Acting Shakespeare - John Barton - Ben Kingsley - Masterclass - Part 3 - Language and Character - 4K - video Dailymotion

Shakespeare Network

"Barton’s legacy is the most exhilarating tribute one can pay to Shakespeare." Maximianno Cobra - Shakespeare Network - Founder and Artistic Director  The Royal Shakespeare Company founder John Barton holds a masterclass featuring: - CAST - JUDI DENCH IAN MCKELLEN PATRICK STEWART BEN KINGSLEY DAVID SUCHET PEGGY ASHCROFT and members of the RSC: Tony Church, Sinead Cusak, Mike Gwilym, Susan Fleetwood, Sheila Hancock, Terry Hands, Lisa Harrow, Alan Howard, Barbara Leigh-Hunt, Jane Lapotaire, Michael Pennington, Richard Pasco, Norman Rodway and Donald Sinden.  Playing Shakespeare - The series features nine master classes on Shakespearean performance.   First group - Objective Things:   - Part One: The Two Traditions - Elizabethan and Modern Acting - Part Two: Using the Verse - Heightened and Naturalistic Verse - Part Three: Language & Character - Making the Words One's Own - Part Four: Set Speeches & Soliloquies - Taking the Audience with You  Second group - Subjective Things: - Part Five: Irony & Ambiguity - Text That Isn't It Seems - Part Six: Passion & Coolness - A Question of Balance - Part Seven: Rehearsing the Text - Orsino and Viola  - Part Eight: Exploring a Character - Playing Shylock - Part Nine: Poetry & Hidden Poetry - Three Kinds of Failure  John Bernard Adie Barton, CBE (26 November 1928 – 18 January 2018), was a British theatre director and teacher whose close association with the Royal Shakespeare Company spanned more than half a century.  Co-founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company, John Barton was, with Trevor Nunn and Peter Hall, one of the legendary theatre directors whose work and acting collaborations in the mid twentieth century would effect the course of Shakespeare on stage in successive decades. His biography includes a range of landmark production through the sixties and seventies (including the 1969 Twelfth Night with Judi Dench as Viola, and the 1970 A Midsummer Night's Dream with Patrick Stewart as Oberon), and with his abilities in helping actors through workshops, his presence and influence are felt even further.  This recording is for educational purposes only and is covered under Fair Use doctrine - Copyright - All rights reserved to their respective owners.  Read the unabridged plays online: https://shakespearenetwork.net/works/plays  _______________________________  FUNDRAISING CAMPAIGN - DONATIONS - Shakespeare Network Website and YouTube Channel:  Donate with PayPal or GoFundMe today: https://shakespearenetwork.net/company/support-us/donate-now  _______________________________  Screen Adaptation - Co-Production : MISANTHROPOS – Official Website - https://www.misanthropos.net Adapted by Maximianno Cobra, from Shakespeare's "Timon of Athens", the film exposes the timeless challenge of social hypocrisy, disillusion and annihilation against the poetics of friendship, love, and beauty.  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6946736/

Transcript

00:30What do you read, my lord?

00:56Words.

00:59Words.

01:04Words, words, words.

01:08The Elizabethans loved them.

01:10They relished them and they played with them,

01:12particularly with diphthongs, double vowels as in words.

01:17Probably they used many more words in a day than we do

01:20and they were eager to pick up new ones.

01:22Here, for instance, is the clown Costard in Love's Labour's Lost.

01:26Another character gives him a letter and tips him.

01:29Bear this significant to the country maid Jacquinetta.

01:34Here is remuneration.

01:40Now will I look to his remuneration?

01:43Oh, remuneration.

01:45That's the Latin word for three farthings.

01:48Remuneration! Remuneration!

01:52Why, it is a fairer word than French crown.

01:54I will never buy and sell out of this word.

01:57My good knave, Costard, exceedingly well met.

02:01I pray you, sir, how much carnation ribbon

02:05may a man buy for a remuneration?

02:09What is a remuneration?

02:11For marriage, sir, a penny farthing.

02:13Why, then, three farthings' worth of silk.

02:14Why, thank you, worship, God be with you.

02:15Say, slave, I must employ thee.

02:17As thou wilt win my favour, good my knave,

02:19do one thing for me that I shall entreat.

02:21The princess comes to hunt here in the park,

02:25and in her train there is a gentle lady,

02:28and Rosaline they call her.

02:30Rosaline.

02:31Rosaline.

02:32Ask for her, and to her white hand see thou do commend.

02:37This sealed-up council, there's thy garden.

02:43Go.

02:46Garden.

02:48Oh, sweet garden.

02:52Better than remuneration.

02:5411 pence farthing better.

02:56Most sweet garden.

02:58I will do it, sir, in print.

03:00Oh, garden.

03:03Remuneration.

03:06Good, well relished.

03:08Verbal relish.

03:10Today we're a bit apt to fight shy of it,

03:13but until we love individual words, we cannot love language.

03:16And if we don't, we won't be able to use it properly.

03:19As most actors' instincts push them towards the naturalistic,

03:22they don't go far enough.

03:24I believe that in rehearsal, at any rate,

03:26we should tend to go too far,

03:28because we can always pull back later.

03:30So let's start exploring Shakespeare's language

03:33by looking at one or two individual words.

03:36Lisa, what would you say, if any,

03:39is the most important word in Shakespeare?

03:41Remuneration.

03:43What about time?

03:45Time. Yes, time, indeed.

03:48It's dangerous territory, the word.

03:51There was a wonderful skit on television last year

03:54about a director telling an actor how to use the words.

03:57All right, let's start right at the beginning, shall we?

04:00Right, yeah.

04:01What's the word?

04:03What's the word, I wonder,

04:05that Shakespeare decides to begin his sentence with here?

04:08Er, time.

04:10Time.

04:12Time.

04:14Yeah.

04:16And how does Shakespeare decide to spell it here?

