Acting Shakespeare - John Barton - Peggy Ashcroft - Masterclass - Part 9 - Poetry - 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

00:30John, taking part in some of these programs and watching the others, I've been reminded

00:53that it is actually over 20 years since I first heard you expound some of the matter

00:59which you've been going into in great detail about how to do Shakespeare. Like the rest

01:03of us, in intervening two decades, I've not only worked with you, but come to be very

01:09grateful to you for the productions of Shakespeare, which I've not been able to, of yours, which

01:13I've seen. And we are privileged, and many of your viewers will not be as privileged

01:19because they won't have seen your productions. So everything you've been saying of an academic

01:22nature and of a detailed nature, I've been able to measure against your achievements

01:29as a director in the theatre, and the achievements of the actors who've worked for you. I wonder

01:35if some of the viewers are thinking, why did John Barton never come into the theatre at

01:41all? Why didn't he stay at Cambridge and be the most brilliant academic and write books

01:45on this subject? Why didn't he start a drama school? Why didn't he become a critic and

01:50chastise everybody who wasn't doing it like he was? And yet, I know you're devoted to

01:54the theatre, and I wonder if you could just, along those lines, tell us what it is about

02:01the theatre which keeps your adrenaline running, and makes you want to go even deeper into

02:08the sort of background which will help you to make what are often marvellous productions.

02:14I think in a way it's the reason why we're making these programmes, which is that I've

02:20been asked to write a book about Shakespeare, and I refused because I thought that you could

02:25only talk about the problems of acting Shakespeare by doing it with living actors. And my love

02:32of Shakespeare, which is certainly great when I read him, is always leading me to seeing,

02:37let it be done with actors. Let's see what happens when it's brought alive by actors

02:41because it's so incomplete when it's just a text on the stage. On the other hand, sometimes

02:47I think, well maybe it's all quite impossible, because when we do work, when we dig as we've

02:52been doing in these programmes, we analyse, we argue, we rootle around, and we learn so

03:00much about what goes on in that text. But of course then, when we do it, I always feel

03:06a bit of a sense of failure, because we can't put into the work more than a fraction of

03:12the things that we talk about and dig for. And I think failure is the important thing

03:20to talk about in this programme, because otherwise we set ourselves up as high priests, which

03:25we're not. We do our best, but we only bring before the audience a fraction of the things

03:31that we've learnt or think we've learnt in rehearsal. And I suppose I feel a particular

03:36sense of failure when I talk about Shakespeare's poetry. It's a problem that's haunted me over

03:45the years and which I've never really solved. When I read a Shakespeare text, I'm moved

03:52and stirred by the power and the resonance of individual lines. The poet Houseman described

03:59the effect to him of recalling a line of poetry when he was shaving. Experience has

04:06taught me to keep watch over my thoughts, because if a line of poetry strays into my

04:11memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act. Unfortunately, audiences don't

04:19shave in the theatre, but shouldn't they be thrilled by poetry just as Houseman was? Shouldn't

04:26our senses be stirred by the language? Yet nothing I've said so far about marrying our

04:33two traditions, Elizabethan and modern, necessarily helps to bring about what I can both hear

04:40and I can feel in the lines as I read them. I can talk about intentions and the rhythm

04:46and the key words and the situation and all that, all the things that we've looked at,

04:51and yet I feel I'm missing something and in rehearsal I often don't know what to say

04:56or how to help the actor.

04:58What about just saying to them, as somebody said in Alice in Wonderland, look after the

05:03sense and the sounds or look after themselves?

05:05Well that's comforting words to an actor, but are we sure that they're true? I mean,

05:11I think that they're good counsel for starting the work, but I'm not sure that they take

05:16you all the way. But what do you think?

05:19I think it's fair enough as far as the question of comprehension is concerned. You need to

05:25comprehend obviously as well as you can what the lines mean. I think that where the other

05:32aspect of the sounds or the textures, the rhythms, are to do with this other question

05:40which is, perhaps we don't quite understand so well today, which is the word apprehension

05:46as opposed to comprehension. And I think that apprehension to the Elizabethans was a very

05:50palpable form of being sensually highly aware of, as I say, rhythm, sound, texture, as a

06:02way of combining with comprehension to bring about a factor which goes beyond just the

06:10sense.

06:11That's very good.

