"Barton’s legacy is the most exhilarating tribute one can pay to Shakespeare."
Maximianno Cobra - Shakespeare Network - Founder and Artistic Director
- CAST -
Featuring:
Dustin Hoffman, Charles S. Dutton, Liev Schreiber, Kevin Kline, Lynn Collins, Cynthia Nixon, David Hyde Pierce, Keith David, Patrick Stewart, Peter Hall.
Please consider subscribing to our channel for More Insights: https://www.youtube.com/user/ShakespeareNetwork?sub_confirmation=1
This fascinating program brings viewers into a workshop run by John Barton, cofounder of the Royal Shakespeare Company, that demonstrates how vividly accessible Shakespeare’s language can be when it is heard rather than read. Barton explains that Shakespeare’s text gives subtle cues to actors about how a scene should be played, and that audiences can become immersed in the action by a verbal invitation to the imagination (“Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them…”). With commentary and rehearsal footage that features Kevin Kline, Patrick Stewart, Cynthia Nixon, Charles S. Dutton, Dustin Hoffman, Sir Peter Hall, and others, the film includes some of Shakespeare’s most famous scenes in compelling new interpretations.
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
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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/
Maximianno Cobra - Shakespeare Network - Founder and Artistic Director
- CAST -
Featuring:
Dustin Hoffman, Charles S. Dutton, Liev Schreiber, Kevin Kline, Lynn Collins, Cynthia Nixon, David Hyde Pierce, Keith David, Patrick Stewart, Peter Hall.
Please consider subscribing to our channel for More Insights: https://www.youtube.com/user/ShakespeareNetwork?sub_confirmation=1
This fascinating program brings viewers into a workshop run by John Barton, cofounder of the Royal Shakespeare Company, that demonstrates how vividly accessible Shakespeare’s language can be when it is heard rather than read. Barton explains that Shakespeare’s text gives subtle cues to actors about how a scene should be played, and that audiences can become immersed in the action by a verbal invitation to the imagination (“Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them…”). With commentary and rehearsal footage that features Kevin Kline, Patrick Stewart, Cynthia Nixon, Charles S. Dutton, Dustin Hoffman, Sir Peter Hall, and others, the film includes some of Shakespeare’s most famous scenes in compelling new interpretations.
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/
Category
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LearningTranscript
00:00People say it's very hard today to make an audience listen
00:29and understand Shakespeare, but Shakespeare's theatre is built on bringing those words
00:36alive.
00:40Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue.
00:44But if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as leaf the town crier who spoke
00:49my lies.
00:51The way he writes, if you tap into it, he's guiding, he's directing, he's giving hints
00:59to an actor.
01:01Sometimes these modern dress ones can be really weird.
01:07The miracle still is that you can give a difficult speech of Shakespeare to some intelligent
01:14people and say, read it once and tell me what it says.
01:17They can't do it.
01:19But if they listen to an actor say it once, who really knows what it's about and act it,
01:25they'll understand it.
01:28You do not write these words to be read.
01:30It's like sheet music.
01:33You don't just look at it, it's just a bunch of notes on a page.
01:36This was meant to be played.
01:37I think actually we're going to go this way, downstairs.
01:38Did you?
01:39Yeah.
01:40I hated it.
01:41Until you found somebody.
01:42Until I found somebody and a part that I could feel passionate about.
01:43Right.
01:44Amphimicus.
01:45Amphimicus.
01:46Amphimicus.
01:47Amphimicus.
01:48Amphimicus.
01:49Amphimicus.
01:50Amphimicus.
01:51Amphimicus.
01:52Amphimicus.
01:53Amphimicus.
01:54Amphimicus.
01:55Amphimicus.
01:56Amphimicus.
01:57I had heard of John Barton for years.
02:03I remember British actors telling me, John Barton is the man who made Shakespeare come
02:08alive for me, and so we brought him over to do these workshops.
02:14John gives you some structure, some starting point in terms of how to approach Shakespeare.