04:23T-I-M-E.

04:25T-I-M. M-E.

04:27And what sort of spelling of the word time is that?

04:34Well, it's the ordinary spelling.

04:36It's the ordinary spelling, isn't it?

04:38It's the conventional spelling.

04:41So why, out of all the spellings he could have chosen,

04:44did Shakespeare choose that one, do you think?

04:51Well, because it gives us time in an ordinary sense.

04:54Exactly well done, good boy,

04:56because it gives us time in an ordinary, in a conventional sense.

04:59Oh, right.

05:01So, Shakespeare has given us time in a conventional sense.

05:04Yeah, but he's given us something else here.

05:08Have a look at the typography. What do you spy?

05:11Oh, er, it's got a capital T.

05:13Shakespeare's T very much uppercase Q, isn't it?

05:16Yeah.

05:18Why?

05:20Because it's the first word in the sentence.

05:23Well, I think that's partly it.

05:26But I think there's another reason too.

05:28Shakespeare has given us time in a conventional sense...

05:31Uh-huh.

05:33..and time in an abstract sense. Right.

05:35Do you think your voice can convey that, Hugh?

05:37I hope so. I hope so too.

05:39All right, give it a go.

05:41Just the one word? Just the one word for the moment.

05:43Yeah, OK.

05:47Wh-wh-wh-wh-wh-wh-wh-wh-wh.

05:50Hugh, Hugh, Hugh.

05:52Where do we gather from?

05:54Oh, the buttocks. Always the buttocks.

05:56Sorry. Gather from the buttocks.

06:01LAUGHTER

06:03Time!

06:09What went wrong there, Hugh?

06:11Um...

06:13I don't know. I got a bit lost in the middle, actually.

06:17An awful warning.

06:19So we mustn't be too solemn about it.

06:22But we mustn't dodge it either.

06:24Shakespeare himself was obviously haunted by the word.

06:27He did indeed often give it a capital letter.

06:30So in spite of this dreaded warning,

06:32I intend to dig into it a bit later on.

06:34For now, I simply want to make the point

06:36that the correct pronunciation,

06:38or, if you like, the correct pronunciation

06:40played, as it were, at three-quarters speed,

06:42is time.

06:44Two vowel sounds.

06:46It has, as it were, two meanings.

06:48First, something factual, as in, what's the time?

06:50And secondly, it does have a poetic resonance,

06:53a heightened meaning,

06:55i.e., that which is inexorable

06:57and wears down human life and endeavour,

06:59and in the end, death.

07:01Something not to be avoided.

07:04Give us some examples.

07:08Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth.

07:13Despite of cormorant devouring time.

07:17And that old common arbitrator, time.

07:21Good.

07:23Let's look at a passage now where the speaker is entirely concerned

07:26with working on his audience with words

07:28and where nothing else matters.

07:30It's a chorus speech from Henry V.

07:34Let's work on it in the way we said at the outset.

07:37First, ask what the character's intentions are,

07:40and then we look at the language.

07:42All right, but what about the character of the chorus?

07:45Well, I'm not going to talk about the character,

07:47because you, David, are the character,

07:49if you're of the chorus. You're the chorus.

07:51I'm the main one, not a character.

07:53Just feel your way with the words.

07:56You said in the beginning of the play,

07:59on your imaginary forces work,

08:01so on our imaginary forces work.

08:03Your intention is to make us feel, smell,

08:06see what it's like on the battlefield.

08:09And so you've got to find the language

08:11at the moment that you speak it.

08:13You use the words which you, David, need.

08:16Have a go.

08:22Now entertain conjecture of a time

08:27when creeping murmur and the pouring dark

08:31fills the wide vessel of the universe.

08:37From camp to camp,

08:39the hum of either army stilly sounds.

08:43I think that's still a little bit too prepared.

08:46It's got to come out of you actually spontaneously.

08:49You don't know what you're going to say till you say it.

08:52More excited? Inside, yes.

09:01Now entertain conjecture of a time

09:05when creeping murmur and the pouring dark

09:09fills the wide vessel of the universe.

09:14From camp to camp,

09:17through the foul womb of night,

09:20the hum of either army stilly sounds,

09:25that the fixed sentinels almost receive

09:29the secret whispers of each other's watch.

09:35Fire answers fire,

09:39and through their paley flames

09:42each battle sees the other's umbered face.

09:48Steed threatens steed with high and boastful nays,

09:52piercing the knight's dull ear.

09:57And from the tents,

10:00the armourers,

10:03accomplishing the knights

10:05with busy hammers,

10:08closing rivets up.

10:12Give dreadful note of preparation.

10:15Great. I thought the first half of it was great.

10:17Then I went wrong.

10:18You fell into a trap. You set up...

10:20I split it up too much.

10:21No, you set up the atmosphere,

10:23the general atmosphere of the battlefield splendidly.

10:25But the verse and the text actually breaks into that.

10:28After we've got to...

10:30Each battle sees the other's umbered face.

10:33The text goes, steed threatens steed,

10:35where the verse goes, dum-dum-dee-dum.

10:37And the steed, the noise of the neighing of the steed

10:40breaks into the stillness of the knight.

10:42And there's the bang of the armourers

10:44accomplishing the knight with the busy hammers.

10:46So you break the atmosphere that you set up

10:48with the noise of the troops.

10:50Just take it from each battle sees.

11:01Fire answers fire,

11:04and through their paley flames

11:06each battle sees the other's umbered face.

11:10Steed threatens steed,

11:12with high and boastful nays

11:14piercing the knight's dull ear.

11:18And from the tents, the armourers

11:21accomplishing the knights

11:23with busy hammers closing rivets up

11:26give dreadful note of preparation.

11:29That was much better. You took us with us.

11:31It was like the camera moving in from a long shot

11:34to a close-up of what was happening within the scene.

11:38It's actually a point we're going to come up to a lot later

11:40when we talk about set speeches.