06:14Something like music which would accompany wonderful lyrics, say.

06:18Yes.

06:19We're sort of talking about an acting sixth sense, which isn't to do with analysing or

06:24the mind. It's something that we have to feel about those lines.

06:28And it takes place only in the time in which it takes place. I mean, it lives as it dies

06:34or it dies as it lives.

06:35But how can we work on it? How can we find our way with it? That's the problem. I'm talking

06:41particularly about text which is poetic and yet not obviously heightened. Now that's saying

06:48something I haven't raised so far. There's often a kind of hidden poetry in seemingly

06:54simple unpoetic lines, which is easy to overlook and quite different from the overt poetry

07:01which we find in rich and heightened language. Just listen to the line we began the series

07:07with.

07:09In sooth I know not why I am so sad.

07:14Good. Now what Ian caught then, and what I didn't point out at the time because we were

07:19looking at other things, was that besides being a naturalistic line on the surface,

07:25it also has a poetic ring. Uneasy, haunting and resonant, though it's hard to put into

07:32words of quite what. That happens very often with Shakespeare's monosyllabic lines. Here's

07:39a prose example, all but one word of it are monosyllables.

07:44Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man.

07:50When Lear awakens from his madness, he says,

07:55You do me wrong to take me out of the grave.

08:00Thou art a soul in bliss, but I am bound upon a wheel of fire,

08:07that mine own tears do scald like molten lead.

08:12Thirty-five words, and all but two are monosyllables. Grave. Bliss. Fire.

08:21Now in All's Well that ends well, the Countess talks about what it's like to be in love.

08:30Even so it was with me when I was young.

08:34If ever we are natures, these are ours, this thorn.

08:41Doth to our rose of youth rightly belong. Our blood to us, this to our blood is born.

08:50It is the show and seal of nature's truth where love's strong passion is impressed in youth.

08:58By the remembrances of days foregone, such were our faults, for then we thought them none.

09:06Seventy-one words, and again all but eight are monosyllables.

09:11Shakespeare often uses monosyllabic lines for particularly charged or heightened moments.

09:17They need air. They need to go more slowly than the other lines that tend to do so naturally.

09:23Polysyllables trip easily off the tongue. Characterization, repudiation, and so on.

09:30Monosyllabic lines and words are packed with thoughts and feelings.

09:35You actually can't rush them.

09:37So just try taking one or two monosyllabic lines very fast and then see what happens with them.

09:44In sooth I know not why I am so sad.

09:48You do me wrong to take me out of the grave.

09:50That struts and frets his heart upon the stage.

09:52Even so it was with me when I was young.

09:53There, you can't do it, can you? So let's go back to Antonio again, slowly.

10:00In sooth I know not why I am so sad.

10:06Good. Now one of the difficulties of this line is that it's a difficult moment for Antonio.

10:11He doesn't know why he's so sad.

10:14So he's feeling for something but he himself doesn't quite know what it is.

10:18I suppose that's why it's a poetic line.

10:20So each of you take the line one after the other and see if you can't search it, feel for it,

10:27and disturb me poetically in some way like Ian was doing.

10:32In sooth I know not why I am so sad.

10:36In sooth I know not why I am so sad.

10:42In sooth I know not why I am so sad.

10:47In sooth I know not why I am so sad.

10:51In sooth I know not why I am so sad.

10:58Good. Well, I think something was captured and caught there

11:01because you were actually doing something that you don't normally do in the theatre

11:05and yet it's perhaps valuable.

11:07Do you really believe that old ghost about reading Shakespeare

11:09being better than seeing it on stage?

11:13Well, I think it's a ghost that's got some blood in it.

11:17Perhaps we should read Shakespeare to ourselves more often when we're rehearsing him.

11:21Perhaps there's a moral in that.

11:23It touches on something that we don't think about when we're worrying about

11:26character and moves and situation and plotting.

11:31Here's a literary man writing just 50 years ago

11:35of Constance's love and grief for her dead son Arthur in King John.

11:40Of nature's gifts that maced with lily's boast and with the half-blown rose,

11:45oh, bother that half-blown rose, its beauty blurs my eyes and I can hardly go on quoting.

11:49Grief fills the room up of my absent child,

11:52lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,

11:55puts on his pretty looks, oh, where's my handkerchief?

11:57I can't quote anymore.