02:20And I think off we go, and I think the most difficult thing in any workshop is the awful
02:26moment of starting it is here I am with a crowd of solemn people looking at me
02:31and I want to break down the atmosphere of reverence around me. The point of
02:35having an audience at a workshop is because the workshop is going to be
02:40about communicating, sharing and listening and one of the questions I
02:47will ask at times with a difficult bit of text is did you follow that? Did you
02:51understand a word that they were saying? Did you listen or did you
02:56get the point or were you bored or something? So your response is important
03:01to what we set up, what we explore here and I believe that it's helpful to an
03:07actor coming to Shakespeare if they either have never done it or if they
03:11haven't done it much is to point out to them that there are maybe six maybe ten
03:17not more very basic things that Shakespeare does in the way he writes
03:23which is are ever-present they're always always turning up it you can find them
03:29in any speech and that if the actor tunes in and can use them and tap into
03:34them they very soon find their way with Shakespeare. If they don't and they're
03:38not aware of the writing devices that Shakespeare uses they get themselves
03:43into a muddle. Does that make sense as a starting point? I've made far too long a
03:48speech therefore I will start and do a speech.
04:01What I want us to look at is the experience not just of relishing a
04:09wonderful bit of writing but it is one of the places in Shakespeare where he
04:15does address the audience and gives them instructions and advice and he keeps
04:19saying imagine things, work your thoughts, see a siege. It's a different kind of
04:26theatre.
04:29Oh for a muse of fire that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention, a
04:38kingdom for a stage, princes to act and monarchs to behold the swelling scene.
04:47Then should the warlike Harry, like himself, assume the port of Mars and at
04:55his heels, leashed in like hounds, should famine, sword and fire crouch for
05:03employment. If somebody says oh for a muse of fire it's a pretty rousing start
05:11of passion what he wants but he then says we can't do it and it's written on
05:16a contradiction between I would like to do this in a big movie with a thousand
05:22tanks and extras but we're in a tiny little tatty theatre so we can't do it
05:27unless we imagine it. That contradiction is done brilliantly verbally. Our idea
05:33that the whole thing is about relationships is not the primary one
05:37with Shakespeare. You work on the audience through the language centrally.
05:41The text keeps changing between high language and naturalistic and down-to-
05:47earth language. It's a very, in a general wash sense, poetic speech but a lot of it
05:53isn't. Can this cockpit hold the vasty fields of France or may we cram within
06:02this wooden O the very casks that did affright the air at Agincourt. Oh pardon
06:12since a crooked figure may in little place attest a million and let us ciphers
06:21to this great account on your imaginary forces work. And then he gets to the most
06:28important line to me almost on your imaginary forces work. That to me he's
06:37demanding of the audience to use their imagination and to work. If the text is
06:43alive and working it'll reverberate onto us. Peace out our imperfections with your
06:51thoughts. Into a thousand parts divide one man and make imaginary poisons. Think
07:00when we talk of horses that you see them printing their proud hoofs in the
07:05receiving earth. What is your thoughts that now must deck our kings. Carry them
07:13here and there jumping all times turning the accomplishment of many years into an
07:18hourglass. For the which supply admit me chorus to this history who prologue like
07:26your humble patients pray gently to hear kindly to judge. Our play. When I was
07:37introduced to Shakespeare in high school I didn't really understand it and it was
07:42frustrating and then I was afraid of it and then I hated it. It was as an actor
07:51that I found my way into Shakespeare. What's great about John is that no sooner
08:00do you think you're appreciating language and giving it its due in Shakespeare then
08:06he'll stop and say well you know you're loving it to death you know you're
08:10making a meal of it. It's too much. That's pretty straightforward. Just say it. I
08:15think I'd quite like to do Diomed in Crescent.
08:21The situation here is poor old Crescent has been away from Troy in a hostage exchange
08:35and she's among the Greeks and is in the process of being seduced by the Greek
08:40Diomed. He is a sexual tough realist who's pressing to go to bed with her.
08:48She's attracted to him but she doesn't want to betray Troilus who she's in
08:52love with. That's the situation. It's incredibly simple in the writing in
08:57these very short lines. Give it me again. Whose was it? Tell. And they're firing at
09:04full guns on the words. It's like a rally at tennis. Their aces are being served or
09:11counterattacks are being made whizzing across the net but it's the text that is
09:16the bedrock of making works. Have a have a bash.
09:25How now my charge? Any piece of theatre has to be lived one line at a time.
09:30That's the moment you're in. That's the moment the audience sees. For that moment
09:34that is the play. So in a funny way this is a reminder of that. You actually don't
09:39have the whole play there on stage at any one time. Now let your mind be
09:46coupled with your words. Sweet honey Greek. Tempt me no more to fall. I'm learning
09:54things because it happens. It happened. I hadn't spotted it before. How now my
09:58charge? You are his her guardian but you're absolutely right Peter that
10:04charge is also a sexual term for Elizabethan. So the word will do both. I
10:09hadn't yet never spotted it. Hello my charge. It tells a lot. The single word
10:18will do it. It puts the emphasis on making each line a breathing entity. Any
10:26line that doesn't have its own life is dead. How now my charge? Now my sweet
10:38guardian. Now I'm going to take you through the words and you answer with my
10:44sweet guardian. What is your sexual implication there? I do not know but the
10:50word you're coming back with a G word against a G word. That's not accidental
10:54in the writing. We're gonna look at this text as if it's the most dense bit of
10:57poetry in Shakespeare.