11:42It's a great trap if you get onto one note, one tone, one tempo.

11:46You know, it has to always look for the variety.

11:48It's a difficulty, isn't it, when you're trying to

11:51actually coin phrases and words and images

11:55at the same time as also speaking blank verse,

11:58and you mustn't sacrifice one or the other.

12:00That's right. You can mesmerise yourself with the words.

12:03Actually, if you go for the contrapuntal stresses in the verse,

12:07you will find the changes as they come.

12:09Yeah. I'll go and work on that.

12:11OK. Very good.

12:13We've talked about intentions and how the verse works,

12:16and we're beginning to marry the two traditions, Shakespeare's and ours.

12:20We're beginning to get a balance by finding the language

12:23and by making it our own.

12:25Now, let's look in detail

12:27at some of the major ingredients of language.

12:30First of all, what about resonance and onomatopoeia?

12:34Let's have some examples.

12:38HE LAUGHS

12:40Swilled with the wild and wasteful ocean,

12:44when the blast of war blows in our ears,

12:48that the fixed sentinels

12:50almost receive the secret whispers of each other's watch.

12:55Good. Now, what I think you were all doing there

12:58was doing it more closely to how probably Elizabethan actors

13:01would have taken it, and we rather fight shy of that in performance.

13:04And what I'm at tonight is to push us to going too far

13:07just to see whether we don't fight shy of the language too much.

13:10And I think if it's as packed the language as that,

13:13you do have to take it as much as that.

13:15The need for verbal relish is obvious.

13:17Not too little, but of course not too much.

13:19Again, it's the question of balance.

13:21It's perhaps worth pointing to some words

13:23whose richness is not so apparent.

13:25Shakespeare's pronunciation was, of course, different from ours.

13:28It was rougher, perhaps more onomatopoeic.

13:32War, for instance, was pronounced a-war.

13:35And I, as in I, was pronounced a-e.

13:40And time was pronounced ta-eem.

13:43Ta-eem.

13:45Fascinating.

13:47I'm almost obsessively fascinated by what it could have sounded like.

13:51I know you can do this. You should do it.

13:54But in 1590 on the South Bank,

13:57when they had all those little theatres there,

14:00what was the noise?

14:02I mean, I can do it a bit, but you do it.

14:04Well, I'm not an expert and I've often been corrected,

14:07but if we take the speech we've just done,

14:09it went a little bit like this.

14:11Now, enter time, conjecture of a time,

14:15when creeping murmur and the pouring dark

14:19fill the wide vessel of the universe.

14:23From camp to camp, through the foul womb of night,

14:28the hum of either army, stilly sounds,

14:32let the thick sentinels almost receive

14:36the sacred whispers of each other's watch.

14:40Actually, that would have helped me a lot the first time I did it.

14:46It's almost like the West Coast of Ireland or something, or the West Country.

14:51Funny mixture of West Country, Ireland, a bit of American.

14:54How do they know how it sounded then?

14:56They work it out partly from spellings and from rhymes,

14:59but mainly from the way a language changes.

15:02How did English get from Anglo-Saxon to Middle English to us today?

15:06And if it gets to us today, it must have gone through certain changes.

15:10So how much of our accent would have influenced the American?

15:13I think that the American accent

15:15is actually closer to the Elizabethan than ours.

15:18Funny, because American actors are always worried

15:20about not speaking what they call standard English,

15:23and actually they're doing it closer to Shakespeare than we are.

15:26Yes, we all sound much more genteel now, don't we?

15:28Yes, genteel, that's a good word.

15:30You see, it's rougher, isn't it? It's tougher.

15:33In Australia, they pronounce the widow dido as widow dido.

15:37LAUGHTER

15:39Shakespeare actually has the widow dido gag in the Tempest.

15:43Does he? Really? Yeah.

15:45But anyway, there is still a glimmering sense

15:48of this richer sound in actors today.

15:50It's a sort of thespian folk memory, I suppose.

15:53More at the beginning of the century than now.

15:55Let's listen to a bit of Sir Frank Benson

15:58playing Mark Antony 50 years ago.

16:01He managed to make two syllables out of the word ears, for instance,

16:05now four out of the word bones.

16:07Fred.

16:09Roman.

16:11Countryman.

16:13Lend me your ears.

16:15I come to bury Cedar,

16:19not to praise it.

16:21The evil that men do

16:24lives after them.

16:26The good is oft encouraged with their bones.

16:32Somewhat overdone, but not entirely un-Elizabethan.

16:36I think the big difference is that he's more sentimental

16:39than we'd be today.

16:41That sounds to me a bit sentimental, doesn't it?

16:43But diphthongs are, in fact, two vowel sounds.

16:45That's the point we were making.

16:47That's the point the Elizabethan pronunciation brings up

16:50and indeed what Earl Benson brings up,

16:52even though he made them about five.

16:54I think vowel sounds are important.

16:56I don't want to labour the point,

16:58because anybody who knows poetry knows that,

17:00that it doesn't just apply to Shakespeare.

17:02I merely want to stress that there's a tendency

17:05in our acting tradition to run away from it.

17:07We do run away from consonants too, don't we?

17:09Yes. Them just as important, aren't they?

17:11Yes, if there's a danger of wallowing in vowels,

17:14there's a use in thinking of consonants as a stern corrective

17:18and often they're more important.

17:20Why don't we just hear those two lines about the sentries again

17:24from Henry V?

17:27But the fixed sentinels almost receive

17:31the secret whispers of each other's watch.

17:36The whispering's there, the alliteration's obvious,

17:39the sounds are doing the whispering, aren't they?

17:42They need almost as much breath as a well-supported vowel, don't they?

17:45They do.

17:46See, that's a good example of why I have an instinct

17:48to take our verbal relish as far as we dare.

17:51It's partly because Shakespeare wrote with those Earl sounds in mind,

17:55but it's partly because I think we do at this moment in time

17:58tend to give short measure.

