Conflicting theories can tie the verse into a Gordian knot. However, actors have found the following observations useful.
The verse follows the same rules as any other target. First, the verse is there for the actor. The actor is not there for the verse. The verse gives its energy to the actor. The actor is not obliged to accept this gift but is foolish to refuse it.
Second, if the verse and the sense are in conflict, then the actor is obliged to follow the sense. The actor, in the end, must do only what makes sense to the actor.
Let us take Juliet’s speech:
‘Thou know’st the mask of night is on my face,
Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek
For that which thou hast heard me speak tonight.
Fain would I dwell on form; fain, fain deny
What I have spoke. But farewell, compliment.
Dost thou love me? I know thou wilt say “Ay”,
And I will take thy word. Yet, if thou swear’st,
Thou mayst prove false. At lovers’ perjuries,
They say, Jove laughs. O gentle Romeo,
If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully.
Or, if thou think’st I am too quickly won,
I’ll frown and be perverse and say thee nay,
So thou wilt woo; but else, not for the world.
In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond,
And therefore thou mayst think my ’haviour light,
But trust me, gentleman, I’ll prove more true
Than those that have more cunning to be strange.
I should have been more strange, I must confess,
But that thou overheard’st, ere I was ware,
My true-love passion; therefore pardon me,
And not impute this yielding to light love
Which the dark night hath so discovered.’
First tendency of the verse:
the line yearns to be regular
The line is called the iambic pentameter. This impressive expression helps only if we dismantle it and examine its parts.
Iambic refers to the iamb, the name for the basic beat of the line, sometimes known as a ‘foot’. The stresses of an iamb go weak/strong, as in the words:
today, goodbye, farewell, hello, goodnight, Macbeth, obey, renown, pronounce, perverse, impute, redeem, endorse, believe, confirm, protect, expect, survive and salute.
Each of these words is composed of an iamb, weak/ strong.
It is an excellent exercise for Irina to make up her own regular blank verse – it is a lot easier than it sounds. Starting with single words as above and building to single lines:
‘I wonder what the time is? Am I late?’
‘I’d like a ticket for the match tonight.’
‘I think it’s raining. Did I bring a coat?’
‘I hate rehearsing when I’ve got a cold.’
As in the message exercises, this is best played in pairs or groups, alternating lines:
‘I’d like to speak in verse with you today.’
‘I hear they spoke like this all day at court.’
‘I hardly think that’s true, that’s just a myth.’
‘I’d like a cup of tea – I take it black.’
And finally into conversations:
‘A cigarette? No thanks, I’m giving up.’
‘Oh well, perhaps just one, it helps me think.’
The verse exercise is surprisingly easy; English naturally falls into this pattern.
Let us take Juliet’s first line in the speech:
‘Thou know’st the mask of night is on my face’
Irina could stress as follows:
‘Thou know’st the mask of night is on my face’
i.e. Only you, Romeo, know that the mask of night is on my face and nowhere else on my body.
In which case, there are as many as eight weak beats in the line and only two strong beats; the only iamb is ‘my face’.
The line could mean this, but Irina has many choices. She could give several different meanings to the line by stressing as follows:
‘Thou know’st the mask of night is on my face’
‘Thou know’st the mask of night is on my face’
‘Thou know’st the mask of night is on my face’
But the question for Irina is this: can she make the last reading, which is regular, work for her? In other words, does this final version of the stresses make sense? Can that final ‘on’ take a stress?
If Irina can sensibly stress the line:
‘Weak strong weak strong weak strong weak strong weak strong’
then that is what Irina should do. One of the excellent side effects of verse is that it forces us to consider how many choices we have. When we see a line, we have several possibilities of inflection.
If all things are equal and you can make good sense of the meaning with the regular stress pattern, then use it.