11:00How now my charge? Now my sweet guardian. Hark a word with you. That was a bit
11:18passive. You've got to... you actually want to have a word with him. I've got
11:26something to say to you. Throw the words at him. Now my sweet guardian. Hark a word
11:33with you. I think John's great trick in some way is distracting the actor from
11:41being an actor so that he can be a human being. And that was Shakespeare's great
11:47trick as a writer. What would you have me do? What did you swear you would bestow
11:55on me? I pray thee do not hold me to mine oath. Bid me do anything but that. Right
12:03we'll stop you there. I should say I want to take us to now and one of the
12:09reasons I picked this bit of text. There is something very peculiar about it which
12:14terribly obvious when pointed out but easy to overlook. That it's perhaps a
12:20supreme example of a scene in Shakespeare which is almost all written
12:25in monosyllables. I shall have it. What this? Aye that. If it's all monosyllabic
12:32it's very abrasive. It's very charged. I'll have this. Whose was it? It is no
12:39matter. Come tell me whose it was. T'was one that loved me better than you will.
12:44This is a classic trap scene because it looks like a kind of naturalistically
12:51playable scene that's going to get into a muddle if you try and play it that way.
12:55And Diomede is so deliberate like setting a rhythm. It's like he's
13:00trying to control her with his rhythm and she's trying to resist it in
13:05different ways. So what matters is whether the audience want to listen and
13:11know what's going to happen next and hang on to every word. That's the
13:14precious gift. You can act terribly well. You can act with great emotional power
13:19and panache but doesn't necessarily mean the audience will listen. It's very
13:26important in a workshop that one is not trying to bring a scene to performance
13:31or to perfection. One's taking the bit of text to find out what will help the
13:36actor that he can then use as he builds a performance. I've directed a lot of
13:43Shakespeare and I've probably done all the ones I know how to do or want to do.
13:47Long long ago Peter Hall asked me to join him when he founded the Royal
13:53Shakespeare Company and he wanted me to help with the actors working on the text
13:59and language and verse. Well of course you could stress it that way if you went
14:04for the play and said and I play too if you picked out that theatre metaphor.
14:09Go play boy, play. My mother plays and I play too. That's possible isn't it?
14:15I had never met such intensity in a director before. I'd never been in the
14:24presence of a man who could exclude the world, forget time, forget where he is,
14:30indeed as he's well known, I mean literally forget where he is because he's famous for
14:34falling over things and falling off stages and so forth because the the world around him it
14:40seems to be irrelevant. The only thing that matters is attention on the actors and the
14:45language that they're speaking. It's just that he's an absent-minded professor. He doesn't quite
14:49realize because his mind is on higher things what he's doing. You know finding his way through a
14:55sonnet for him is like sailing up the Thames on a sunny day. It's a nice thing to do.
15:05I think people in history are not a mystery to John. Why do you stay so long my lords of France?
15:11I was shy of him. I was nervous of this great guy and I was new in the company
15:16but as soon as I started he stopped me and he began to break down the speech in a way that
15:23no one had ever done it for me before. I was just used to thinking in terms of emotion and certain
15:29to an extent in terms of character and a little in terms of imagery. I thought that was a wonderful
15:35use of verse. So much so that at the end of the hour when I exhausted from the kind of intellectual
15:43battering that I thought I'd taken on this, I looked at my script and I found that almost
15:48every other word in my script was now either underlined or circled. And I wondered how I
15:55could possibly translate all of this that this intense master class in verse speaking that I've
16:01been given into a living performance. But I struggled with it and a few days later I had
16:06this 45-minute session with him and even more intense than the first except I got to go through
16:12the speech more times. When that session was over and I looked at my script I found that every line
16:17that hadn't been underlined or circled now was. So in a sense what he had said to me was there is
16:23not a word that is insignificant in this speech. Everything has a significance a meaning and a
16:29place and it's all linked to all of the other significant moments.
