Episode Highlights
Episode 1: The Two Traditions
Highlights
- Modern actors focus on finding their motivation or "intention" for each line, aiming for a so-called naturalistic style.
- Shakespeare and his contemporaries wouldn't have understood such naturalism. Instead, the playwright used heightened language to convey psychological depth and nuance.
- Barton advises actors to marry the modern, naturalistic tradition with the formal Elizabethan tradition conveyed in Shakespeare's language.
Questions to Consider
- Ian McKellen notes that the size of Elizabethan theatres encouraged "a grander, more generalized" style of acting. How else do you suppose Elizabethan theatres and stagecraft influenced the actors' performances?
- Lisa Harrow suggests that Elizabethan English was growing rapidly, "much more of a living thing than our language is." Do you agree or disagree? Why?
- Can you suggest other differences between the modern and Elizabethan traditions? How are they relevant to playing (or reading) Shakespeare?
- In your own words, how would you describe Barton's direction to strike a balance between the two traditions?
Episode 2: Using the Verse
Highlights
- Shakespeare's verse contains hints on how to play a character or scene.
- Conventional iambic pentameter, or blank verse, establishes a pattern of ten syllables per line, five unstressed alternating with five stressed.
- Variations in that pattern–such as feminine (unstressed) line endings, extra stresses, short lines, lines shared by two actors, or endstopped lines–reveal character and guide an actor's delivery.
Questions to Consider
- Barton suggests that Shakespeare and other Elizabethan playwrights used iambic pentameter to help actors control their breathing better and thereby phrase their lines more easily on outdoor stages. Can you think of other advantages of blank verse?
- To demonstrate shared verse lines, David Suchet and Patrick Stewart play a short exchange between the king and his counselor from King John (Act III, Scene 3) twice–once using pauses, and once picking up the cues quickly. From this snippet of dialogue, how does your impression of the characters change in the two different readings?
- In discussing archaic pronunciations of words in verse, Barton advises actors to rely on old pronunciations to preserve the rhythm and ease of speech as Shakespeare wrote it. How do you, as an audience member, react to hearing an actor use unfamiliar pronunciations?
- According to Barton, actors should become very conscious of the verse in rehearsal but shouldn't think about it in performance. What do you think he means? Do you agree or disagree?
Episode 3: Language and Character
Highlights
- Striking a balance between the Elizabethan and modern traditions requires the actors to make Shakespeare's words seem "found, coined, or fresh-minted" at the moment they're uttered.
- Barton advises actors to look for antitheses–words or thoughts set in opposition to each other within the same line or speech–and play them.
- Hamlet's advice to "suit the action to the word, the word to the action" serves modern actors well.
Questions to Consider
- Think about the recording of Sir Frank Benson delivering Mark Antony's famous oration from Julius Caesar (Act III, Scene 2). Listen to it again, if possible. How would you describe Benson's style, and how is it different from that of more modern Shakespearean performers?
- According to Barton, Elizabethan English was rougher, tougher, and more American than current British English. What do you think he means? How will his observation affect you, as an audience member, as you see and hear various productions on stage and screen?
- Roger Rees notes, "so much of our literature and playwriting today seems to be obsessed with the lack of language . . . the spaces and the pauses." Can you think of examples from books, plays, TV shows, or films? To what effect are such pauses or spaces used?
- As Barton says, Shakespeare's characters "need the language to express their situation and their characters." To what extent do you think that Barton's observation is truer in Shakespeare than in other works?
Episode 4: Exploring A Character
Highlights
- Like most of Shakespeare's characters, Shylock is neither wholly good nor wholly evil but a collection of inconsistencies–flawed, contradictory, and ultimately human.
- Patrick Stewart portrays Shylock as the quintessential alien or outsider, one obsessed with money and possessions.
- David Suchet emphasizes Shylock's Jewishness and explores it in the context of his relationships with his friends and enemies.
Questions to Consider
- Whose portrayal of Shylock affected you most powerfully and why?
- What tools did each actor use to communicate his vision of the character?
- How did each actor highlight the inconsistencies that made Shylock a three-dimensional human?
- If you've enjoyed other productions of The Merchant of Venice, how would you describe their Shylocks? Can you imagine alternatives to Suchet's and Stewart's approaches to the character?
Episode 5: Set Speeches and Soliloquies
Highlights
- Most of Shakespeare's set speeches and soliloquies have three parts: the response to a specific set of circumstances, the character's intellectual and emotional exploration of that situation, and the resolution.
- In these speeches, the actor must avoid generalizing the emotion and instead engage the audience so that they follow the character's thought process.
Questions to Consider
- Patrick Stewart delivers Titus's long speech from Act III, Scene 1 of Titus Andronicus twice–once in a manner that Barton refers to as "generalized," and once not. What specific differences did you notice in the two performances?