18:00We can't go far wrong, I think,

18:02if we just remind ourselves over and over of what we started with,

18:06which is Shakespeare's own view of the matter.

18:08So, Ben, just remind us Hamlet's advice to the players again.

18:14Speak the speech, I pray you,

18:16as I pronounce it to you trippingly on the tongue.

18:20But be not too tame...

18:22Oh, that's a wonderful word, isn't it?

18:24Because we do get so tame.

18:26Be not too tame, neither,

18:28but let your own discretion be your tutor.

18:32Suit the action...

18:34LAUGHTER

18:36Suit the action to the word, the word to the action.

18:40It's all there, isn't it?

18:42Not too little, not too much.

18:44Balance.

18:46I'm always struck by the sentence

18:48suit the action to the word and the word to the action.

18:51I'm not sure, but I think Shakespeare is partly expressing here

18:54in Elizabethan terms

18:56what we've been expressing by the word intention.

18:59Intention equals what are you doing?

19:02Action equals that which you are doing.

19:05So, suit the action to the word and the word to the action.

19:11If I were to offer one single bit of advice

19:14to an actor new to Shakespeare's text,

19:16I'm not sure it wouldn't be more useful

19:18if I were to say look for the antithesis and play them

19:21than anything else.

19:23We can very easily overlook them

19:25because we don't use antithesis very much today,

19:28particularly in our everyday speech.

19:30Yet Shakespeare was deeply imbued with a sense of it.

19:33He thought antithetically.

19:35It was the way his sentences over and over

19:38found their shape and their meaning.

19:40But as with alliteration,

19:42Shakespeare sometimes sends up excessive antithesis.

19:46Listen to Falstaff.

19:49Harry, I do not only marvel where thou spendest thy time,

19:54but also how thou art accompanied.

19:57For though the chamomile,

20:00the more it is trodden on, the faster it grows,

20:04yet youth, the more it is wasted, the sooner it wears.

20:09There's a triple antithesis in that,

20:11and they're not at all uncommon.

20:13The trouble is that the antithetical words at first blush

20:16are often somewhat hidden.

20:18For instance, in to be or not to be,

20:21we have about as simple an antithetical thought as one can get.

20:25But Hamlet's next sentence has key words

20:28which are not quite so obvious.

20:31To be or not to be,

20:35that is the question.

20:38Whether it is nobler in the mind

20:41to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune

20:46or to take arms against a sea of troubles

20:50and by opposing end them.

20:53If an actor doesn't point up antitheses,

20:56he will be hard and sometimes quite impossible to follow.

20:59Here's the beginning of Richard II's long soliloquy

21:03in Pumphrey Castle.

21:05I have been studying

21:08how I may compare this prison where I live

21:13unto the world.

21:16And for because the world is populous

21:19and here is not a creature but myself,

21:22I cannot do it.

21:25Yet I'll hammer it out.

21:28My brain, I'll prove the female to my soul,

21:32my soul the father,

21:34and these two beget a generation of still-breeding thoughts,

21:38and these same thoughts people this little world

21:42in humors like the people of this world,

21:44for no thought is contented.

21:47The better sort, as thoughts of things divine,

21:51are intermixed with scruples

21:54and do set the word itself against the word.

21:59Good. Hold it there a moment.

22:01Set the word itself against the word.

22:04Now, that's rather a useful piece of direction by Shakespeare, isn't it?

22:08Each new word, each new word in a sentence,

22:12qualifies what has gone before

22:14or changes the direction of that sentence.

22:16The principle's the same as with antithesis.

22:19If you don't set up one word,

22:21you won't prepare for another to qualify it.

22:23And if the next word doesn't build on the first

22:26and move the sentence on,

22:27the audience and you, the actor, may lose the way.

22:30Yeah, and as far as this particular speech is concerned,

22:34which I don't know very well,

22:35there seems to be two separate techniques being used

22:40because his opening proposition is based on,

22:45sort of laterally, on sort of antithesis.

22:47I've been studying how I may compare this prison where I live unto the world

22:49and thought because the world is populous

22:50and here is not a creature but myself, I cannot do it.

22:52Yet I'll hammer it out is the first strong intention of the speech.

22:55And then something different happens,

22:57which seems to be the accumulation of ideas,

23:00which often involves picking up one word from the end of a line

23:03to the beginning of the next.

23:05My brain, I'll prove the female to my soul.

23:07My soul, the father, and these two beget a generation of still-breeding thoughts,

23:09these same thoughts, people, this little world, and so on.

23:12So for the actor scanning the text for clues,

23:16it suggests an accumulating energy in a forward movement.

23:19That's right. It's a story, isn't it? Moving on.

23:21The thing of pushing the thought through

23:22is really what is another problem with that speech, isn't it?

23:25It's the problem of inflection,

23:26which, like antithesis, is not something we use every day

23:28and it's as modern act as we've often come across it.

23:31I mean, the inflection is what we use

23:33to carry that impetus of thought forward, isn't it?

23:36Yes, I wish I had a nice helpful definition

23:39of what an inflection really is.

23:41I suppose it's to stress something important,

23:44but partly it is an invitation, as Mike's just been saying,

23:47to the audience or to the person you're talking to

23:50to go with you.

23:51It introduces a new thought

23:53or it changes the direction of a sentence.

23:55It's like cutting from shot to shot in the television screen, isn't it?

23:59The new shot, the inflection, is the new information,

24:02and the story moves on.

24:04What do you mean by inflection?

24:05I mean, we know we have this upward and downward inflection, but...

24:10What does the dictionary say, Wanda?

24:11I don't know.

24:13Whatever it is, it's the shortest possible route

24:16between the speaker and the audience, isn't it?

24:19I mean, if you're dealing with difficult language,

24:22the actor has the privilege and the good fortune

24:25of having lived with the language for a long time

24:27and then has one opportunity only to convey it to an audience

24:30whose attention may be difficult to hold.

