CHAPTER 22

Session Twelve

In this session: • Listening to ourselves • Questions about the plays • Summary list of skills • Short lines • Text analysis • Checking scholarly sources • “Natural talent” • Next assignment

Coach: Now we’ll listen to ourselves. Today let’s run through the monologues without comment, and I’ll record them. Then we’ll listen and let you point out the problems. (They all do their monologues, and then we play them back. The actors point out what they have missed, and any other problems that are obvious on the recording.)

Alex: I hate listening to myself.

Coach: But what did you hear?

Amber: Bad voice, not breathing right.

Bridgett: Overemphasizing the end-of-line support. I was kicking the box too hard.

Alicia: Rushing. I wasn’t phrasing correctly. I understand better, now that I’ve heard myself.

Bride: Is my voice that high?

Maggie: Not all the time—not when you breathe more consistently.

Bridgett: It’s embarrassing to stumble over a word—it really shows up.

Coach: Like we said earlier, this material will expose you more quickly than realism. It’s more like singing a solo and forgetting the lyrics. We’ll record again in a couple of weeks to see if you think you’ve improved. Now, please turn to page 64 of your book. Here’s the line that introduces the chapter: “By the pricking of my thumbs, / something wicked this way comes.” Who speaks that line?

Bride: One of the witches in Macbeth.

Coach: Right. I used it here because the “something wicked” is how many actors, especially young ones, feel about analysis. Present company excepted, of course.

Alex: Of course. (Echo of that around the studio.)

Coach: But first, I promised to ask a few questions about each play. (Groans, but I ask three or four questions about each play to the actor who has the monologue from that play. They answer pretty well, so we move on.)

Here is a summary list of all the skills and techniques we’re learning. (We review all the skills studied to date.) The first three are clear—but number four, short or shared lines, we haven’t talked about very much. What do you think?

Bridgett: Is that when another actor finishes your line with her line?

Coach: That would be a shared line—two different speeches are connected on their last and first words, respectively, half of the line from one speaker and half from the next. What about short lines?

Bride: I have one line that’s only three feet. I think I’m supposed to do something to finish it out.

Coach: Most directors believe that is what “short or shared lines” require—finishing the short line with an action. At any rate, you’ve got to take the pause to keep the rhythm going. We’ve now worked on all of the skills on the list except imagery. “Text analysis” means all of these things, but it also means the specific analysis of a Shakespearean speech or sonnet. Without getting into character, we’ll do a little text analysis to prepare us for imagery.

I’ve selected one of the sonnets as an example, number 15. To understand the possibilities of what the ideas expressed in the sonnet might mean, I’ve used two sources—two scholars who have analyzed the sonnet. I’ve already given you two analyses of your sonnets and asked you to find a third. Here we’ll work with the same two. Look on page 66. I used two editions of the sonnet—Pelican and HarperCollins, and the scholars are Kerrigan and Booth. Now I’ll show you why. Let’s read through this sonnet nice and easy.

(Bride reads it. We pause after each idea to discuss what our first impression of the idea might be without looking ahead to see what others think. The actors come to love the sonnet, as I already do.)

Now, first we check the footnotes in the text—in our case, two texts. Notice that only one editor elects to define “holds in perfection,” and the other editor elects to define “stage.” Notice that all the way through, sometimes both editors define a word or phrase and sometimes they choose different ideas to define. For that reason, you’re better off using more than one edition. (We check all footnotes in both editions.) Let’s go now to the two scholars. Notice that Kerrigan elects to define lines 3 and 4 individually, but Booth puts lines 1 through 4 together.

Here’s a beautiful example of how analysis helps the actor with imagery. Notice how Kerrigan defines one of the words in line 4. (They study it.)

Bride: He defines what the Elizabethans meant by “influence.” The “stars” pour down an ethereal fluid that they call “influence.”

Amber: So the stars are affecting us by pouring this fluid into us—into our ear?

Coach: I don’t know about the ear, but that’s probably a good assumption. Do you notice that if you as the actor are aware of Shakespeare’s use of this word, it affects your imagery for that phrase?

Bride: You can really see something. “Influence” as we think of it today would be hard to find an image for.

Coach: Right. See how the actor can use this? Let’s go through everything these two scholars contribute to the sonnet, which will sound all too scholarly for an actor. But there are wonderful things to discover. You don’t need to pay attention to all of their analysis, as much is very scholarly—English literature—and it won’t help you for performance. But if you just go through it, you’ll have the discoveries—like “influence”—that you can use, and you wouldn’t otherwise have these thoughts to work with.

We find many useful ideas—like “cheered” and “height” and “wear their brave state”—perhaps like some older ladies wear little fox collars on coats, and to them it is high fashion.“Height,” when used to mean “later in age” or “at the peak of one’s skills,” becomes antithetical to “rich in youth.” The actors gain a deep appreciation for the sonnet but seem strained.

Coach: It doesn’t really take long to review some scholarly ideas about Shakespeare’s words. Some very smart people have spent years of their lives working out these ideas, and they can help you as an actor. They will give you something you didn’t have before you did this.

Do this analysis with your sonnets—but also do it with your monologues. You’re already looking up the words, and that’s a big part of it. It’s your job as an actor to know exactly what you’re saying.

Alicia: I think that’s why some actors of Shakespeare, like Kenneth Branagh, seem so good. You believe they know exactly what they’re saying.

Kristin: Even if you don’t.

Bride: And it doesn’t matter, because they know and you just accept.

Coach: Now you see why so many actors seem poor at Shakespeare. We could name many. It’s hard work to get under this language, to have a complete feel for what it’s doing. And who wants to work that hard?

Maggie: We like to use “natural talent.”

Coach: And then you’re never quite sure that you’re right. So the acting seems tentative. Most of what I see in amateur Shakespeare productions has that, and sometimes even professional productions suffer from it. So how does an actor take that next step? Well, look at what we just did. If you were to perform this sonnet and only look at the footnotes, ignoring the other information that’s available to you (like the OED), you would never realize the discoveries we just discussed. You would never know what “influence” meant when used with “stars.” Or “height” as perhaps an actor’s career, or “wearing your finery,” or your love becoming disfigured. If your love becomes disfigured, what does that do to you emotionally? You’ll never get that from the sonnet just by reading the footnotes and relying on your “natural talent.”

Any comments? Do you understand why I ask you to do this analysis? (They do.) Don’t rely only on your natural talent. That’s like a superior athlete who goes drinking every night and plays at seventy percent of his ability. Where does that take you? To a short career and depression, probably.

Next time we’re going to run the monologues to see what new information you might have discovered, then move on to imagery. So complete the analysis of your monologue. See you then.