12:00We can laugh at him, and indeed I suppose he's half laughing at himself,

12:04but isn't he at bottom right in what he's expressing there?

12:08Don't the lines move you just a little just by listening to them, even out of context?

12:13And if the feeling is there in reading,

12:16shouldn't we try to recapture it if we can in the theatre?

12:19And don't we sometimes give short shrift with poetry?

12:22In the old days, directors used to tell the actor how to do the line

12:25and what the tune was, and it still happens sometimes.

12:28I remember with you, oh yes, I remember, when I first started,

12:31you used to do it to me all the time, tell me how to say a line,

12:34because I got the inflectional things like that wrong.

12:38Do you believe in that?

12:39Well, I'm very half and half about it.

12:41Sometimes I think it's a good thing, sometimes I think it's a terrible thing.

12:45I'm tempted to it often, but I suspect it,

12:48because I think the prejudice against it in the modern theatre is healthy,

12:52because it makes the actor a mimic.

12:55He'd be playing a set tune rather than spontaneous intentions

12:59and wouldn't feel real.

13:00Anyway, I'm always doubtful, why should I think that I can do it better?

13:03But I'm never quite sure about it.

13:06What do you think?

13:07Well, it's interesting that that's Hamlet's,

13:10kind of, I suppose, instructions to the players.

13:14But then perhaps that was Hamlet,

13:16I wonder whether Hamlet would have made the same instructions

13:18to a set of players at the end of the play

13:20that he makes so certainly at the beginning.

13:22Does it perhaps suggest something that the quality of a,

13:26I think, a director should indeed be able to have the ability

13:31to explain as well as possible,

13:32but must always, I think, allow actors to be in a,

13:38feel in a secure enough atmosphere that they can experiment

13:42and similarly the director will want to do that as well,

13:45so that in fact something new can be found.

13:48I mean, I think that if everybody followed Hamlet's instructions

13:51absolutely all the time,

13:53half his plays would have fallen by the wayside in a curious way.

13:56I mean, I don't think that they apply absolutely to the letter all the way through

14:01and even then they're open to a kind of interpretation.

14:04So I think a balance is really the thing that should happen.

14:07I think that's sage counsel.

14:09Once again, you're using our key word, which is balance.

14:13One couldn't tip it too far one way, tip it too far the other,

14:16always got to balance.

14:18Let's now take a bit of prose,

14:21which certainly contains hidden poetry.

14:23A dialogue which we've heard before between Falstaff

14:27and Goldtear Sheet from King Henry the Fourth Part Two.

14:34Thou wholesome little tidy moth on a new boar pig.

14:39When will thou leave fighting a days and finding a nights

14:43and patch up thine old body for heaven?

14:46Peace, good doll.

14:48Do not speak like a death's head.

14:52Do not bid me remember mine end.

14:56Sirrah, what humours the prince on?

15:00He's a good shallow young fellow.

15:03He's made a good pantler and a good chipped bread well.

15:08They'd say poins has a good wit.

15:11He? Good wit?

15:14Hang him, baboon.

15:17His wits as thick as Tewkesbury mustard.

15:21Why does the prince love him so, then?

15:24Because their legs are both of a bigness.

15:27He plays it quite so well.

15:29He eats conger and fennel,

15:32and drinks to candle's ends for flapdragons.

15:37Rides with the wild mare, with the boys.

15:42Jumps upon joint stools.

15:45Swears with good grace.

15:48Wears his boots pretty smooth.

15:51By country, sign of the leg.

15:55And other gamble faculties.

16:01Does that show a weak mind and an able body?

16:08For which the prince admits him.

16:11The prince himself is such another.

16:15Kiss me, darl.

16:23That does give me flattering busies.

16:26By my troth, I kiss thee with the most constant heart.

16:31I am old.

16:34I am old.

16:38I love thee more than I love ere a scurvy young boy of them all.

16:42Much stuff would have a curtle of.

16:45I shall receive money as there's to him.

16:47Shall have a cap tomorrow.

16:50A merry song.

16:58It grows late.

17:00We're to bed.

17:04Thou'll forget me when I'm gone.

17:07When I'm gone.

17:09By my troth, thou'll set me a-weeping, and thou speak'st so.

17:15Prove that ever I dress handsome till thy return.

17:24Harken at the end.

17:29Well, what's the poetic bit?

17:33Just listen again to three lines.