24:32And the inflection is the most economical and clearest way of doing that.

24:36For instance, you could say,

24:38to be or not to be, that is the question, without inflection.

24:41And you would probably be understood,

24:44but it would be more helpful if you say,

24:46to be or not to be, that is the question.

24:48And equally, you could say, to be or not to be, that is the question,

24:52and insult the audience's intelligence by doing that.

24:55So it's just a matter of hitting the mean, isn't it?

24:57Again, it's a balance, isn't it?

24:58But you're quite right, it's really an invitation to the audience

25:01to go with you.

25:02Yeah.

25:03It's also carrying thoughts that do go on in a verse situation,

25:07from the end of one line into the next line.

25:09It's holding that up in the air and moving it into the next line

25:12so that the thought at the end of the line isn't lost for the audience

25:15as you're going from one to the other.

25:17So far, we've looked at a lot of short examples.

25:20Now, let's stand back and have a look at the verbal impact of a whole speech.

25:25We'll take Henry V's speech rallying his soldiers at Harfleur,

25:30which we've heard bits of already.

25:32Now, Mike, an awful lot could be said about this speech,

25:35and there's an infinity of interpretations,

25:37but what I want to concentrate on is Henry's use of his language.

25:42His intention is to rally his troops,

25:44and so his language is heightened because of his intention,

25:48not because it's a set speech.

25:50He works on them with words.

25:53So do it now to our audience and try and get them into the breach.

25:57I think this speech particularly relies very much upon the army

26:03and their reactions to my speech.

26:05Yeah.

26:06So is it possible for the audience to perhaps heckle,

26:10and perhaps we could have these ladies up.

26:12They can come and do some work.

26:14Come and join Henry's army,

26:16and all of you, all of them, make it as difficult for Mike as possible,

26:20and you make it easier.

26:31Right. Off we go then.

26:33Right.

26:34Once more...

26:36Run!

26:37...unto the breach!

26:39Dear friends, once more,

26:42or close the wall up with our English dead!

26:48In peace, there's nothing so becomes a man

26:53as modest stillness and humility.

26:56But when the blast of war blows in our ears,

27:00then imitate the action of the tiger.

27:03Stiffen the sinews.

27:05Summon up the blood.

27:07Disguise fair nature with hard-favoured race.

27:12Then lend the eye a terrible aspect.

27:15Let it pry through the portage of the head like the brass can.

27:20Let the brow o'erwhelm it

27:22as fearfully as doth a galled rock

27:25o'erhang and jutty his confounded base,

27:28swilled with the wild and wasteful ocean.

27:31Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide.

27:35Hold hard the breath,

27:37and bend up every spirit to his full height.

27:41On! On!

27:43You noblest English,

27:45whose blood is fed from fathers of war proof,

27:48fathers who, like so many Alexanders,

27:51have in these parts from war in even thought,

27:55and sheed their swords for lack of argument.

27:57Dishonour not your mothers.

27:59Now attest that those whom you called fathers did beget you.

28:04Be copy now to men of grosser blood,

28:07and teach them how to war.

28:10As he who stand, like greyhounds in a slip,

28:13straining upon the start,

28:15that gains a foot,

28:17follow your spirit,

28:19and upon discharge cry,

28:22God for Harry, England,

28:25and St. George!

28:28Hooray!

28:34Well done. It's a useful exercise.

28:37But you see why I'm taking this example?

28:40The heightened language is so obviously there for a dramatic purpose.

28:44The character needs it to handle the situation,

28:47to handle his soldiers.

28:49Well, this is an obvious and extreme example,

28:51but I believe that the same thing will be found to apply

28:54to almost all, no, perhaps all,

28:57heightened speeches which we come to look at.

29:02John, everything you've said so far has been about language,

29:06but we haven't talked at all about character.

29:09What about the character who speaks a language?

29:11Well, it's because I'm going for language this evening,

29:14and I think a good point comes up here

29:16is when in Shakespeare's text,

29:19the language, the text, the thing described,

29:22which I call the correct, actually,

29:24is more important than the character.

29:27Do you see what I mean?

29:29Correct.

29:30Correct's a dreadful word, isn't it?

29:32But let me say again what I mean by it.

29:34I mean when the text is about the thing it's describing

29:38and not about the character who's speaking it.

29:41And very often, Shakespeare gives terrific speech

29:44to somebody who isn't important in the play as a character.

29:48I mean, why don't we...

29:49Let's take perhaps the extreme example in Shakespeare,

29:51which is the opening speech of Antony and Cleopatra,

29:54and Ben, you give us Philo.

29:56Philo is an unknown soldier who says this

29:58and never speaks or appears again in the play.

30:01Relish the words.

30:03Is this the first utterance in the whole play?

30:06First utterance in the play.

30:08Yeah.

30:09So it's like the introduction to the whole story.

30:12That's right.

30:13So he can't be a character.

30:14That's right, and it's my example of a correct speech.

30:16Your function is correct, and we want to know about Antony

30:20and we want to know about Cleopatra,

30:22but we're not particularly interested in Philo.

30:24And then I go around and count the house,

30:26take the tickets, do the tease.

30:28That's right.

30:29Sweep the carp up.

30:32Nay, but this dotage of our generals,

30:36o'erflows them measure,

30:38those his goodly eyes,

30:40that o'er the files and musters of the war

30:44have glowed like plated mars,

30:47now bend, now turn

30:50the office and devotion of their view

30:53upon a tawny front.

30:55His captain's heart,

30:58which in the scuffles of great fights

31:01hath burst the buckles on his breast,

31:04reneges all temper,

31:06and is become the bellows and the fan

31:10to cool a gypsy's lust.

31:13But, John, there is a character thing here, isn't there?

31:15Because, I mean, the character himself is angry.

31:17So there's two things.