Jazz
Verse works a little like jazz. In jazz there is a sense of what is regular, say 4/4 time; then this is the beat that is ‘square’. Jazz is not as independent of beat as it sometimes sounds. Jazz musicians know they depend on a highly disciplined beat that they can then disobey. And this disobedience releases energy.
Verse works in a similar way. Verse creates an expectation of a beat. Tee-tum, tee-tum, tee-tum, etc., and suddenly, if we meet not a tee-tum, but a tee-tee or a tum-tee or a tum-tum, we react; our anticipation has been denied. We have predicted something, however unconsciously, like the moving escalator, and when it doesn’t happen as expected, we get a jolt. In verse this jolt seems to be a bolt out of the blue, a hit of external energy. As we have seen, sources of external energy are precious for the actor. Verse supplies a ready supply of outside energy. Verse is a windfall for the actor.
Anticipation denied
Verse sets up an anticipation that the actor can either satisfy or deny. If anticipation is continually denied, then all anticipation gets lost. That is one of the reasons why the line yearns to be regular. Too many irregular lines would dismantle the verse into prose.
Of course, Irina’s choices will change the more Irina develops in her work. At the beginning of rehearsals she may feel a line cannot be regular and later on in the run feel that perhaps it can, after all, and give it a try; and vice versa.
It is a matter of negotiation between the actor and the verse. The line always wants to be regular. Sometimes the actor will agree with the verse. Sometimes the actor will hotly disagree and break the regular iambic rhythm. More often a line could just about manage to be said regularly, and the actor will have to decide whether to give in to the verse or not. Each line presents its own special opportunities. The law is there, but each case should be decided on the facts.
The pentameter
The second tendency derives from the second word in iambic pentameter. As we have seen, the iamb refers to the basic beat. Iamb is a name for a unit called a foot. Pentameter is derived from the Greek word for five. There are five feet in each line. Ideally each foot in the iambic pentameter is an iamb; ideally there are five iambs in each line.
The line wants to have five neat iambs all of its own. The line does not want four iambs, or six iambs. No. The line wants all five, and only five, iambs. The verse does not always get what it wants; but it never gives up trying.
(Thou know’st) (the mask) (of night) (is on) (my face)
Five iambs and the verse is satisfied. It is easy to hear the familiar throb of the iamb . . . tee-tum . . . tee-tum. But how does Irina mark the fact that there are only five iambs per line? How does the audience hear that after the fifth iamb there is a new line? Should Irina leave a pause to make this clear to the audience? The actor, as we know, should never try to make anything clear to the audience.
Second tendency of the verse:
the first stressed syllable of the line yearns to be the most important syllable of that line
‘Thou know’st the mask of night is on my face’
Here ‘know’st’ wants to be more important than the other stressed syllables: ‘mask’, ‘night’, ‘on’ and ‘face’. Irina may feel that the words ‘mask’, ‘night’ and ‘face’ are far more interesting than the bald word ‘know’st’ and may want to put more energy into these more exciting and glamorous words.
But the actor should first take care of the unassuming syllable near the beginning of the line, around which the sense of the entire line revolves.
Of course, only in a regular line will the first stress fall on the second syllable. If the line is irregular, the first stressed syllable might be the first, or the third or even the fourth syllable. The rule remains that wherever the first stress falls, that syllable asks to be considered as first candidate for the line’s most important syllable. Of course this affects the meaning.
The first stressed syllable
‘Thou know’st the mask of night is on my face,
Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek
For that which thou hast heard me speak tonight.
Fain would I dwell on form; fain, fain deny
What I have spoke. But farewell, compliment.
Dost thou love me? I know thou wilt say “Ay”,
And I will take thy word. Yet, if thou swear’st,
Thou mayst prove false. At lovers’ perjuries,
They say, Jove laughs. O gentle Romeo,
If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully.
Or, if thou think’st I am too quickly won,
I’ll frown and be perverse and say thee nay,
So thou wilt woo; but else, not for the world.