17:36A plays at Coiteswell, and eats conger and fennel,

17:40and drinks off candle's ends for flap-dragons,

17:44and rides the wild mare with the boys.

17:48Drinking off candle's ends for flap-dragons means

17:52trying to drink out of a tankard with a lit candle in it,

17:56and trying to drink it without putting the candle out.

17:59But aren't these phrases poetic?

18:02Don't they say more than the things they actually describe?

18:06This is an easier example than in Soothe, I know not,

18:10because it's textually stranger and richer.

18:15Now, a really hard example of a poetic line.

18:20There's a line of Amelia's at the end of Othello,

18:23which haunts me.

18:25It can easily pass by unnoticed,

18:27but it sends a shiver through me in the way Hausmann describes.

18:32Othello has killed his wife Desdemona,

18:36and Iago's treachery is being found out.

18:39Amelia, Iago's wife,

18:41has discovered that he's been saying

18:43Desdemona went to bed with Cassio,

18:45and the pressure is on.

18:47She false with Cassio?

18:50Did you say with Cassio?

18:52With Cassio, mistress.

18:53Go to charm your tongue.

18:54I will not charm my tongue.

18:56I am bound to speak.

18:57My mistress here lies murdered in her bed.

19:00Oh, heaven forfend.

19:01And your reports have set the murder on.

19:04Stare not, masters.

19:06It is true indeed.

19:08Villainy, villainy, villainy.

19:11I think upon, I think, I smelt.

19:13Oh, villainy.

19:15I thought, so then I'll kill myself with grief.

19:18Oh, villainy, villainy.

19:19Are you mad?

19:20I charge you, get you home.

19:23Good masters, let me have leave to speak.

19:27Tis proper I obey him, but not now.

19:32Perchance, Iago, I will ne'er go home.

19:42Well, you can probably guess it.

19:43The line that moves me very powerfully is the last line.

19:48Perchance, Iago, I will ne'er go home.

19:51How can I explain it?

19:53In the general turmoil,

19:55it comes suddenly as a still line,

19:57where Amelia's emotion is channeled into a single thought.

20:01She stands outside herself.

20:04Partly because she's standing up to her husband, Iago,

20:07for the first time in her life.

20:08And partly because she subconsciously senses

20:11that he is about to kill her.

20:13So the line is ambiguous.

20:16It means, I won't go home with you.

20:19And it means, I'm going to die.

20:22Now, let's listen again to Queen Margaret

20:25in King Richard III, talking to the widow

20:28of the dead King Edward IV.

20:31The speech is also about time.

20:34Oh, thou didst prophesy that time would come,

20:36that I would wish for thee to help me curse

20:38that bottled spider, that foul bunched-back toad.

20:42I called thee then, vain flourish of my fortune.

20:47I called thee then, poor shadow.

20:49I called thee then, poor shadow, painted queen.

20:53A presentation of but what I was.

20:57A sign of dignity, a breath, a bubble.

21:00A queen in show, only to dress the scene.

21:06Where is thy husband now?

21:08Where be thy brothers?

21:09Where are thy two sons?

21:11Wherein dost thou joy?

21:12Who soothes thee and cries, God save the queen?

21:16Where are the bending peers that flatter thee?

21:19Where be the thronging troops that follow thee?

21:23Decline all this, and see what now thou art.

21:29Poor happy wife, a most distressed widow.

21:33Poor joyful mother, one that wails the name.

21:37For one that's sued to, one that humbly sues.

21:41For queen, a very catiff, crowned with care.

21:48Thus hath the course of justice whirled about,

21:52and left thee but a very prey to time.

22:04Sometimes Shakespeare at once sees both good and ill in time.

22:08It's an enemy, and yet a friend.

22:11So let's look at another non-dramatic piece which sums that up.

22:15Let's take a bit of The Rape of Lucrece, which hardly anybody knows.

22:20Alan, share the lines with us all.

22:23Tell us about your old friend.

22:25You know him, you love him, and you fear him.

22:28And above all, you accept him.

22:30It's not just text.

22:32It's your experience.

22:34Alan's.

22:35Time's glory is to calm contending kings,

22:39to unmask falsehood and bring truth to light.

22:44To stamp the seal of time in aged things,

22:48to wake the morn and sentinel the night.

22:52To wrong the wronger, till he render right.