31:19It's not just that it's a correct speech,

31:21that it's giving us, the audience, a situation and information,

31:23but the actor who's playing it

31:25has got to have his own feelings.

31:29Who gets top billing in this?

31:31Mars, actually.

31:33No, this general, but Mars is the first.

31:35You're absolutely right, and in a sort of way I'm cheating.

31:38What I was saying was,

31:39make the language your first concern,

31:41which Ben was doing.

31:42Now I would say to him,

31:44now that you've focused on the language

31:46and started to make the language work on your audience,

31:49now what the character feels,

31:51not necessarily what he is, but what he feels,

31:53his anger and bitterness and outrage at what he sees,

31:56has got to work into it to make it real.

31:58Well, I suspect that it would only work for me if I...

32:03I tend to clutter, I think.

32:05I think as an actor I tend to clutter.

32:07And as an exercise, not cluck, clutter.

32:10And I think... No.

32:12I think that as an exercise,

32:14I ought to always, always simplify, simplify, simplify.

32:17So I won't yet impose a character on these words.

32:21I'll still allow the words to try and push me into some shape,

32:25because they're very vigorous.

32:27Something that would help push you into it

32:29is you actually come into it.

32:31If you start static, you'll be a bit static,

32:33but come in outrage out of what you've seen.

32:36Come into the scene.

32:38Yes. All right. Try that.

32:40Try that. Might give a good lead-in.

32:42To tell us.

32:44Yeah, I could tell us. I could tell Roger.

32:47Yeah. And Deezer, if you're interested.

32:50And us.

32:57Nay, but this dotage of our generals,

33:00oh, flows the measure,

33:02those his goodly eyes,

33:04that all the files and musters of the war

33:07have glowed like plaited mars,

33:10now bend, now turn,

33:12the office and devotion of their view

33:16upon a tawny front.

33:19His captain's heart,

33:21which in the scuffles of great fights

33:24hath burst the buckles on his breast,

33:27renegs all temper,

33:29and has become the bellows

33:33and the fan to cooler gypsies' lungs.

33:38Oh, that was great.

33:40You see, what we did is quite interesting.

33:42Makes me shake, this language.

33:44Actually makes me shake. It is so strong.

33:46So strong.

33:47But if I let it push me,

33:49it's like getting a little vial of something

33:51and whacking it into your arm.

33:53If you let it... If you let it...

33:55Where is it?

33:56This guy's a junkie. He's a freak. Get him out of here.

33:58If you let it work on you...

34:00Yes. Yeah, the language made you angry.

34:02The language made you angry.

34:04And we also did an interesting thing.

34:06We kind of worked the other way around.

34:08We started with the language,

34:09and then we went to the intentions.

34:11Because what you did then beautifully

34:13was that you solved the beginning

34:15because you came into it with great pressure

34:17and a great need to tell us about it.

34:19And you found your intention,

34:21and it made the language come alive.

34:23So I'm not saying that the character isn't important.

34:26I'm saying it's valuable at times

34:28to start with the text only.

34:30Well, good for me, it's the only way.

34:32It must be for me.

34:34Yes, because if you did it the other way around

34:36and had all the emotion and you didn't have the language,

34:38then we wouldn't understand what it was you were saying,

34:40and then the play wouldn't have its right kick-off.

34:42That's right. I think there's a big lesson in that.

34:44Good.

34:45Here is a rather harder example.

34:47In Henry V, the Lord Grandpré

34:50is describing to the French

34:52the condition of the English army.

34:55Why do you stay so long, my lords of France?

34:59Well, island carrions,

35:02desperate of their bones,

35:04ill-favouredly become the morning field.

35:07Big Mars seems bankrupt in their beggared host

35:11and faintly through a rusty beaver peeps.

35:14The horseman sits like fixed candlesticks

35:18with torch-staves in their hand,

35:20and their poor jades lob down their heads,

35:24hanging the hide and hips,

35:26and down-roping from their pale, dead eyes.

35:29And in their pale, dull mouths

35:32the gimmel-bit lies foul with chawed grass,

35:35still and motionless.

35:37And their executors, the knavish crows,

35:40fly o'er them, all impatient for their hour.

35:44Description cannot suit itself in words

35:48to demonstrate the life of such a battle.

35:52Description cannot suit itself in words

35:55to demonstrate the life of such a battle.

35:58Well, the function of this speech in the play is clearly coric.

36:02The things described obviously matter more

36:04than the character of the subject.

36:06The language is so heightened and peculiar

36:09that it's clearly the most important thing.

36:11So maybe one should say character doesn't matter here.

36:14Or does it? Or is there indeed any character at all?

36:17Oh, surely, yes. And it always matters.

36:20It's not enough to say that a speech is simply coric

36:23or simply descriptive.

36:25And although in this piece Shakespeare doesn't tell us

36:28what Grand Prix had for breakfast

36:30or whether he was bottle-fed when he was a baby,

36:32but he clothes the character in such rich text

36:35that the actor can find, I think, a variety of characters

36:38if he looks carefully enough.

36:40That's right. You've said it, haven't you?

36:42The text. The text is the character.

36:44The text fills him out.

36:46Entirely. Good.

36:48Here's an example of Shakespeare introducing a new character

36:51into a play in a very emotional and personal situation

36:55and yet giving her at the same time a coric function.

36:59In Julius Caesar, Calpurnia, Caesar's wife,

37:03comes to tell him that the day is ominous.

37:06Now, don't fall into the trap

37:09of trying to play the heightened language up

37:13because it's heightened.

37:15Try to search out that language

37:17and find the meaning of all the images that you see.

37:20What were they? Why did they happen?

37:22So search them rather than demonstrate them.

37:25Right. Have a go.

37:27What mean you, Caesar?

37:29Think you to walk forth?

37:32You shall not stir out of your house today.

37:36Caesar shall forth.

37:39The things that threaten me ne'er look but on my back.

37:42When they shall see the face of Caesar, they are banished.