- Barton concludes by noting, "In dialogue, a character reaches out to another character, and in a soliloquy, a character reaches out to the audience." How does Michael Pennington reach out to you, as the audience, in his performance of Hamlet's soliloquy?
- With Barton's general direction and the company's examples as your guides, try to deliver Hamlet's famous soliloquy yourself. Afterward, discuss your intentions and technique. Here's the text:
To be or not to be–that is the question;
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep . . .
To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there's the rub.
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who could bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th'oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th'unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveler returns, puzzles the will.
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of ?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action.
–Hamlet, Act III, Scene 1
Episode 6: Irony and Ambiguity
Highlights
- Shakespeare often uses ironic dialogue to reveal certain characters' inner thoughts about themselves or other characters.
- To communicate irony, the actor must savor the words–or, as Barton describes it, put the words in quotation marks or capital letters.
Questions to Consider
- How would you explain the difference between irony and ambiguity? Can a line be both ironic and ambiguous?
- Ben Kingsley notes, "In a sense, you cannot write irony down." Do you agree or disagree? How do you identify irony in the text?
- How does identifying irony in Shakespeare's dialogue differ from identifying it in a novel, essay, or other prose?
- Considering the examples of ironic performances in this episode–particularly Richard Pasco's speech from Richard II and Tony Church and Michael Pennington's exchange from Troilus and Cressida–how do the actors use pace, inflection, and other tools to communicate irony?
Episode 7: Passion and Coolness
Highlights
- Shakespeare often calls upon actors to temper their characters' most emotional speeches with coolness or intellectual detachment.
- Overplaying the emotional elements of the dialogue may lead not only to a false or grotesque portrayal, but also to strangulation of the lines, monotony, or subversion of the text's power to move the audience.
Questions to Consider
- Barton readily admits that he advocates a "cool" reading of Shakespeare rather strongly–perhaps too strongly. Do you think that his direction strikes the right balance between detachment and emotion? Is balance even necessary?
- Ben Kingsley notes, "If you try and iron out these inconsistencies in order to make the part playable, you will in fact anesthetize the energy within the lines. The energy of the character and the predicament of the character are only available to the audience if the tension between the opposing forces is observed, relished, and played." How does this observation challenge an actor? A reader of Shakespeare?
- Compare Mike Gwilym's two portrayals of Hotspur's death scene from Henry IV, Part I. Which moved you more? Why?
- Barton warns that Gwilym's "naturalistic" rendering of the death speech obscures some of the words. Do you, as an audience member, need to catch every single word in this speech or in other emotionally charged dialogue?
- Discuss Susan Fleetwood's three readings of Sonnet 129–with lust, with disgust, and with self-awareness. Which seems most genuine to you?
Episode 8: Rehearsing the Text
Highlights
- Besides pointing out stresses, pauses, and subtle directions to the actors that Shakespeare embedded in the verse of Twelfth Night (Act II, Scene 4), Barton notes that verbs often convey the most meaning and emotion in a line.
- Feste's song more fully reveals Orsino's emotional state and other characters' reactions to it, rather than being a mere interlude or break in the scene's action.
Questions to Consider
- How does this rehearsal compare to others that you've witnessed, participated in, or imagined?
- How would you describe the exchange of ideas between the director and the actors? To what extent is this rehearsal a collaborative process?
- What did you, as an actor, learn from the actors' approaches to rehearsal and responses to direction? What did you, as a director, learn from Barton's approach?
- What insights about performance did the rehearsal spark for you, simply as an audience member?
Episode 9: Poetry and Hidden Poetry
Highlights
- Shakespeare often uses monosyllabic, seemingly prosaic lines to convey multiple meanings, resonant emotions, and a character's self-awareness.
- Actors strive to help the audience apprehend–if not comprehend– the complexity and hidden poetry of these lines.
- Reviewing recordings of Shakespearean actors from 50 years ago, the company speculates on how its own approach will be viewed in 50 years.
Questions to Consider
- In your own words, discuss what you think Barton means by "hidden poetry."
- Lisa Harrow raises what she calls an "old ghost"–the belief that reading Shakespeare is a richer experience than watching it performed. Do you agree or disagree? Why do you attend live performances of Shakespeare?
- How does the experience of watching a stage performance of Shakespeare compare with watching a Shakespearean film?
- Compare John Barton's and Ben Kingsley's readings of Brutus's speech over the body of Cassius in Julius Caesar. Which do you prefer, and why?
- Alan Howard suggests that Hamlet might have been less certain about his instructions to the players after he watched their performance than he was when he delivered it. After viewing this entire series, do you agree?
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