22:57To ruinate proud buildings with thy hours,

23:00and smear with dust the old.

23:03And smear with dust their glittering golden towers.

23:08To fill with wormholes stately monuments,

23:12to feed oblivion with decay of things,

23:15to blot old books and alter their contents.

23:19To pluck the quills from ancient ravens' wings,

23:23to dry the old oak sap and cherish springs.

23:29To spoil antiquities of hammered steel,

23:33and turn the giddy round of fortune's wheel.

23:37To show the Beldam daughters of her daughter,

23:41to make the child a man, the man a child.

23:46To slay the tiger that doth live by slaughter,

23:51to tame the unicorn and lion wild,

23:54to mock the subtle in themselves beguiled.

23:59To cheer the ploughman with increased crops,

24:03and waste huge stones with little water drops.

24:11Sometimes Shakespeare addresses time

24:14as if it's almost a character,

24:16not something impersonal, but somebody he knows.

24:19His feelings about his old friend and enemy

24:22are constantly shifting.

24:23Sometimes he accepts time, and sometimes he's defiant.

24:28Devouring time, blunt thou the lion's paw,

24:33and let the earth devour her own sweet brood.

24:37Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaw,

24:40and drown the living phoenix in her blood.

24:44Make glared and sorry seasons as thou fleest,

24:47and do whate'er thou wilt, swift-footed time,

24:51with the wide world and all her fading sweets.

24:54But I forbid thee one most heinous crime.

24:58O carve not with thine hours my love's fair brow,

25:03nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen.

25:07Him in thy course untainted do allow,

25:11for beauty's pattern to succeeding men.

25:14Yet do thy worst, old time.

25:17What'er thy wrong, my love shall in my verse ever live young.

25:25Perhaps we're cheating by taking two non-dramatic bits.

25:29So let's go back to a key point we made earlier.

25:32Sometimes an actor has at the same time to be in character

25:37and yet stand outside his situation and his character.

25:41Let's take one of the most loaded examples of all.

25:45In Julius Caesar, Brutus is talking to the dead body

25:50of Cassius, his friend.

25:55The last of all the Romans, fairly well.

26:03It is impossible that ever Rome should breed thy fellow.

26:08Friends, I owe more tears to this dead man

26:13than you shall see me pay.

26:18I shall find time, Cassius.

26:25I shall find time.

26:29Oh, that was lovely.

26:31That last line, you made that sing poetically, I think.

26:35What do you feel and think about time

26:38at the moment that you say it?

26:40Well, it's hard to divorce what one feels and thinks

26:44about time at that moment, of course,

26:45from the information that is accumulated

26:47throughout the event of playing the role.

26:50But the clues I get off the page are short,

26:57monosyllabic almost, impossible is one of the largest,

27:00the longest words in the whole section.

27:02Relentless driving force of this speech.

27:06He doesn't give himself time for grief.

27:10The writing doesn't allow you time for grief.

27:12But I think the last line, Shakespeare allows the character

27:16by repetition to take himself by surprise

27:19because I think I shall find time

27:22when first said is quite genuine.

27:25And then when said again is totally ironic, of course,

27:28because it's too late to find time.

27:30That's right.

27:30And the second one probably has death resonating

27:33in it already.

27:34That's right.

27:34It's the problem of ambiguity again, isn't it?

27:37You're trying to reach out to Cassius with your love,

27:40but also like Amelia, you're thinking about your own death.

27:44So it's about two things.

27:45Yes.

27:46Maybe amongst other things,

27:47you're mocking yourself for all your high aspirations

27:50in the play which have come to nothing.

27:52I think that there is a danger

27:55if without the information of the play helping you

28:00to try and compress too many objectives

28:04into those four or five lines will neutralise,

28:07they'll start to neutralise one another.

28:09It's very hard actually to hold abstract information

28:13in your head.

28:14And if you haven't got the accumulated information

28:17to feed on, in other words,

28:18if the rest of Brutus has been a washout,

28:20you're not going to find your way out of it on these lines.

28:23You're not going to find any hope at all.

28:25It's always dangerous to dig too deep

28:27and think of too many things,

28:29but the lines got to mean so many things there.

28:31I mean, Shakespeare is asking us to be moved

28:36and to be questioning time.

28:38With sparse, short words as well.

28:41That's right.