In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond,
And therefore thou mayst think my ’haviour light,
But trust me, gentleman, I’ll prove more true
Than those that have more cunning to be strange.
I should have been more strange, I must confess,
But that thou overheard’st, ere I was ware,
My true-love passion; therefore pardon me,
And not impute this yielding to light love
Which the dark night hath so discovered.’
All line readings are personal. The above is a provisional choice of where the first stressed syllable may fall. ‘There-fore’ reminds us that we do not mean the first stressed word. This is an important distinction. We are talking about the first stressed syllable.
The last line of the speech reminds us that the first stressed syllable does not necessarily fall on the second syllable. Here it is marked the third syllable. However, there are good arguments for the first stressed syllable to be the third syllable in some of the above lines.
Reading each of the lines it will be seen that the meaning subtly changes if the first stressed syllable becomes more important than any of the words at the end of the line. It can involve quite an act of renunciation.
For example, let’s take the second line:
‘Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek’
Here the first stressed syllable is ‘would’. But does ‘would’ really matter more than ‘bepaint’? ‘Bepaint’ seems so much more interesting than ‘would’. Surely ‘bepaint’ deserves more energy than ‘would’? The imagination runs to the wonderful words towards the end of other lines, as, for example, ‘cunning’ and ‘strange’. Surely Irina should spend more time on these intriguing words and less on the boring adjective, ‘those’, at the beginning of their line?
The challenge is this: if Irina dwells on the thrilling images at the end of the line, she will tend to emote on those words. She will push her feeling into a frame for ever too large for its contents. Spreading feeling into and onto the big words fixes the actor in the same problems we have met before. The frame must always be smaller; the feeling is always bigger than the word.
On the whole, the big words need to be controlled; it is the first stressed syllable that needs to be made work. If we run the first stressed syllables together we get a good impression of what the character sees and what the character thinks that she needs to do. In this speech we find:
Know’st
Would
That
Would
I
Thou
I
Mayst
Say
Thou
If
Frown
Thou
Truth
There
Trust
Those
Should
That
True
Not
Dark
We can even make almost-sentences:
‘Know’st, would! That would I!
Thou, I mayst say thou, if frown thou.
Truth, there!
Trust those!
Should that true?
Not dark.’
What can Irina hear in these words?
Clues to what Juliet sees?
A world that makes her need to control it?
A Romeo that makes her need to believe him?
To trust him?
A Romeo whom Juliet needs to believe?
A darkness to be used?
A darkness to be feared?
A darkness to be overcome?
A truth that must be uncovered?
A truth that must be protected by the dark?
A balance between him and her that must be created and maintained?
A Romeo that must be loved?
This word sequence offers an insight into what Juliet thinks she wants. Even without the re-punctuation the sequence has an impressive energy.
Punctuation and breathing
‘Thou know’st the mask of night is on my face
Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek
For that which thou hast heard me speak tonight
Fain would I dwell on form fain fain deny
What I have spoke but farewell compliment
Dost thou love me I know thou wilt say Ay
And I will take thy word yet if thou swear’st
Thou mayst prove false at lovers perjuries
They say Jove laughs O gentle Romeo
If thou dost love pronounce it faithfully
Or if thou think’st I am too quickly won
I’ll frown and be perverse and say thee nay
So thou wilt woo but else not for the world
In truth fair Montague I am too fond
And therefore thou mayst think my ’haviour light
But trust me gentleman I’ll prove more true
Than those that have more cunning to be strange
I should have been more strange I must confess
But that thou overheard’st ere I was ware
My true-love passion therefore pardon me
And not impute this yielding to light love
Which the dark night hath so discovered’
It is always useful to remove the punctuation from Shakespearean text; it is extremely unlikely that he supervised the printing of any of his plays and so we cannot know for sure what he intended. Indeed, different editions have conflicting versions from different editors.
