CHAPTER 12

Session Two

In this session: • Blank verse structure • Creating blank verse • Irregular feet • Scansion • Elision • Feminine endings • Trochees • Selecting monologues • Second assignment

Coach: Before we read your monologues today, let’s take a few minutes and work on blank verse itself. What is blank verse? Well, it’s nothing more than the English language written in ten syllable lines. Let’s use our own feet and walk like blank verse, just like we did last time. If you walk heel-toe, heel-toe, heel-toe, heel-toe, heel-toe you’ve just walked a line of blank verse.

(Everyone is up and walking.)

Let’s say it out loud while we walk. Heel-toe, heel-toe, etc. (Everyone does.)

Now let’s change heel-toe to dee-dum, dee-dum, dee-dum, dee-dum, dee-dum. (Everyone does and keeps walking.)

Now let’s make the dee, or heel, soft and the dum, or toe, stressed. Speak it that way as you walk about. (Everyone does.)

Now you have the rhythm of blank verse. Five feet, ten syllables, in each foot the first syllable is soft and the second is stressed. That kind of foot is called . . .

Alex: An iamb—Greek, iambos, for foot.

Coach: So five of those iambs give you penta iambs, thus the term “iambic pentameter”—which is a term describing the form blank verse is presented in. Everyone now has the feel of the rhythm, so let’s sit down and open our complete works to a page that contains both blank verse and prose. For example, look at page 280 in the Pelican edition of Much Ado about Nothing, or act I, scene i in the other editions that some of you have, and note the two dialogue styles. (Everyone opens to that page of MAAN.) What do you observe?

Bridgett: Verse lines are shorter.

Coach: They appear that way, don’t they? Can anyone explain it?

Amber: Ten syllables.

Coach: Sure. At ten syllables you have a regular blank verse line, so you go to the next line. But notice that often there is no punctuation at the end of the line. That line keeps going into the next line, and so on. If we count the number of words in a line, for example from period to period, verse lines can be just as long as prose lines—they just look different. And that’s because of the ten syllables. When you hear fine actors read blank verse it sounds no different than prose.

This is what Shakespeare and his contemporaries discovered. That the English language is best expressed in blank verse. It’s the way we speak naturally. It’s not poetry, but it can contain poetry. It doesn’t have to rhyme, but it can rhyme. Since Shakespeare’s time, no other author has been able to duplicate the perfection of his blank verse. Not only can he express his work in ten-syllable lines, but he makes the second syllable of each foot the more important syllable. If you don’t think that takes genius, try it for yourself. Let’s all speak some blank verse.

Everyone makes up blank verse lines and says them aloud. There are lots of laughs: “The mucus in my nose is running down.” “I sure do hope the Sonics win tonight.” “I got out of bed to take a shower.” “I hate being put on the spot like this.” We then try to redo the lines so that the second syllable in each foot is the more important, and have many more laughs.

As I mentioned earlier, this language is called “heightened text.” Most realism you hear today is not heightened, as it has no real rhythmic structure. However, you might look at some of Blanche’s speeches in Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. That may be as close as realistic playwrights come to heightened text.

Before the actors arrived, I had placed two sections of information on the eraser board—a collection of six lines of verse, and a listing of terms with scansion symbols. The lines are:

1. Let’s go to town and buy an ice cream cone.

2. Thou canst not speak of that thou does not feel.

3. What light through yonder window breaks?

4. The quality of mercy is not strained;

5. Horatio, thou art e’en as just a man;

6. To be, or not to be—that is the question.

The terms are:

1. iamb	Two-syllable foot, second syllable stressed.
2. trochee	Two-syllable foot, first syllable stressed.
3. anapest	Three-syllable foot, third syllable stressed.
4. dactyl	Three-syllable foot, first syllable stressed.
5. pyrrhic	Two-syllable foot, neither syllable stressed.
6. spondee	Two-syllable foot, both syllables stressed.

However, for iamb I wrote , and for trochee, .

Coach: Now let’s look at the eraser board and see how to scan the lines. Breaking the line into feet and stresses is called “scansion,” and with scansion we can read how the line is structured. Look at the first line, which is not Shakespeare’s.

Let’s go to town and buy an ice cream cone.

The first foot is “let’s go,” so we divide it right there with a diagonal line. We mark the other feet the same way. A regular line in Shakespeare starts “dee-dum,” so we mark it with a soft stress and a hard stress like this.