16:36In the late 50s early 60s John Barton joined forces with Peter Hall and created the Royal
16:42Shakespeare Company. They knocked the dust off the old style of acting Shakespeare and led the
16:48way to a new stripped down fresh style and started a movement in a way in terms of how Shakespeare
16:57should be played. See I think most people if you say to them Shakespeare in acting think of a very
17:03overweight lady or gentleman moaning and groaning and shouting and gesticulating. They certainly
17:09don't think of it as something witty lean quick spoken trippingly on the tongue funny abrasive
17:16strange you know. I will buy with you sell with you talk with you walk with you and so following
17:21but I will not eat with you drink with you nor pray with you. What news on the real though?
17:30John and Peter passionately feel American actors have intuitively a feeling for Shakespeare's
17:37language and structure and certainly for character and certainly for emotion.
17:41Cursed be my tribe if I forgive him. Shylock do you hear? I am debating of my present story. It
17:47really depends on having that little beat after tribe cursed be my tribe end of line
17:54if I forgive him. Shylock do you hear? I know the iambic when I drill it over. Yeah but then I get
18:00in here it goes right off my skull. I mean that's inevitable. It's exactly like an actor learning a
18:06dance or a singer learning a song. You learn the dance you learn the steps you learn the notes.
18:12There then comes a point when you have to as we say make it your own and the point when you make
18:18it your own is when you understand what you have to feel in order to make that end result
18:23the actual expression. I am not bid for love they flatter me but yet I'll go in hate to feed upon
18:37but yet I'll go yeah I know I'm just trying to yeah
18:45we're a place for sure but why am I going why do I want to go they don't want me because they love me
18:52but even though I know they don't love me I'll go and I'll bring my own hate
18:57they flatter okay they flatter me but yet I'll go in hate to feed upon
19:04the prodigal Christian. Great great. In the end it's how to help a modern actor act and act freely
19:14handling Shakespeare's text. Attack us more. Okay. I have to get a sense of that actor and how they
19:20tick and what is helpful to them. Under whose shade the ramping lion slept
19:28whose top branch over-peered Jove's spreading tree and I just feel so acty because I'm
19:44it's not necessarily a crime
19:51the point is it's the juices of this marvelous bit of rhetoric
19:56isn't it and we of course you we can go over the top yeah you won't be punished no
20:04Mia will now go over the top
20:08thank you
20:19you're left alone somebody has just just thrown down a ring in front of you
20:25and you pick it up and that's the situation where the hell did this come from
20:30shall I just start just do and then I'll react okay anything okay all offers gratefully received
20:44I left no ring with her what means this lady fortune forbid my outside have not charmed her
20:51she made good few of me indeed so much that sure myth thought her eye had lost her tongue
21:00for she did speak in starts distractedly she loves me sure very good now my rule is I'm not allowed
21:09to direct you I'm only allowed to to give you hints to put you in orbit or things about the
21:15things about the text this one I'm using not just because it's a wonderful text but because it's a
21:22real tester about playing the storyline you actually did it more describing all the things
21:30that are happening you actually don't know what's happening the comedy is to do with they know
21:35they watch you who are normally which equate intelligent and sensitive actually a bit thick
21:43at first right and I think that the secret might be on the gear change is not to go straight into
21:51she loves me sure I mean you don't realize till the moment and the verse line goes for she did
21:57speak in starts distractedly however you time it do it if you just live that story okay
22:05I left no ring with her what means this lady fortune forbid my outside have not charmed her
22:19she made good few of me indeed so much that sure myth thought her eye had lost her tongue
22:27for she did speak in starts distractedly
22:30she loves me sure
22:35that's lovely yeah did that feel right yeah let me come in here and say what are the big gear
22:41changes because the problem is one always tends to generalize or make it even in rhythm I want
22:49any actor to sense themselves where Shakespeare is steadying the scene speeding up or whatever
22:56because if a long speech becomes a statement or generalize I stop listening if I sort of get the
23:02point I tend to well I'm quite enjoying this but I don't actually listen to every word and that's
23:08what Shakespeare wants us to do going to now do the well-known bit of Hamlet's advice to the players
23:25what's more interesting for an audience here is not that Hamlet's saying it but that at this point
23:32in the play one of the characters make us think about the nature of theatre that's that's very
23:36Shakespearean speak the speech I pray you as I pronounced it to you trippingly on the tongue
23:45but if you mouth it as many of our players do I had as leaf the town crier spoke my lines
23:52an actor trap is to play the mood or the emotion or the general results of a speech rather than
24:00that speech coming out of something lived discovered and worded in the moment suit the
24:06action to the word the word to the action with this special observance that you or step not