There is another reason for de-punctuating: if we read the unpunctuated text aloud we run out of breath because we are no longer told when to stop. This is an advantage. Modern punctuation follows modern conventions. It is a modern prose convention that we have many short thoughts. But, whatever the convention, we naturally breathe on the thought. The depth of the breath we take is dictated by the stakes. We do not have to think about this rule in real life; it is a reflex. When under threat, a second’s delay could mean the difference between life and death.
In attempting to clarify, modern punctuation may dismantle the original thought. If the Shakespearean long thought is deconstructed, it will change or lose its meaning.
A word of caution
We often pretend that we want to do certain things we are in fact forced to do. We may deny that we have no option. So we can invent countless reasons why that long thought should be chopped into many little ones, tiny bite-sized thoughtlets. All aided and abetted by a plethora of modern commas.
It is emphatically not a problem that Shakespeare is so complex you need a degree to understand it. His thinking is not some cerebral conundrum that only academics can fathom. The major difficulty for modern actors approaching Shakespeare is practical: the length of thought demands far more breath than the actor needs for most modern texts. Actors must train physically for the long thought so that they may breathe when they want to and not when they have to.
Reading the speech unpunctuated may make Irina get out of breath. This is a useful lesson, for Irina needs to try as much of the speech as she can without breathing in, because some thoughts in Shakespeare are exceptionally long.
However, breathing exercises do demand patience and endurance. Actors often feel helpless or enraged the first time they run out of breath. These feelings are also practical. It is entirely helpful to face our limitations. If we never dare explore the rim of our capacities, we can never expand them.
Irina needs to practise slow exhaling. There are many exercises. Only the most obvious is to breathe in deeply and breathe out while counting slowly and aloud. With practice the number reached comfortably can rise. Previous generations have had much technical advice. My advice is that breathing, even if it needs particular capacity and stamina for Shakespeare, must always be natural. The actor should never feel forced to retain breath. Artificial techniques can block the actor. The body knows better how to breathe than we can consciously teach. If we need more breath, the body will provide us with the means. We only need to provide the body with enough practice.
Natural reserves of breath
When the stakes soar, our lungs never empty. Empty lungs reduce our capacity for fight or flight. This deep-breath reflex is bred in us. Both bulls and robins inflate their chests when frightened or angry. Of course we can take in small top-up breaths that happen naturally and by reflex. But in the presence of danger, we never let our lungs completely empty. When the stakes soar we could not pump out all our breath even if we wanted to; just as we cannot commit suicide by holding our breath. The reflex is stronger than the conscious will.
Shakespearean verse demands a lot of breath – the stakes are high and the thought is long. If you want a car to drive comfortably at sixty miles an hour, it ought to be able to reach a hundred miles an hour. The car that can only do sixty miles an hour will have problems with endurance and power even if its limit is never breached; the breathing apparatus is the same.
Irina will breathe when Juliet’s sense demands it. Irina should not have to think about when to breathe. Irina will breathe naturally on the thought. Her intake of breath will follow the sense automatically. But Irina needs to see that the spoken thoughts of Juliet are often longer than they appear to a modern reader. Reading and rereading the text aloud and without punctuation will help Irina to see how long some of Juliet’s thoughts might be.
The last word sequence
If we list the last words, they make an extraordinary effect. Unlike the first stressed syllable we are now talking of whole words. This last word sequence opens a door onto the vastness of the unconscious mind. This exercise is invaluable for the invisible work.
Irina reads the final words aloud and slowly:
face
cheek
tonight
deny
compliment
Ay
swear’st
perjuries
Romeo
faithfully
won
nay
world
fond
light
true
strange
confess
ware
me
love
discovered
These sequences are often astonishing, and seem to give an irrational and subconscious version of the character and even the whole play. It is reductive to define
what the sequence means. The phenomenon works mysteriously by developing what the actor sees. This juxtaposition will mean something personal to Irina that is subjective, indefinable, profound, and will enrich the targets that she sees through Juliet’s eyes.