37:47Caesar, I never stood on ceremonies,

37:52yet now they fright me.

37:56There is one within,

37:58besides the things which we have heard and seen,

38:01the current's most horrid sight seen by the watch.

38:06A lioness hath whelpered in the streets,

38:10and graves have yawned and yielded up their dead.

38:15Fierce, fiery warriors fought upon the clouds

38:19in ranks and squadrons and right form of war,

38:23which drizzled blood upon the capital.

38:27The noise of battle hurtled in the air.

38:31Horses did neigh, and dying men did groan,

38:35and ghosts did shriek and squeal about the streets.

38:40O Caesar, these things are beyond all use,

38:45and I do fear them.

38:48Very good. Very good. You did that beautifully.

38:51Now, let's look at Casca the Conspirator in Julius Caesar.

39:00Who offered him the crown?

39:01Why, Antony.

39:03Tell us the manner of it, gentle Casca.

39:06I can't as well be hanged as tell the manner of it.

39:10It was mere foolery. I did not mark it.

39:15I saw Mark Antony offer him the crown.

39:19Yeah, it was not a crown, neither.

39:21It was one of those coronets.

39:24And, as I told you, he put it by once,

39:27but for all that to him, I think he would fain have had it.

39:32Then he offered it to him again.

39:35Then he put it by again.

39:37But, to my thinking, he was very low to lay his fingers off it.

39:41And then he offered it the third time,

39:43but he put it the third time by,

39:45and still, as he refused it,

39:47the rubblemen hooted and clapped their chopped hands

39:51and threw up their sweaty nightcaps

39:55and uttered such a deal of stinking breath

39:58because Caesar had refused the crown

40:01that it had almost choked Caesar,

40:03for he swooned and fell down at it.

40:05And, for my own part, I durst not laugh

40:07for fear of opening my mouth and receiving the bad air.

40:11Prose, terse, reductive and cynical.

40:14Now listen to him, 60 lines later,

40:16describing the same supernatural storm

40:19which we've just seen Calpurnia talk about.

40:22Are you not moved?

40:24When all that sway of earth shakes like a thing unfirm?

40:29Ah, Cicero!

40:31I have seen tempests when the scolding winds

40:35have writhed the knotty oaks,

40:37and I have seen the ambitious ocean

40:40swirl and rage and foam

40:42to be exalted with the threatening clouds,

40:45but never till tonight, never till now,

40:49did I go through a tempest-dropping fire.

40:54Either there is civil strife in heaven,

40:57or else the world, too saucy with the gods,

41:00incenses them to send destruction.

41:03Good.

41:05Now, almost every actor who plays Casca,

41:08I think, finds the switch from the prose scene to the verse scene,

41:13because he's so different, a big problem.

41:15What do you think about that?

41:17Well, I think, yes, it is hard,

41:20but I think that, just literally,

41:22over the last two minutes while we were working on it,

41:25I had one of those gifts, those little revelations.

41:28You cannot have somebody who always exists on an hysterical level

41:33coming in and reacting to something extraordinary,

41:36because he's cried wolf.

41:38He's cried wolf so often that you think,

41:40oh, well, it's Casca blowing his top again.

41:43But if it's somebody who is always laid back,

41:46always obeying, nothing surprises him, nothing shocks him,

41:50and you suddenly find him in a terrible state,

41:53I think that it hopefully will convey to the fellow characters,

41:56actors and audience that there is something deeply disturbing going on.

42:01And were Casca always in heightened verse,

42:04if that was his plane of existence,

42:06I think that there would be no hiatus in the play,

42:08that the audience wouldn't think,

42:10there must be something terrible happening.

42:12Alex very often does that, doesn't he?

42:15I'm sure that's the point,

42:17that Shakespeare's drastic change is totally deliberate,

42:20and because it's the cool man going berserk,

42:24actually the storm becomes more real,

42:26because it's affecting that man.

42:28And what's great in the playing of it

42:30is if you go for each scene totally as it comes and commit to it,

42:34and you don't try to iron out the inconsistencies,

42:37because after all, all human beings and all of us are pretty inconsistent.

42:40That's right, yes.

42:42Shakespeare does this over and over,

42:44a seeming inconsistency which is entirely deliberate on his part.

42:48In The Merchant of Venice, for instance,

42:50when Bassanio comes to choose the caskets,

42:53Portia's first speech to him is fairly naturalistic.

42:58I pray you, tarry!

43:00Pause a day or two before you hazard,

43:02for in choosing wrong I lose your company,

43:05therefore forbear awhile.

43:07There is something tells me, but it is not love.

43:10I would not lose you, and you know yourself,

43:13hate cancels not in such a quality.

43:15A little while after, when she bids him choose the caskets,

43:19the text becomes poetic and heightened.

43:22Away, then! I am locked in one of them.

43:26If you do love me, you will find me out.

43:29Let music sound while he doth make his choice.

43:33Then if he lose, he makes a swanlike end,

43:37fading in music.

43:39That the comparison may stand more proper,

43:41my eye shall be the stream and watery deathbed for him.

43:45He may win.

43:47And what is music then?

43:49Then music is even as the flourish

43:51when true subjects bow to a new crowned monarch.

43:55Such it is as are those dulcet sounds at break of day

43:58that creep into the dreaming bridegroom's ear

44:01and summon him to marriage.

44:04Now he goes, with no less presence,

44:08but with much more love than young Alcides

44:11when he did redeem the virgin tribute

44:13paid by howling Troy to the sea monster.

44:15I stand for sacrifice.

44:17The rest aloof are the Dardanian wives

44:20who with bleared visages come forth

44:22to view the issue of the exploit.

44:25Go, Hercules, live thou.

44:28I live.

44:30With much, much more dismay I view the fight

44:33with thou that makes the fray.

44:35Good.

44:37Portia isn't just switching into romantic language.

44:39She's trying to find the words she can to express her situation.