28:41And in a way you have to trust the poetry

28:44and let it carry you.

28:45You can't worry about it

28:46while you're doing the line or should you?

28:48I think you've got to let go,

28:49but trust the...

28:50It's rather like pouring molten metal

28:52into a mould that Shakespeare has made for you.

28:55Providing your metal is hot enough,

28:57the mould will work,

28:58but if it's not, it won't.

29:00I'm torn when I listen to that

29:01because I thought you did it marvellously

29:03and yet one bit of me was wanting to say,

29:06get more out of it, get more out of it.

29:07But maybe I mustn't say too much

29:10because you can only take so much into it at a time.

29:13Well, let me hear it.

29:14I mean, I would like to hear it.

29:17I find often that things are...

29:19The objective side of a speech is unlocked

29:21when I hear somebody else say it.

29:24It remains subjective

29:25and I mustn't listen to myself anyway

29:27because it's a false exercise.

29:28So there's Cassius, John.

29:31And there's Brutus.

29:33So let me hear you do it.

29:35It would help me if you could do that.

29:38I've got to talk to the cloak this time.

29:39Yes, you have.

29:40It's a good cloak.

29:41It looked after me very well.

29:42My old friend Cassius.

29:47The last of all the Romans, fare thee well.

29:53It is impossible that ever Rome should breed thy fellow.

29:59Friends, I owe more tears to this dead man

30:03than you shall see me pay.

30:06I shall find time, Cassius.

30:11I shall find time.

30:16Let's take another word now.

30:18Let's take death.

30:20But this time we'll do it in a jolly way

30:22and we'll take a prose bit rather than a verse bit,

30:26but it's going to be poetic prose.

30:28It's also a passage built on the resonance

30:31of one single word.

30:33Here we have old Justice Shallow

30:38in Henry IV talking to his even older friend, Silence.

30:43Oh, Jesus.

30:44Jesus, the mad days that I've spent.

30:49And to see how many of mine old acquaintance are dead.

31:00We shall all follow, cousin.

31:06Oh, certainly.

31:07It is certainly sure.

31:09Death, as the psalmist says, comes to all.

31:13All shall die.

31:16How a good yoke of bullocks at Stamford Fair.

31:19Oh, by my truth, I was not there.

31:27Death is certain.

31:29Is old Double of your town living yet?

31:45Dead, sir.

31:46Jesus, Jesus, dead.

31:51I drew a good bow and dead.

31:55I shot a fine shoot.

31:59John O'Gaunt loved him well and bet he'd much money on his head.

32:04Dead.

32:08He would have clapped in the clout

32:10and carried you a four hand shafts,

32:12a fourteen and a fourteen and a half.

32:16It would have done a man's heart good to see.

32:21How a score of ewes now.

32:25Thereafter is maybe.

32:31A score of good ewes may be worth ten pound.

32:40And is old Double dead.

32:50Good, I enjoyed that.

32:51But I want to do it again.

32:53I want to push it one step further.

32:54Because you were both so old that you were in your graves

32:59and you were dead.

33:02The paradox, I think, and the fun of this scene for Shallow

33:05is that though he's very old and senile,

33:07he doesn't know he is and he's full of life

33:10and he's got a terrific manic energy and zest.

33:12And part of the fun of the scene is old Silence,

33:15who's slow coach and ponderous like a great bovine creature.

33:19But Shallow has a sort of manic energy about him,

33:22though it's a senile energy.

33:24So try it again.

33:25It's one of the troubles with parts which are quite short

33:28that you try and make them rather long by putting a lot of pauses.

33:33Yes, yes.

33:36Let me put it another way, though.

33:42You've got to earn the golden moments, haven't you?

33:45There's got to be a basic manic energy

33:47so that you can break through with the really important lines

33:52and the realization of death when it comes.

33:54Do you think that Shallow, by the end,

33:56is relating the fact that Double has died

34:00to the fact that he is himself going to die?

34:02Or is he absolutely thrilled that he's outlived old Double?

34:06I think that he's thrilled of his own living,

34:09but realizes on the very last is old Double dead,

34:13his own death, but not till then.

34:14Yes, all right.

34:15OK, have another go.

34:20Death is certain.

34:22Is old Double of your town living yet?

34:26Dead, sir.

34:27Oh, gee, gee, gee.

34:28Dead? He drew a good bow.