24:12the modesty of nature for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing whose end both
24:21at the first and now was and is to hold as to her the mirror up to nature show virtue her feature
24:29scorn her own image the very age and body of the time his form and pressure his form and pressure
24:40any ideas that statement of Shakespeare's says something to the audience about why you're doing
24:47it we're doing working on Shakespeare at all and why do we do it today our lives and the life of
24:52the theatre is about the pressure of the moment and therefore a good play well acted makes that
25:00bridge between the modern and the contemporary and the Elizabethan we are for good or ill today in a
25:10culture that is primarily visual rather than verbal but if you've got a great and timeless
25:18writer what the actors and director have to do is to take a modern audience into another world
25:26time melts that's what I'm after
25:32the average audience in the theatre don't really listen to complex language unless the actor
25:40shares it makes them listen argues it well and communicates it
25:46we seem to have lost that love of language and while it's a pleasure to do Shakespeare it's also
25:54there's a challenge that's being posed for contemporary actor there are certain tools
25:59certain techniques that have to be sharpened and so if Shakespeare's going to stay alive
26:07in the 21st century I think it's up to the actors words vows gifts tears and love's full sacrifice
26:21he offers and another's enterprise I think what we do here is maybe audience if you haven't done so
26:28let's all have a look at the text this bit of text one of the reasons I picked to start with
26:35it enables me to say what I think is the single most important thing about the way Shakespeare
26:40writes he writes in antithesis do you know what we mean by antithesis you look into this speech
26:48virtual there's something antithetical the whole time and it's that that gives us the character
26:54and the situation it's about something it's about contradictions I love him and I'm going to hide it
27:00because I'm like this and I'm like that if you share with us the contradictions in yourself
27:07the character starts to build and we get interested in you look at how he sets a word
27:13or an idea against another word and unfolds human life as something full of ambiguities
27:20and contradictions that's a way of writing which then expresses itself through characters and all
27:28characters in Shakespeare at some point use that device now let's do it again and let's just follow
27:35it in the text you do it to them and we'll just point out to them as they come words vows
27:45gifts tears and love's full sacrifice he offers in another's enterprise well I thought that was
27:53one antithesis you didn't get what happens is there's a list at the beginning but the words
27:58that matter are he offers in another's enterprise it doesn't quite make sense to me if that
28:06antithetical thought isn't in it do it again words vows gifts tears and love's full sacrifice
28:15he offers in another's enterprise but more and joyless thousand fold I see
28:23than in the glass of pander's praise may be and it's the same sort of thing isn't it I see
28:28as opposed to panda ah it's a similar thing but more and joyless thousand fold I see
28:35than in the glass of pander's praise may be I think the other thing I would say it is written
28:42in rhyme that is a fact so the first acting problem is what do you do about rhymes
28:49well I would suggest something quite simple is that if you ignore it it sounds phony therefore
28:56you have to use it part of your character your wit your imagination is that you know you're
29:02talking in rhyme I am so with it I'm so sexy and attractive that I can do it all in rhyme when I
29:10want to right therefore first thing to you is play the rhymes as your words because the process
29:18is to make these words your own I've always believed in coming to do workshops here it's
29:33important to have one English actor which is why I've asked Harriet to come people say oh dear but
29:38you all know something in England about Shakespeare that we don't hear it so crap
29:47this scene is an absolute classic of why of Shakespeare's shifting between
29:54verse and prose and really just sharing together why does he do it what happens here the
30:02prose is obviously to do with making jokes and being light and easy and and verse is to do with
30:08something emotionally deeper it isn't always that could be the opposite but it's just this
30:13is a very good simple example where one can show fairly clearly why it's going from one to the
30:21other does thou and contents think tell me Amelia that there be women do abuse their husbands and
30:28such gross kind there be some such no question would thou do such a deed for all the world
30:35why would not you no by this heavenly light nor I neither by this heavenly light
30:42I might do it as well in the dark
30:46shrew me if I would do such a wrong for the whole world why the wrong is but a wrong in the world
30:52and having the world for your labors is a wrong in your own world and you might quickly make it right
30:57I do not think there is any such woman yes a dozen and as many to the advantage as would
31:04store the world they played for then it then is the big change where Amelia goes into verse
31:12of signing off prose and suddenly a need for you to use verse because you're not being flipped so
31:19what is verse all it means is the rhythm that goes to dum de dum de dum de dum de dum
