by:
Melissa | Sun, Dec 9, 2007 at 9:45 AM
Well said Melissa (and all you other anti-bardolators).
You're right.
You're fun.
You're bright.
:) (:
Posted by:
WmShagsper | Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 8:34 AM
Are you all actors kissing Melissa's butt so she'll hire you? Her diatribe is just as pedantic as the "Shakespeare is holy writ" philosophy. Are there clues in the text? of course there are. Would it behoove an actor to understand scansion to be able hunt for them? Of course it would. Shakespeare was an actor, so when he wrote it is not a stretch to assume his actor's instincts were working through his writing. Why not add an extra tool to the toolbox and try and intuit some meanings from the text? But ultimately it's the actor's choice. If scansion is the door into the text for you then use it! And don't let anyone (Phd or no) try to tell you differently from their ivory tower soap box. But...I don't understand an actor who is afraid of a new idea.
Posted by:
Michael | Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 12:57 PM
Well, hello, Michael. My first thought is to wonder how you managed to chance upon this almost two-year-old blog post! My curiosity is overwhelming . . . but I digress.
My point about scansion, of course, is not that all scansion is bullshit, or that no one should use scansion as a tool. My point is that it's not definitive, sacrosanct, or foolproof as many would like to believe, particularly considering that there's no such thing as a definitive text for any of the plays. "Cool but not sacrosanct" was what I said.
My overall point is that it's counterproductive to sacrifice clarity in the name of preserving Shakespeare's original text in contemporary performance and that a cut that messes with the scansion is a far better choice than preserving the scansion if the cut provides clarity. I certainly didn't say actors shouldn't study scansion.
Carry on!
Hope to see you at A Midsummer Night's Dream, opening 2/13/09!