CHAPTER 10
Love the Imagery
I ONCE ASKED a fine professional actress what she thought was meant by imagery. She said, “In a text? Well, certain words allow me to draw pictures for the audience—put pictures in their minds. I think that is imagery.”
Here is Webster’s first definition of imagery: The formation of mental images.
The images in Shakespeare’s language are expressions of the character’s state of mind at that moment. Thousands of papers and books have been written about this subject, and you might want to study some of them at your leisure. For our purposes, remember this: Shakespeare’s characters speak what they are thinking, and they communicate much of the time through imagery. That imagery is often a very strong clue to who the character is.
Shakespeare’s characters use imagery far more than do the characters in modern plays. They need to express themselves through images, either contemporary or classical. In Elizabethan times, the other characters, and the audience, grasped the images. All were on the same page. Nowadays, if you speak in classical images, much of the audience is likely to be left “in the dark.”
Here are a few examples of imagery. In Romeo and Juliet, Juliet, a thirteen-year-old girl, uses nine specific images in only seven lines, as she impatiently awaits word of Romeo:
Juliet: Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds, (1)
Towards Phoebus’ lodging! Such a wagoner (2)
As Phaeton would whip you to the west, (3)
And bring in cloudy night immediately. (4)
Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night, (5)
That runaways’ eyes may wink, and Romeo (6)
Leap to these arms untalked of and unseen. (III, ii) (7)
Note the images:
Line 1: “fiery-footed steeds”
Line 2: “Phoebus’ lodging” (Phoebus is Apollo as the sun god)
Line 3: “wagoner as Phaeton” (Phaeton is Phoebus’ son)
Line 3: “whip you to the west”
Line 4: “cloudy night”
Line 5: “spread thy close curtain”
Line 5: “love-performing night”
Line 6: “runaways’ eyes may wink”
Line 7: “Romeo leap to these arms”
In all likelihood, most of the Elizabethan audience understood these images. Surely the actors in the company were familiar with them. Nowadays, comparing something to Phoebus or Phaeton would hardly clarify the idea.
In this example from act III of Henry V, Chorus describes the scene of the King’s departure for France.
Chorus: Thus with imagined wing our swift scene flies, (1)
In motion of no less celerity (2)
Than that of thought. Suppose that you have seen (3)
The well-appointed king at Hampton pier (4)
Embark his royalty; and his brave fleet (5)
With silken streamers the young Phoebus fanning. (6)
Play with your fancies, and in them behold (7)
Upon the hempen tackle shipboys climbing; (8)
Hear the shrill whistle which doth order give (9)
To sounds confused; behold the treaden sails, (10)
Borne with th’ invisible and creeping wind, (11)
Draw the huge bottoms through the furrowed sea, (12)
Breasting the lofty surge. (III, i) (13)
. . . and continuing for a total of thirty-five image-rich lines. Here are the first:
1. The “scene” flying as if on wings
4. “the well-appointed king”
5. “brave fleet/With silken streamers”
6. “young Phoebus fanning”
8. “hempen tackle” followed by “shipboys climbing”
9. “the shrill whistle”
10. “treaden sails”
11. “invisible and creeping wind”
12. “huge bottoms” followed by “furrowed sea”
13. “breasting the lofty surge”
As a final example, look back at Sonnet 15 on page 66, and let’s concentrate on some of the images.
3. “huge stage” . . . “shows”
4. “stars . . . comment”
7. “vaunt in their youthful sap” (youth boasting); “height decrease” (aged bending)
8. “wear their brave state” (perhaps aged people wearing what is out of fashion; other possibilities as well)
10. “set you most rich in youth” (seeing the one you love in the richness of youth)
11. “Time . . . Decay” (an image which is probably different to each person)
12. “sullied night”
14. “engraft you new”
For by the image of my cause I see
The portraiture of his.
HAMLET, V, ii
A well-spoken image should create an analogy, an identifiable likeness, in the listener’s mind. Nearly every speech in Shakespeare contains images. Use them to help you play your action and achieve your objective.
An image-rich passage is active, not passive. In performance, it engages (or seduces) the listener to participate in the character’s action. It is not sentimental, and if you read it too lyrically the listener will lose interest. The imagery must be active and move the action forward.