31:26that is blank verse so on we go but I do think that it is husband's faults if their wives do fall
31:38say that they slack their duties and pour our treasures into foreign laps
31:44or else break out in peevish jealousies throwing restraint upon us or say they strike us or scant
31:52our former having in despite well we have galls and though we have some grace yet have we some
32:02revenge it's terribly like great jazz playing now the essence of jazz is it's an individualistic
32:11it's a celebration of the individual there isn't another charlie parker there's charlie parker
32:17that's it but what there is is a tune and a rhythm and somebody an extraordinary jazz musician
32:29taking liberties with that rhythm and nearly breaking nearly breaking the rhythm nearly
32:34nearly falling off the whole machine it's frailty that does us it is so too and have
32:41not we affections desires for sport and frailty as men have then let them use us well else let
32:49them know the ills we do their ills instruct us so it nearly misses the beat but never does
32:58and great shakespearean acting never misses the the beat of the verse
33:03but is flexible against it in counterpoint
33:16we're taught in our culture to say what is my motivation i think that's the wrong question
33:23i think it's more useful to start a scene or a part by saying what am i reacting to
33:31what pressure is on me that makes it necessary for me to do something or makes me want to do something
33:38kevin's played hamlet it's well-known text and i just want to use it as a talking point
33:45about character in terms of how does shakespeare build a character the whole point with the
33:51character of hamlet and indeed the soliloquies is they incredibly inconsistent if you try to say
33:57hamlet is this or is that the text resists it and the a bad hamlet takes his cue from one of
34:05the soliloquies and works everything out in relation to it in the way i think shakespeare
34:10builds characters they're all most all built on contradictions ambiguities and reversals
34:19he actually says the most important lines to me in the part it's not interpretation it's a fact
34:25he says i do not know why yet the things to do since i have cause and means and will to do it
34:31i don't know i don't understand my own character that's wonderful i think acting helped to anybody
34:39playing hamlet be or not to be that is the question
34:50whether it is one other thing i must say it's it's also as you're it's it's it's it makes it
34:57easier obviously if you're raising the question for your friends the audience
35:02acting tip there are questions in the speech
35:06when there's a question always play the question should we do it once more
35:14to be or not to be that is the question
35:21whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
35:28or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them to die
35:41to sleep no more and by sleep say we end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that
35:51flesh is heir to tis a consummation devoutly to be wished to die sleep
36:03sleep a chance to dream
36:08aye there's the rub we're in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have
36:15shuffled off this mortal coil must give us pause there's the respect that makes calamity of so
36:24long life who would bear the whips and scorns of time the oppressors wrong the proud man's
36:35contumely the pangs of disprised love the laws delay the insolence of office and the spurns
36:43the patient merit of the unworthy takes when he himself might his quietus make with a bare bodkin
36:52who would fardels bear to grunt and sweat under a weary life but that the dread of something
37:01after death the undiscovered country from whose born no traveler returns puzzles the will
37:10and makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of
37:19as conscience does make cowards of us all
37:25us native view of resolution is sickly door with the pale cast of thought
37:33of thought enterprises of great pitch and moment with this regard
37:39their currents turn awry and lose the name of action
37:46doesn't it
37:50well that was not very remarkably did i say that all right
37:56i felt that he kept flip-flopping you know it's like i want to i want to do
38:01something but i keep thinking and when i think about it i can't do what i'm supposed to do
38:10the whole irony and is it funny is it tragic it's that you have this profound exploration
38:16and you get fuck nowhere and to be human means the all these contradictions
38:23what shakespeare does is describe the experience of being a human being
38:38if you're the king who's been thrown out if you're the king who's coming in
38:42if you're the wife of the king who's been thrown out if you're the page
38:46who's done nothing but work for that king all your life and now you're out of a job
38:51each of them describes the experience of life in a different way
38:55and that is done with language there's no substitute for it
39:12the problem in shakespeare always is how can you speak the lines when you're supposed to
39:18be very emotional because he wants the actor to contain the emotion that he's feeling inside
39:25by the use of this text but it's like me saying i must not cry because i wish to tell you
39:32exactly but the tears are there the emotion is there
39:35now might i do it pat now he is a praying and now i'll do it and so he goes to heaven
39:50and so am i revenged
39:57that would be scanned
39:58and a villain kills my father and for that i his soul son did this same villain send to heaven