Of course this artificial sequencing must be forgotten for the visible work. Like every other component of the invisible work, the impression will decide when and how it makes its influence felt.
The acceleration
Reading the text aloud, Irina may notice that something strange occurs between the last word and the following first stressed syllable:
‘Thou know’st the mask of night is on my face
Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek
For that which thou hast heard me speak tonight
Fain would I dwell on form fain fain deny
What I have spoke but farewell compliment
Dost thou love me I know thou wilt say Ay’
There is a noticeable tendency to accelerate. This desire to race to the first stressed syllable seems to come from somewhere else. The verse has a will of its own. So there exists a seemingly independent urge to go fast between ‘face’ and ‘would’, between ‘cheek’ and ‘that’, between ‘tonight’ and ‘would’, between ‘deny’ and ‘I’ and between ‘compliment’ and ‘thou’, etc.
This acceleration between the last word and the following first stressed syllable is the major means by which the line ending makes itself felt. The actor may go with the acceleration, may deny it, may obey it, may disobey it, but the actor cannot simply ignore it.
Other examples
We can look at the effects of the last word and first stressed syllable exercise on the three speeches we looked at earlier.
‘Hist Romeo hist O for a falconers voice
To lure this tassel-gentle back again
Bondage is hoarse and may not speak aloud
Else would I tear the cave where Echo lies
And make her airy tongue more hoarse than mine
With repetition of my Romeos name . . .
’Tis almost morning I would have thee gone
And yet no farther than a wantons bird
That lets it hop a little from his hand
Like a poor prisoner in his twisted gyves
And with a silken thread plucks it back again
So loving-jealous of his liberty . . .
Sweet so would I
Yet I should kill thee with much cherishing
Good night good night parting is such sweet sorrow
That I shall say good night till it be morrow’
Here is a list of the possible first stressed syllables:
Hist
lure
Bond
would
make
rep
al
yet
lets
poor
with
lov
I
night
I
(Incidentally, I can only make out four stresses in the line: ‘Like a poor pris-oner in his twist-ed gyves’. Were the line regular it should have five stresses of course. Perhaps the first ‘Like’ could take a stress. This decision has to be left to Irina; after all, it is her imagination alone that can make this line seem like the inevitable consequence of what she sees.)
This sequence of syllables is quite telling. These first stressed syllables imply an urgency or an intensity that might get overlooked if Irina gets distracted by the magnificence of the later final words. Perhaps Juliet feels she needs to take events into her control, and not leave them to fate or to Romeo. Irina can sense many conscious actions and targets in this sequence that are too subtle to be described in prose. This sequence of first stressed syllables can give Irina some constructive ideas for her invisible work.
The underpoem
Once more, Irina can use the last word sequence to stimulate her imagination:
voice
again
aloud
lies
mine
name
gone
bird
hand
gyves
again
liberty
I
cherishing
sorrow
morrow
– another astonishing underpoem: mysterious, rich, allusive, joyful, generous, frightening, epic, tender and prophetic. This underpoem is like a secret message sent from Shakespeare’s unconscious direct to Irina’s. All Irina need do is pay attention to the sequence, by reading it aloud and slowly and with a head as empty as possible. The matrix leaves its own mark by feeding the unconscious.
The caesura
Another technical aspect of verse is the impressively named ‘caesura’.
Loosely speaking, the caesura is a break in the middle of the line, and is often used to mirror antitheses. With open attention, Irina will discover these breaks herself. Too much expert advice on the caesura can confuse, and there is no hard and fast rule on the caesura in each Shakespearean line. Some lines have no caesura at all. Some lines split naturally into more than two and the best way for Irina to develop a sense of these breaks is through practice.
The mid-line turn
There is, however, an exception and that is when there is an unavoidable caesura because Shakespeare has put a ‘turn’ not only at the end of a line, but also in the middle.