Often Shakespeare changes from a regular line to an irregular, but we’ll get to that shortly. After you’ve marked the scansion, you read the line by stressing the stressed words—go, town, buy, ice, cone. Now beat it out on the table or on your leg. (Everyone beats out the rhythm, hitting something on the “dum.”) This puts the rhythm into your muscle memory and it will stay there.

Now let’s change the scansion. (I put stresses over “cream” and “to.” We experiment with reading the line as marked, then conclude that we should not stress “to” but might stress “cream,” giving it the same importance as “cone.”)

Now the next line. Who wants to do it? (Jerrod walks to the board and marks the scansion:)

It’s a regular line, so we work on the stress that must be placed on “feel” and how much stress it can handle. We take turns reading the line and increasing the stress on “feel” with each reading. We continue until we’re shouting the word, which would usually be too much stress, and we begin to realize the importance of the final word in the blank verse line.

Coach: Usually we wouldn’t place that much stress on the final word, but the example points out the immense importance of the final word in a blank verse line.

The next line, which Bride works, also regular, is: “The quality of mercy is not strained;” and she scans and reads it, realizing that “strained” has to be stressed but won’t take as much as “feel.” She also discover why this is a harder line to scan: The words themselves sometimes divide into more than one syllable. “Quality” itself is three syllables and “ity” is a complete foot because it contains two syllables. Strained is a long word but it’s only one syllable.

Coach: Now that we’ve scanned these three lines, do you know how we can tell if we’re right? Try reading the lines and stress the unstressed words: thou, not, of, thou, not. And in the other line: the, it, of, cy, not. (Everyone tries this and we get lots of laughs.) That’s so awful it’s good!

Now say those two lines naturally. (All try.) Make them even more natural—no effort at stresses—try whispering them. Do them quietly into a microphone. (All try this and discover.) Notice what we hear. Even whispering, if you’ve once beaten the stresses into your system, you will automatically read the line correctly with just the slightest stress on the important words.

Alicia: Wait a minute. Something doesn’t seem right. You’ve written up there that an iamb is “stress/soft,” but that isn’t what we’re doing.

Coach: Good! You caught it. Everyone see what the problem is. I tried to fool you by messing up the first two terms, “iamb” and “trochee.” But you caught me at it.

Please go up and rewrite iamb correctly, and redo trochee. (Jerrod does.) The iambic foot is written soft/stress and an inverted foot, called a “trochee,” is written stress/soft. We’ll soon find a trochee. Look at the next line.

What light through yonder window breaks?

Who wants to work it? (Bridgett attempts to mark the scansion, then stops.)

Bridgett: Something’s fishy here. I don’t know how to get five feet.

Coach: What’s the matter?

Emily: We’re missing a foot. Is it finished by another line?

Coach: That could be a good guess, but it’s not what happens here. Somebody check the line in the book—Romeo and Juliet. (They find it.) What’s the problem?

Emily: There’s more to the line.

Coach: Right. I didn’t write down the first two words of the line. See what they are?

“But soft!” Now can you mark the five feet? (Bridgett adds the two words to the beginning of the line, then scans it.)

Now we have ten syllables. If you don’t get five feet and ten syllables, something is irregular. And Shakespeare does this all the time, but he didn’t do it here. Everyone beat out the rhythm of the line. (All actors practice reading the line with huge stresses and then very naturally, always beating out the rhythm.)

You have to do this with every verse line you ever tackle in Shakespeare. And we haven’t even started looking up the words. For example, what did “quality” mean to Shakespeare? What did “strained” mean—and “soft” and “breaks”? When you know what the words meant to Shakespeare your original use of the word will change. And, of course, we haven’t yet done phrasing and breathing, which come next. We have done two skills—scansion and end-of-line support. Except we still have to kick the box.

Kristin: What happens when he works backwards?

Coach: Do you mean a trochee?

Kristin: Yes, when he reverses the stresses.

Coach: Amazing you should ask that right now—because look at the next line.

Kristin: I already saw it coming. That’s why I asked the question!

Coach: Way ahead of me already. Someone read the next line. (Kristin goes to the board. She reads the line.)

Horatio, thou aren’t e’en as just a man

Coach: Go ahead and mark the scansion. (She does.) How many feet do you have?

Kristin: Six.

Bridgett: Five.

Coach: Before we answer, someone do the next line. (Amber marks the scansion.)

To be, or not to be—that is the question.