40:08why this is higher in salary not revenge if somebody does an extraordinary breakdown
40:15they've done it you don't need the text what what what shakespeare does is about handling emotion
40:23it's not about it primarily about expressing it it's about the character needs themselves
40:32to talk about it to handle it if you actually surrender to it the odds are there's a moment
40:41where an audience shares and feels it but then they don't listen
40:54in the scene between beatrice and benedict it is very much a dialogue of passing the ball one
41:01to another because over and over one of them picks up on the other one's word don't they
41:07the gun has been fired at the end of the line and that passes something onto him that he has
41:11to throw back to you it's almost a musical thing the point i'm trying to make is that the clues to
41:17the character are more built into the writing than we often notice they're two very clever
41:23people expressing themselves that in itself is the juice and excitement of the scene and that
41:28in a sense is a relationship lady beatrice have you wept all the while yay and i will weep a while
41:37i will not desire that you have no reason i do it freely surely i do believe your fair
41:43cousin was wrong ah how much might the man deserve of me that would write her
41:50is there any way to show such friendship i'm going to stop you there because this gives you
41:53one example right or wrong each feeds the other yeah and it wasn't a set up and the other didn't
42:02play it back that's that's the thing i'm looking at if i was only allowed one comment
42:08i had to shut up i would say look for the antithesis because that's how he writes how
42:13he thinks how he forms sentences and sometimes they're very straightforward and witty sometimes
42:18they're about a contradiction and a paradox you've got to set the word against the word to share it
42:24together surely i i do believe your fair cousin was wrong ah how much might the man deserve of me
42:34who would write her is there any way to show such friendship a very easy way but no such friend
42:40may a man do it it is a man's office but not yours i do love nothing in the world so much
42:47as thee is not that strange as strange as the thing i know not it were as possible for me to
42:55say i love nothing so well as you but believe me not yet i lie not i confess nothing nor deny
43:04nothing i am sorry for my cousin by my sword beatrice thou lovest me well do not swear by
43:10it and eat it i will swear it by it that you love me and i'll make him eat it who says i love not
43:17you will you not eat your word with no sauce that can be devised to it i protest i love thee
43:24well then god forgive me for what offense sweet beatrice you have saved me you have
43:31stayed me in a happy hour i was about to protest that i loved you and do it with all thy heart
43:39i love you with so much of my heart that i have none left to protest
43:45come let me do anything for thee kill claudio oh
43:52not for the wide world you kill me to deny it
43:58farewell terry sweet beatrice i am gone though i am here there is no love in you nay i pray you
44:05let me go but beatrice oh that i were a man for his sake or that i had any friend would be a man
44:12for mine i cannot be a man with wishing therefore i will die a woman with grieving terry good
44:20beatrice by this hand i love you use it for my love some other way than swearing by it
44:28think you in your soul that count claudio hath wronged hero yay as i have a thought or a soul
44:36enough i am engaged i will challenge him i will kiss your hand and so leave by this hand claudio
44:46shall render me a dear account as you hear of me so think of me go comfort your cousin i must say
44:53i must say she's dead so farewell
44:59i think that you you're both doing so well i'm tempted to get a perfect take and that would be
45:05cheating for a workshop see i think that there's so many possibilities with shakespeare that we
45:11we all tend to complicate or in ben kingsley's wonderful words don't clutter he says he says
45:17he always is apt to clutter so i'm trying to reduce it to the simple common sense things
45:24that will then enable the choices that's really all i'm sort of trying to do
45:38i think we should just if we can find it just listen to a speech where the character talks to
45:45to their soul
45:50a candle a sleeping woman god etc othello is not in a very good state when he comes in
45:59and his soliloquies all over the place he talks well we should listen because it's quite
46:04guidance saying there are no rules you can't say it what doesn't work is if you do the whole of
46:11a soliloquy yourself that's just a yeah we go to sleep they think oh he's to be or not to be
46:18there's the question he is thinking about the meaning of life got the point oh well it's a
46:21famous speech i can have a rest here and just come and come and have a go feel your way with it and
46:29we'll explore anywhere anywhere you like yes you don't have to go up on on the stage or you can
46:41if you want to up together it is the cause
46:57it is the cause my soul
47:02let me not name it to you you chase stars it is the cause
47:07yet i'll not shed her blood
47:11nor scar that whiter skin of hers and snow and smooth as monumental alabaster yet she must die
47:23i guess part of doing shakespeare is being number one fearless you have to be fearless to do it you
47:30have to have a kind of um um bravado that says you know um i'll embarrass myself up here right
47:38now so what and if you're in great company and great camaraderie you're actually encouraged to