A ‘turn’ here includes not only a full stop; it indicates wherever the thought has a major change of direction; such a place might be marked in modern punctuation also with an exclamation mark, a question mark, a dash or a semi-colon. Typically these turns would be reserved till the end of the line.
‘Turn’ is a more helpful word than stop. ‘Stop’ implies that the energy stops and starts again. In a play the energy never stops. The energy may be transmuted into a seeming stillness and silence, but beneath the tranquil surface, the play storms on. As in a relay race, the baton of energy is deftly passed from performer to performer; the energy changes but the baton of energy is never dropped. Dropping the baton only loses a relay race, but if the insecure pilot decides to check the engines mid-flight – and switches them off to test them, then the result will be more serious.
Here is a speech with some provisional mid-line turns marked:
1. ‘Thou know’st the mask of night is on my face
2. Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek
3. For that which thou hast heard me speak tonight
4. Fain would I dwell on form fain fain deny
5. What I have spoke TURN but farewell compliment
6. Dost thou love me TURN I know thou wilt say Ay
7. And I will take thy word TURN yet if thou swear’st
8. Thou mayst prove false TURN at lovers perjuries
9. They say Jove laughs TURN o’ gentle Romeo
10. If thou dost love pronounce it faithfully
11. Or if thou think’st I am too quickly won
12. I’ll frown and be perverse and say thee nay
13. So thou wilt woo TURN but else not for the world
14. In truth fair Montague I am too fond
15. And therefore thou mayst think my ’haviour light
16. But trust me gentleman I’ll prove more true
17. Than those that have the cunning to be strange
18. I should have been more strange I must confess
19. But that thou overheard’st ere I was ware
20. My true-love passion TURN therefore pardon me
21. And not impute this yielding to light love
22. Which the dark night hath so discovered’
What does Irina need to do at these mid-line turns? Irina will notice that the mid-line turn denotes an unusually important change; it is a red light, an emergency warning: ‘Watch out – this turn is sharper than you think!’
The turn and the target
The turn is entirely dependent on the target. We cannot force ourselves to turn around internally. We can only change direction because the target has changed. It is the target that changes before we can change. We are for ever trying to keep up with the changing target.
For the actor, the mid-line turn signifies a major change of target. It asks the actor to see something altogether new. A big change of target at each mid-line turn will encourage the actor to make an interesting choice. Something unexpected jumps in front of the character’s gaze. This new target could be many different things, but it should be substantially different from what the character saw before. How is Irina supposed to show this mid-line turn?
Well, it is not for Irina to show anything. All Irina can do is examine what Juliet might see that is startlingly new. For example:
1. Thou know’st the mask of night is on my face
2. Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek
3. For that which thou hast heard me speak tonight
4. Fain would I dwell on form fain fain deny
5. What I have spoke TURN but farewell compliment
6. Dost thou love me TURN I know thou wilt say Ay
Conceivably we could have put another turn in line 4, between ‘form’ and ‘fain’; and also we could have omitted the turn in line 5 between ‘spoke’ and ‘but’.
The target is permanently changing, but some of these changes are bigger than others. Juliet improvises her text. Rising stakes make it harder to stick to a pre-written text. Whatever plan she makes, vanishes and emerges transformed at each word she utters.
However, there is arguably only one thought in lines 1–3. This thought does not exactly finish on the last word: ‘tonight’. It is helpful for the actor to remember that a thought can never be complete. (This is also useful to remember in all verse forms, particularly those, like the Alexandrine, which appear to package ‘perfect’ thoughts.) It helps more that a new thought is born before the old thought has had time to die – all thought is an interruption.
In Juliet’s case the new thought starts on line 4 with: ‘Fain would . . . ’ For her first stressed syllable, Irina has a choice: either ‘fain’ or ‘would’. It will be that syllable which gets that extra pressure, that heavier lean where the new thought kicks in to kill the previous thought. The previous thought never trails away in its death throes. The new thought always interrupts before the previous thought has had time to die. The preceding thought is always cut off in its vigour. It is in fact the very friction between competing thoughts that sparks the motor. Of course these thoughts are all born in the target.