IMAGERY EXERCISE
With this exercise, the actor experiences what the audience will experience—the language, complete with images, coming at the ear. It is not enough for the actor to visualize an image and then use that visualization to help create an emotion to accompany the line reading, a technique which is commonly taught in realistic acting classes. It is more important that the actor not indulge in applying an emotion, but learn to handle the image vocally so that the audience can experience it as well.
To practice how to handle the image vocally, apply this exercise to any of Shakespeare’s speeches. If a line does not yield an image for you, simply go on to the next line. Not all lines contain clear images.
Look at Chorus’s speech from Henry V as shown on page 71. Read it aloud once for sense and for the listeners to hear how you read it. Then lie back on the floor, close your eyes, and have someone else read the speech to you—very slowly—without any emphasis or selection of important words. When you hear a word which invokes an image, raise you hand to signal the reader to pause. Concentrate on the image. When you have it in detail, lower your hand to signal the reader to continue—very slowly. Pause at the next image, etc. When you’ve heard all of the lines, stand and read the speech yourself aloud.
You and the listeners will notice many things. You will try to communicate to the listener the details of the images you have seen. Your articulation and control of the language will improve. You will slow down. You will develop a personal commitment to the images in the speech and a personal ownership of the lines. You will want to make them clear.
This wonderful exercise works every time. You can also use it for realistic text.
You may notice that speeches rich in imagery often have few antithetical words, phrases, or thoughts. Looking at Chorus’s same speech, the antithetical words are limited to “motion” and “thought” in lines 2 and 3, “order” and “confused” in lines 9 and 10, and “furrowed” and “lofty” in lines 12 and 13. In Juliet’s image-rich speech above, the idea of getting rid of light and bringing on night is antithetical, but there isn’t much else.
As an actor, you love words that allow you to draw images. You want to paint pictures in the listeners’ minds. Painting pictures helps you to establish who you are, where you are, and what you want. To help you paint those pictures, you won’t find better images in dramatic language than Shakespeare’s. Love and cherish them!
To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!
HAMLET, III, i
There are other skills you may want to learn for playing Shakespeare, but we won’t study them here. The skills learned in this book prepare you for more advanced work. There are dozens of other exercises which, if practiced, will develop your skills, especially vocal.
Study Cicely Berry’s book, The Actor and the Text, John Barton’s Playing Shakespeare (with the accompanying videos), and Kristin Linklater’s Freeing Shakespeare’s Voice or Patsy Rodenburg’s The Need for Words, The Right to Speak and The Actor Speaks. They will help you to improve your Shakespeare.
Do your language study before rehearsals begin, then the rehearsal process can be about character and relationships, as it should be.
A parting thought: no, not “parting is such sweet sorrow,” but rather—
Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town crier spoke my lines. Hamlet, III, ii
There will be no such mouthing, I pray you . . . (WV)
Thou speak’st
In better phrase and matter than thou didst.
KING LEAR, IV, vi
O, well done! I commend your pains,
And every one shall share i’ th’ gains.
MACBETH, IV, i
Answer from page 61: line 1, first phrase to the second phrase; lines 2/3, “wish him dead”—“hate the murderer”; line 3, “hate”—“love” and “murderer”—“murdered”; lines 4/5, “guilt of conscience”—“good word nor princely favor”; lines 6/7, “wander”—“show” and “the shade of night”—“day nor light.”
Answer from page 61-62: Here are only a few of the antithetical words, phrases, or thoughts. You should have no trouble picking out the others. Line 1, first phrase against the second phrase; line 2, “peevish boy”—“talks well”; line 3, first phrase against the second phrase; line 4, “speaks”—”hear”; line 5, “is pretty”—“not pretty”; line 6, “proud”—“pride becomes”; lines 8/9 “offense”—“heal” and “tongue”—“eye.” There are at least six more in the next twenty-two lines. But note—the second part of the speech, beginning with line 20, is antithetical to the entire first part of the speech. The character appears to reverse direction in the middle of her thoughts. We hadn’t seen that reversal in any of the other examples.
Answers from page 63: Line 3/4, “stage”—“stars” and “shows”—“comment”; line 6, “cheered”—“checked”; line 7, “vaunt”—“decrease” and “youthful”—“height”; line 12, “day”—“night” or “day of youth”—“sullied night”; line 13, “war”—“love”; line 14, “takes”—“engraft.” Note that the thought of lines 9–14 is antithetical to the thought of lines 1–8. The reader must set up the idea that “time wins every time,” so that this thought can be contradicted with “however, my love is such that when time pursues you, my poem makes you immortal in youth.”