Coach: How many syllables? (All say “eleven.”) How many syllables in the other line? (Most say “eleven.” Some say “ten,” some say “twelve.”) The first thing we do with a blank verse line is count the syllables. If we don’t get ten, the next thing we do is check out the last syllable. Notice the difference in the last syllable of these two lines.

Emily: “Man” has to be stressed. But “tion” in “question” doesn’t have to be.

Coach: Right, because we don’t pronounce “question” as quesTION. So the “tion” is a feminine ending—a soft ending that is spoken but not stressed. You will find many feminine endings in Shakespeare—like “en” in “heaven,” “ing,” “er”; these endings, spoken softly, do not affect the rhythm.

Now write the word “e’en” and the word “even.” (Kristin writes these words on the board.) Now write the word “elision.” What does this say to you?

Kristin: This is like a contraction. He changed a two-syllable word into a one-syllable word by contracting two syllables into one.

Coach: Right. Now if Shakespeare had not elided “e’en,” how many syllables are in the line?

Amber: Twelve.

Coach: Now we have a six-foot line. But Shakespeare took it to eleven syllables; now we have to take it to ten. What else can we elide? Working backwards, “a man” has to be your final foot, and “as just” is a foot. So somewhere in the first part of the line we need to elide a syllable.

Emily: In “Horatio.”

Coach: Try it. (Kristin works out an elision to read the name with three syllables, “Ho-ra-sho.”) Now we have ten syllables. Mark the elision with an inverted “u” over the “i”—meaning you won’t pronounce the “i.” Now mark the scansion and beat it out. (She does.) Now you know the structure of the line. In rehearsal you can say the line depending on your impulse, your motivation to speak it, but whatever that is, the structure of the line will be correct.

Say the line as if Horatio is being a complete ass to you. (She tries a reading.) Good. Now as if Horatio is being very kind to you. (She tries a reading.) Good.

And so on—depending on your motivation. But each time, the line has its correct words stressed. We need to get the stresses and rhythm correct before we look for motivation—or character choices. They will fall together later.

Now, does everyone see what we’ve done? We’ve used a Shakespeare elision and one of our own creation. Now let’s go back to the most famous line in Shakespeare and mark the scansion. (Alex does.) And mark the feminine ending with parentheses around a “u.” Read the line the way you’ve written it, which is like a regular line. Some actors prefer to read the fourth foot not as “that IS” but as “THAT is”—an inverted foot. Try it both ways. (He does.) What do you think? (Everyone comments.) Is it a trochee or isn’t it? Well, it’s your choice. It’s an actor choice. You’re the one who has to make it work, so make your choice and do it your way. But if you change it, do it knowingly—do it as a choice, not because you didn’t know any better. Don’t shoot from the hip. Work out the scansion, then read the line the way you elect to scan it.

Generally you’re going to find trochees in the first, third, or fourth foot. If a line starts with a verb, the first foot is nearly always a trochee. If the third foot starts with a verb, it will be a trochee. Pretty soon scansion will be second nature to you, and you will trust your own judgment. We’ll be doing the monologues many times and will pick out the trochees.

Note the terms again and put them where you can get to them easily—iamb, trochee, anapest, dactyl, pyrrhic, and spondee. You might have one or more of these in your monologue. So next we’ll read the monologues, then kick the box, which will solidify the second skill—which is end-of-line support. You now have the first skill—how to scan a line. And we also know that we have to look up the words. Like “question,” for example; why didn’t Shakespeare use “problem” or “issue”? You need to know that. Let’s take a break then read the monologues.

The following approach to monologue selection works for me: I ask the actors to have their complete Shakespeare in front of them. They take turns reading monologues they want to work on. Everyone follows along. We discuss the merits or problems of each speech, including its usefulness as an audition piece.

Kristin chose A Midsummer Night’s Dream, act II, sc ii, Hermia, from “Help me, Lysander . . .” We reject this because Hermia is looking for a character who isn’t there and we believe Kristin can find something better. After cutting the brother’s line, we accept Measure for Measure, act III, sc i, Isabella, from “Oh you beast . . .” for her:

Isabella:     O you beast,

Faithless coward, O dishonest wretch!

Wilt thou be made a man out of my vice?

Is’t not a kind of incest, to take life

From thine own sister’s shame? What should I think?

Heaven shield my mother played my father fair,

For such a warped slip of wilderness

Ne’er issued from his blood. Take my defiance,

Die, perish. Might but my bending down

Reprieve thee from thy fate, it should proceed.