The next ‘turn’ for Irina, however, possibly does not occur with relative comfort at the end of a line, but in the middle.
What happens before ‘But farewell compliment’? Does Juliet steel herself for the coming declaration of love? Possibly. The rule for Irina is that she has to interrupt ‘spoke’ by seeing a radically new idea. The same is true for the next line: ‘Dost thou love me TURN I know thou wilt say “Ay” ’ where it is likely Juliet will want to interrupt any claims made by Romeo. Practical advice for Irina is to make sure she has enough breath at these crisis points not to have to gulp in more. The actor should not be forced to breathe at this point; a gulp needs a pause and a pause won’t help here.
The Chinese pictogram for the word ‘crisis’ collides the pictograms for ‘danger’ and ‘opportunity’. This helps us understand the mid-line turn. The danger is that the actor will blunt this change by marking it with a pause. The opportunity is for the actor to see something extraordinary and make a remarkable new choice. The mid-line turn offers the actor an opportunity to see something startling and new in the spontaneous moment. The mid-line turn invites Irina to surprise herself. The mid-line turn offers the actor a safe framework in which to lose control.
See something new; the invisible work and the tension in the verse will protect you.
A digression: a cable car
The verse in general and the mid-line turn in particular work rather like a cable car. We may feel doubt as we sway over the jagged rocks. We may try not to breathe and not to move and not to look down. But it is a shame to miss the hurtling valleys and soaring peaks. We will enjoy ourselves more if we remember that the engineers have done the invisible work. We can relax and rely on the tension in the cable. Along its length there are no sags, no droops and, above all, no gaps.
Of course the actor can pause, as long as the thought continues to change and the targets are never dropped; a pause is merely expensive. But if a pause denotes the completion of a thought or the dropping of the target, then the cost is as high as if there were a gap in the cable.
A digression: infectious diseases of the line
The line that continually trails off is exhausting to say – and hear. But line droop is not a disease; it is only a symptom. The cause is that the actor fails to see the targets at the end of the line. The opposite problem to this is the line that never quite starts, with muttered syllables, like a car that revs without moving; the effect is similar to the actor dropping his cue. This is caused when the actor has not fully committed to the target at the beginning of the line.
Blind spots can become habits. The actor can get into the rhythm of blocking the target at certain repeated moments. Why? Because of an unconscious desire to have a regular rest at home. And it’s not much of a journey if we keep going home for a rest. It’s not much of a match if you keep kicking the ball into touch. Incidentally, any sprayed-on tricks to bamboozle the audience, as for example, imposing an automatic upward inflection on the end of every line, destroy both the actor’s belief and self-respect. Besides, like any structure, safety devices can be dangerous. Once nets were strung across an Australian bay to stop the sharks eating the swimmers. But sharks aren’t stupid, and dozens nosed their way in through holes. They found themselves trapped inside the bay, and soon became irritated and rather hungry . . .
A verse exercise
Irina memorises the speech and walks the length of a small room, or runs across a larger hall.
As Irina moves she keeps the words flowing out loud and touches the wall on the last word, and only on the last word, of each line. Her touch on the wall must last for the entirety of each last word and only during each last word. Then Irina turns and points with her arm and finger outstretched towards the opposite wall on the first stressed syllable of the following line. The intention of her point must be to pierce and change that approaching wall. Irina then walks to that opposite wall pointing all the time and makes her walk last as long and no longer than the line, so that she is able to touch the opposite wall only on the following last word. She repeats this till the end of the speech, each line lasting for one crossing of the room. Irina performs the exercise several times, each time judging her pace more accurately, each time touching the wall, turning and pointing more specifically; it is not easy.