47:46embarrass yourself and it's cool maybe just imagine that the basic thing in shakespeare
47:53is that when you're alone on the stage you know they're there and they are potential friends or
48:00something yeah when you stop what you're doing the way you've been taught the way you've been
48:06doing it the habits you've fallen into and then along comes someone says you know try it this way
48:13it's always it gives you a spark on a long deep emotional speech like this you've got to keep an
48:20audience contact when you shared yourself one went totally with you and if you went
48:29away from us for too long i sort of started to observe because that is that is the nature of
48:36a soliloquy i'm not it's not an interpretive point it's something that one feels in an audience and
48:42indeed feels in you it's the most simplest and uncomplicated of things include the damn audience
48:50include your friends the the next problem with a very weighty long soliloquy is changing gear
48:58find your gear changes the rhythm of it matters as well as the feelings and the text it seems
49:06at the end of the play that he's in some sort of catatonic state in which some people's critics
49:11stupid critics say he is i think the interesting thing about it is that in his mind's all over
49:17the place he wants to he doesn't want to he he and the the different things that he's actually
49:23doing is he justifying himself is he exploring it is he expressing feelings that the choices
49:30are so many but sometimes um the gear changes at least for me to move from one to the other he
49:37loves her one second and he hates her the next he's going to kill her and he's not going to kill
49:42and not that nice little time well i'll think about it then uh let me indulge a little and then
49:47uh but if you can embrace that contradiction because he's he's absolutely determined and yet
49:55he can't he's he's living through a contradiction but i do think the point that the elizabethan
50:02actors probably thought quicker than we do is always helpful i think that we find that we
50:09churn through a gear change and clearly as it as in the writing of shakespeare it is so full of
50:16changes they must have embraced it in a way that we find harder we we study it we work on it books
50:22are read about it but the text says this change this change that's changed and and the answer is
50:29don't rush it but somehow it's not just that you feel deeply but that your your mind works quicker
50:36in shakespeare we americans sort of think visceral first we know we think physical we think
50:43emotional first you know and um we feel if we get that then we can go back to the words okay
50:51okay but john is right if you really look at the words and you really see
50:57oh well he's thinking this way now and then oh now he's back here now he's over here
51:01you can't help but become physical physically different
51:10it is the cause
51:14it is the cause my soul
51:18let me not name it to you you chase stars it is the cause
51:24yet i'll not shed her blood nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow
51:30and smooth as monumental alabaster yet she must die
51:38else she'll betray more men
51:46put out the light
51:47put out the light and then put out the light if i quench thee thou flaming minister i can again
51:55thy former light restore should i repent me but once put out thy light
52:03thou cunning's pattern of excelling nature i know not where is that promethean heat that can
52:11thy light reloom when i have plucked the rose i cannot give it vital growth again it needs must
52:19wither i'll smell it on a tree
52:30oh palmy breath
52:35dust almost persuade justice to break her sword
52:41but
52:47one more
52:53one more
52:56be thus when thou art dead
53:01and i will kill thee
53:05and love thee after
53:11one more and that's the last
53:21so sweet was ne'er so fatal i must weep but they are cruel tears
53:30this sorrow's heavenly it strikes where it doth love
53:38she wakes
53:42well something terrific happened there i thought what he absolutely caught then was the thing we
53:48were talking about earlier about the play doesn't stop for a soliloquy the trap about being alone
53:56talking with the audience is if the play stops for someone to talk about it however deep their
54:02feelings that was true we talked about hamlet if one actually sees someone wrestling with it
54:11it becomes dynamic active much more painful than if one gets locked into one's own feelings
54:19i thought that was terrific really i'm really terribly grateful to you very good thank you
54:24very thank you thank you
54:31you're welcome to do it right and to really live shakespeare you have to leave
54:37an ounce of your internal essence on the stage floor every night you know if you if you haven't
54:47done that then you haven't done the play or you haven't done the part and doing shakespeare can
54:52age you you know it can drive you to drink and whatever else but that's the that's also the love
55:00of it shakespeare's characters are whole people there is not a hero that he wrote that is not
55:12flawed there's not a villain who is not gifted in some way and has not the potential for great
55:18virtue the reason we can relate to shakespeare's characters is we recognize ourselves they're us
55:31and the great thing is that in the text one can only go so far in one's thoughts and imagination
55:38it's always different if a living actor stands up and does it it it all begins again
55:45it's almost sort of biblical the creation has to begin again
56:15so
56:45you
57:15you