I’ll pray a thousand prayers for thy death,

No word to save thee.

[Cut Claudio line.]

O, fie, fie, fie!

Thy sin’s not accidental, but a trade;

Mercy to thee would prove itself a bawd,

’Tis best that thou diest quickly.

For Alicia, we accept Henry VI, Part 3, act I, sc i, Queen Margaret, from “Enforce thee…”after working out pronunciation of the names. We cut the first line and decide to begin with “I shame to hear thee speak,” as starting a monologue with a question can be weak. Starting with a strong statement that catches our ear is much better.

Queen Margaret:    I shame to hear thee speak. Ah, timorous wretch,

Thou hast undone thyself, thy son, and me,

And giv’n unto the house of York such head

As thou shalt reign but by their sufferance.

To entail him and his heirs unto the crown,

What is it but to make thy sepulcher

And creep into it far before thy time?

Warwick is chancellor and the lord of Calais;

Stern Falconbridge commands the narrow seas;

The duke is made Protector of the realm;

And yet shalt thou be safe? Such safety finds

The trembling lamb environed with wolves.

Had I been there, which am a silly woman,

The soldiers should have tossed me on their pikes

Before I would have granted to that act.

But thou preferr’st thy life before thine honor;

And seeing thou dost, I here divorce myself

Both from thy table, Henry, and thy bed

Until that act of parliament be repealed

Whereby my son is disinherited.

Emily chooses Twelfth Night, act II, sc ii, Viola, from “I left no ring with her . . .” We reject this because I warn the group that the monologue has been overused as an audition monologue, so it can’t really be used in professional auditions. We had earlier agreed that these monologues should be prepared for later use in the professional world.

Also, looking at this monologue we discover many differences in the six editions the actors are using. Both words and punctuation differ. We set the Pelican edition as “official” and all monologues are to be checked against it for specific spellings and punctuation.

Emily decides she really wants to work on the “I left no ring with her . . .” speech and none of the actors in the workshop has heard it before. (I realize again how much older I am!) However, before the next session Emily has decided not to do the “ring” monologue and instead selects Twelfth Night, act I, sc v, Viola, from “I see you what you are . . . .” We select this after cutting some lines and inserting a bridge phrase. Later we add an Olivia and put some of the lines back in.

Viola:        I see you what you are; you are too proud;

But if you were the devil, you are fair.

My lord and master loves you. O, such love

Could be but recompensed though you were crowned

The nonpareil of beauty.

[Cut Olivia, “How does he love me?” and the next nine lines.]

If I did love you in my master’s flame,

With such a suff’ring, such a deadly life,

In your denial I would find no sense;

I would not understand it.

[Cut Olivia, “Why, what would you?”]

[Insert]     Yet would I

Make me a willow cabin at your gate

And call upon my soul within the house;

Write loyal cantons of contemn’ed love

And sing them loud even in the dead of night;

Hallo your name to the reverberate hills

And make the babbling gossip of the air

Cry out ‘Olivia!’ O, you should not rest

Between the elements of air and earth

But you should pity me.

For Ryan, we accept Titus Andronicus, act V, sc i, Aaron, from “Even now I curse the day . . .” after a discussion about playing the good in an evil character.

Aaron:       Even now I curse the day, and yet I think

Few come within the compass of my curse,

Wherein I did not some notorious ill:

As kill a man, or else devise his death;

Ravish a maid, or plot the way to do it;

Accuse some innocent, and forswear myself;

Set deadly enmity between two friends;

Make poor men’s cattle break their necks;

Set fire on barns and haystacks in the night

And bid the owners quench them with their tears.

Oft have I digged up dead men from their graves

And set them upright at their dear friends’ door

Even when their sorrows almost was forgot,

And on their skins, as on the bark of trees,

Have with my knife carved in Roman letters

`Let not your sorrow die, though I am dead.’

But I have done a thousand dreadful things

As willingly as one would kill a fly,

And nothing grieves me heartily indeed

But that I cannot do ten thousand more.

Coach: Aaron is obviously a villain, and quite evil. However, for the actor, playing evil on top of evil creates one-dimensional characters, unless you’re playing “mellerdrama,” which is already one-dimensional. So when you choose villainy as an intention for a villain, or when you read a villain as a villain, what we hear is attitude—or HOW you’re reading becomes more important than WHAT you’re reading. When playing an evil character, look for what’s good in him/her. If there is nothing, look for what gives the villain joy or satisfaction—both better choices than evil. We’ll do more on this when we work on character. For now, you should concentrate on reading without interpretation. (However, Ryan later dropped the workshop, so we were never able to hear a final monologue.)