44:43And that's what you did. Good.

44:45Now, all of you come in a moment.

44:47On what we've explored so far

44:49when we were going for the heightened language,

44:51I think somewhere along the line overall

44:54maybe we could all have gone a bit farther.

44:56I don't know what you felt,

44:58but I felt we could have been a bit more dairy.

45:00More?

45:01What do you think?

45:02Well, it's limits, isn't it? I mean, art is limits.

45:04How far...

45:06How far can you go before you've broken a limit

45:10and rendered it unintelligible?

45:12I mean, how far would you...?

45:14Well, personally, I'd go very far,

45:16but, of course, it's the old question again of balance, isn't it?

45:18What, you personally would go...?

45:20Personally, I'd go further, I think.

45:22I mean, you yourself would.

45:24I think you'd be put on the spot.

45:26I think you'd be subtly manoeuvred up to a spot.

45:28John, would you like...

45:30Show us how you yourself personally might.

45:32Cue music.

45:34End credits.

45:35What do I do?

45:36You should do the Henry V...

45:38Herald.

45:39No, the...

45:40The old French king.

45:42The list of the French knights, right?

45:45French king.

45:46Yes.

45:47All right.

45:48It's a quiz, this is.

45:49Are you going to use an accent?

45:51Are you going to use an accent?

45:52I don't think I'll do it in Elizabethan English,

45:54but what I might try and do

45:56is to do it in my idea

45:58of what an Elizabethan actor might be like.

46:00So I might go a bit far with it,

46:02and if I do, you can tell me.

46:04All right?

46:05Let's try.

46:06This is your set.

46:07All right.

46:08A modest little chair.

46:10All right.

46:11I'll also try doing something which we haven't mentioned,

46:14which is tending to try to pronounce

46:17every single sound within a word.

46:20I think the Elizabethans may have done that more than we do.

46:23So I'll overstress the sounds and see what happens.

46:26You sound like an Elizabethan actor.

46:28I'm going to try.

46:29All right.

46:30Going too far.

46:34Where is Montjoy, the herald?

46:38Speed him hence.

46:40Let him greet England with our sharp defiance.

46:43Up, princes, and with spirit of honour edged

46:46more sharper than your swords,

46:48high to the field.

46:50Charles de la Brethe,

46:53high constable of France,

46:55you dukes of Orleans, Bourbon, and of Berry,

46:58Allenson, Brabant, Barre, and Burgundy,

47:01Jaques, Wichita, Rambures, Vaudemont, Beaumont, Grande Praie,

47:05Roussea, and Falkenbridge,

47:07Foix, Lestralle, Bousiquelte, and Charoloise,

47:11high dukes, great princes,

47:14barons, lords, and knights,

47:16for your great seats now quit you of great shames,

47:19Barre, Harry, England,

47:21that sweeps through our land

47:23painted in the blood of our Fleur.

47:25Go down upon him.

47:27You have power enough.

47:29And in a captive chariot into Rhone,

47:32bring him our prisoner.

47:34Bravo.

47:39Seriously, was that too far or not too far?

47:42Not to my taste. Not to my ear.

47:44No.

47:45It was like a fruitcake stuffed with lots of different ingredients.

47:48It was down at the beginning,

47:50and there was this amazing thread that went right the way through.

47:52You never let it drop or let it flag for one second.

47:55It just kept on going like a huge, relentless wave.

47:58It was marvellous.

47:59Did the speech take us with you?

48:01It never lets us off the hook when it's done that way.

48:03No.

48:04No, it does take us.

48:05Yes, it swept us right along.

48:07Was that Rouen?

48:08Rouen.

48:09No, I said Rhone, R-O-A-N,

48:11because that's how it's spelled in the folio.

48:13And, of course, it makes a much better verse line.

48:15In a captive chariot into Rouen.

48:17Sounds a bit of a hiccup.

48:19But in a captive chariot into Rhone.

48:21It's much more resonant.

48:23It's wonderful to hear that,

48:24because all our literature and playwriting today

48:28seems to be obsessed with the lack of language.

48:31You know, the absence of a text sometimes.

48:34You know, spaces, pauses.

48:36And to hear that so thickly encrusted

48:38and each different kind of shape and movement in the sound.

48:43What it is is energy, isn't it?

48:44I mean, it requires a fantastic amount of energy to use this language well.

48:49Our modern thing, as you said, with pauses.

48:51I mean, a lot of our modern writing is thrown away and deflated.

48:55But a speech like that requires a fantastic drive and energy,

48:59which is also something we need to hold on to and remember.

49:02It's as if Shakespeare means each name to stand for 5,000 men.

49:06So by the end of the speech, you've had the whole of the army.

49:09Yes.

49:10Well, what are the key points we should remember from this exploration?

49:15It seems to me that the most important one

49:17is that the characters need the language

49:20to express their situation and their characters.

49:23Yes, you can't say that their language is remotely incidental.

49:26Their language is them, and that should be our starting point.

49:29And then we have to keep this balance

49:31between the Elizabethan tradition and our tradition.

49:35It's always that word balance.

49:37Perhaps in one or two of our versions,

49:39we may have gone a bit too far one way.

49:41Perhaps in others, we've gone too far naturalistically.

49:44The melancholy truth is that in performance, it's hardly ever perfect.

49:48It goes too far one way and too far another.

49:51There's no perfect answer.

49:52Let your own discretion be your tutor.

49:54Yes, that's right. That's the way it goes.

49:56You keep coming up with these things.

49:58That's the way it is.

49:59It's not me.

50:00I think all we can say is that if the situation is right

50:03and the character's right,

50:04and if you find and fresh mint the language, you won't be far off.

50:08So as ever, the moral and the rule is,

50:11make the words your own, your own words.

51:08Subs by www.zeoranger.co.uk

Acting Shakespeare - John Barton - Ben Kingsley - Masterclass - Part 3 - Language and Character - 4K

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