The exercise helps the actor to see the time a line may take and to feel that verse springs as much from the body as from the head. Above all, it helps the actor to sense that particular and powerful interval from last word through any unstressed syllable to the first stressed syllable. To describe this short interval as a ‘gap’ or a ‘lapse’ or a ‘suspension’ is misleading, for it is a time charged with energy. This interval normally gives a sense of acceleration, and always a change of direction, a sense of sharp reorientation, wherever it occurs. The sensual feel of this specific moment will vary from actor to actor.
A digression: the International Date Line
In any event this sensation changes from line to line. The sensation is generated in Irina when she pays attention to both the last word and the first stressed syllable. The distance from first stressed syllable to the last word in the same line is rational. It is the line itself. However, from the last word to the first stressed syllable of the following line is strange, a little like the International Date Line. What might happen to a traveller without the International Date Line is curious. In terms of time-reckoning, travellers would get younger if they continued to journey west. And so the Date Line was invented. A flaw in logic, a fault line, an artificial crisis imposed on the clock so that we can recover a sense of narrative control of Time itself.
Dionysus and Apollo
Ultimately, the very best way to learn about blank verse is to read as much verse as possible aloud. Developing verse speaking is rather like researching how the Greeks saw their gods. When rehearsing an Ancient Greek play we may go off and read what the experts have said. Actually, it may help more and intimidate less to read the Greek texts themselves. We learn in these texts, from the plays, the epic poems and the histories, to meet these gods ourselves. We each have been given a different way of seeing the world. This individual way of seeing can be led out of us, educated, with the help of others. But it remains our way of seeing and not that of someone else. This does not mean that we can make up whatever we like about these ancient beliefs. We have to get used to them through attention. But we cannot get near what Dionysus or Apollo meant to the Ancient Greeks without allowing ourselves to experience these gods as directly as we can. We experience them through contact as immediate as possible. Our contact needs to be simple and sensual. We need direct contact with the original sources, rather than via what someone else has seen in these sources. Although it helps to read an introduction and listen to experts, we must always remember that this research can only ever be an introduction to our own work.
Personal verse
There comes a moment when we grasp something for ourselves. We cannot give, get or take wisdom, but we can be helped to discover our own and help others to do the same. This means that Irina cannot be taught how to speak verse. She can be given a hundred rules and be forced or coaxed to give a passable rendition of someone else’s way of speaking it. Only Irina can teach Irina, first by listening to others more experienced. But the moment will come when she needs to teach herself her own way. One of the best ways that Irina can teach Irina about verse is not only to read aloud as much verse as possible from all periods, but also to try to write some of her own. Trying to write (or act) teaches us fast how hard they are to do well. Irina can learn quickly at first hand what words cannot do and, consequently, what they can do. Irina will learn how alarmingly independent words are, even for the greatest poets.
Irina can become as much an expert on blank verse as anyone else. Knowing about verse or indeed any other aspect of Shakespeare’s plays is not the privilege of a Gnostic priesthood. The more we get to know his work the more we each recognise an individual relationship with him. Nobody owns Shakespeare. (Although once a Hollywood producer solemnly assured me that he had acquired the rights!)
Just as Irina will find her own way of performing Juliet with this particular Romeo, so Irina must synthesise her own way of speaking verse. Irina can be given help and guidelines. But in the end Irina has to find her own individual way. With some discipline and a lot of practice, Irina will discover how she must speak verse.
Seeing
It is the same for the verse as it is for any other aspect of acting. Irina must remember that she has no business getting anything right. Right doesn’t exist, for the actor at least, and wrong is equally frivolous. We are not here to get things either right or wrong. We are here to do our best. What constitutes this best we decide as individuals, having seen the ambivalence of the world as clearly and unsentimentally as possible.
The actor sees for us: things we want to see and also things that we don’t want to see. The infant Millennium is roaring: the actor’s capacity to see the target in all its messy ambivalence has never been more precious.
Don’t go home.