For Amber, we accept The Taming of the Shrew, act V, sc ii, Katherine (called Kate), from “I am ashamed that women are so simple . . .” after correcting many differences in punctuation between her text and the official text. Because of the length of the speech, we decide to begin at “Such duty as the subject owes the prince . . .” and discuss the differences between women’s positions in 1600s England and now.

Kate:         Such duty as the subject owes the prince,

Even such a woman oweth to her husband;

And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour,

And not obedient to his honest will,

What is she but a foul contending rebel

And graceless traitor to her loving lord?

I am ashamed that women are so simple

To offer war where they should kneel for peace,

Or seek for rule, supremacy, and sway,

When they are bound to serve, love, and obey.

Why are our bodies soft and weak and smooth,

Unapt to toil and trouble in the world,

But that our soft conditions and our hearts

Should well agree with our external parts?

Come, come, you froward and unable worms,

My mind hath been as big as one of yours,

My heart as great, my reason haply more,

To bandy word for word and frown for frown.

But now I see our lances are by straws,

Our strength as weak, our weakness past compare,

That seeming to be most which we indeed least are.

Then vail our stomachs, for it is no boot,

And place your hands below your husband’s foot,

In token of which duty, if he please,

My hand is ready, may it do him ease.

For Alex, we accept Henry IV, Part 1, act III, sc ii, Prince Hal, from “Do not think so . . .” but elect to begin with “God forgive them . . .” for a stronger opening, dropping “And.”

Prince:      God forgive them that so much have swayed

Your majesty’s good thoughts away from me.

I will redeem all this on Percy’s head

And, in the closing of some glorious day,

Be bold to tell you that I am your son,

When I will wear a garment all of blood,

And stain my favors in a bloody mask,

Which, washed away, shall scour my shame with it.

And that shall be the day, whene’er it lights,

That this same child of honor and renown,

This gallant Hotspur, this all-praised knight,

And your unthought-of Harry chance to meet.

For every honor sitting on his helm,

Would they were multitudes, and on my head

My shames redoubled! For the time will come

That I shall make this northern youth exchange

His glorious deeds for my indignities.

Percy is but my factor, good my lord,

To engross up glorious deeds on my behalf;

And I will call him to so strict account

That he shall render every glory up,

Yea, even the slightest worship of his time,

Or I will tear the reckoning from his heart.

This in the name of God I promise here;

The which if he be pleased I shall perform,

I do beseech your majesty may salve

The long-grown wounds of my intemperance.

If not, the end of life cancels all bands,

And I will die a hundred thousand deaths

Ere break the smallest parcel of this vow.

Bridgett chose The Two Gentlemen of Verona, act II, sc vii, Julia, from “The more thou . . .” We reject this because it’s so reflective and lacks real action. We try act I, sc ii, Julia, from “Nay, would I were so ang’red with the same . . .” because it has great fun and action.

Julia:        Nay, would I were so ang’red with the same!

O Hateful hands, to tear such loving words!

Injurious wasps, to feed on such sweet honey,

And kill the bees that yield it with your stings!

I’ll kiss each several paper for amends.

Look, here is writ ‘kind Julia.’ Unkind Julia!

As in revenge of the ingratitude,

I throw thy name against the bruising stones,

Trampling contemptuously on thy disdain.

And here is writ ‘love-wounded Proteus.’

Poor wounded name! My bosom as a bed

Shall lodge thee till they would be thoroughly healed,

And thus I search it with a sovereign kiss.

But twice or thrice was ‘Proteus’ written down—

Be calm, good wind, blow not a word away

Till I have found each letter in the letter,

Except mine own name; that some whirlwind bear

Unto a ragged, fearful-hanging rock,

And throw it thence into the raging sea!

Lo, here in one line is his name twice writ,

‘Poor forlorn Proteus, passionate Proteus,

To the sweet Julia.’ That I’ll tear away—

And yet I will not, sith so prettily

He couples it to his complaining names.

Thus will I fold them one upon another—

Now kiss, embrace, contend, do what you will.

Coach: Next time, we’ll get to the other three monologues. If your monologue has been approved, you should now type it up triple-spaced, check it against the Pelican edition, and bring a copy for each member of the workshop. See you next time. We got a lot done today.