34:31But dead, he shot a fine shoot.

34:34John of Gaunt loved him well and bet him much money on his head.

34:37Dead?

34:40He would have clapped at the clout at 12 score

34:42and carried you a forehand shot at 14 and a 14 and a half

34:46that it would have done a man's heart good to see.

34:51How was score of Hughes now?

34:53Thereafter, as may be.

34:57A score of good Hughes may be worth 10 pounds.

35:06And is old Double dead?

35:13It was great.

35:14It was great.

35:15It reminded me of a point we made right at the beginning

35:18about how Shakespeare makes these sudden changes.

35:21You go from a yoke of bullets at Stamford Fair,

35:24which is on a bouncy level, and suddenly the reality of death

35:28the next moment.

35:29It's these sudden, jagged gear changes

35:31which we have to embrace.

35:33And of course, for the Elizabethans,

35:34death was an ever-present fact of life in a way.

35:39With our modern medicine, of course,

35:41death is at the end of something rather long that's proceeded.

35:43But death was a more frequent fact

35:46than one could see in the streets.

35:49That's right.

35:49In all these examples, we've tried, I think,

35:52to hang on to our basic starting point in the whole series,

35:56that the intention must be rightly found.

35:59That's the first step.

36:00But we've found this evening that it won't take us all the way.

36:04And there's a sort of leap in the dark to be made

36:06on bits of text like this.

36:08It's a leap in the dark because we can't,

36:10certainly I can't, quite articulate the answer.

36:14One might sometimes sense it, or as Alan puts it,

36:17it's a sixth sense that we reach is full.

36:19So we've talked of two kinds of failure so far,

36:23but perhaps there is a third.

36:26Somehow, sometimes, after doing a bit of good work,

36:29we like to think we've solved the way of approaching Shakespeare

36:33and that we do it better than it used to be done.

36:36It's supposed to be a modern way of doing Shakespeare,

36:39which is sometimes coupled with the name of our company.

36:42But I suspect it's not so new as we sometimes like to think.

36:47I wonder what playing Shakespeare was like 50 years ago

36:52and what it'll be like 50 years hence.

36:55I'm sure that what we do now, what we're doing tonight,

36:57will be mocked as we sometimes mock

36:59what we hear of the old actors.

37:02Yet the past seems to me to be full of contradictions.

37:06First, let's listen to Henry Ainley playing Othello in 1938.

37:12Cold, my girl, even like thy chastity.

37:20Oh, curse her, curse her, slave.

37:24Whip me, ye devils, from the possession of this heavenly sight.

37:28Blow me about in winds, roast me in sulphur,

37:33wash me in steepedown gulfs of liquid fire.

37:36Oh, Del Demona, Del Demona, Del...

37:55Yes, we can hear and we can laugh and give ourselves a pat on the back.

38:00But now listen to a recording of Viola made in the 1940s.

38:05I let no ring with her.

38:07What means this lady?

38:11Fortune forbid my outside have not charmed her.

38:16She made good view of me.

38:19Indeed, so much that sure me thought her eyes had lost her tongue.

38:22For she did speak in starts, distractedly.

38:26She loves me, sure.

38:28The cunning of her passion invites me in this churlish messenger.

38:32None of me lords ring.

38:34Why, he sent her now.

38:36I am the man.

38:39You recorded that 35 years ago, but it doesn't sound like it to me.

38:46Anyway, your experience of Shakespeare is much greater and richer than mine.

38:51Does the way that we play him now seem very different

38:54from the way you knew it in the theatre?

38:57Oh, John, what a question.

38:58Terrible.

38:59It's simply huge, because...

39:02Well, first of all, I just must make a little comment about Henry Ainley's excerpt,

39:06because that is said to be made in 1938.

39:10But in 1932, I recorded the whole of Othello with him,

39:14and he didn't do it like that at all.

39:16And I have a feeling, you see...

39:19I mean, he did belong to another era, let's face that.

39:23But I think we today, there is not such a great difference.

39:28But if I might take you up on your favourite theme, time,

39:34I could use it in two senses.

39:36In one way, how lucky we are today that we have time.

39:41We have seven weeks rehearsal.

39:44In those days, we had three, four if we were very, very lucky.

39:49Now, that time in that sense, I think, makes an enormous difference.

39:53But to try and divide the approach to acting,

39:58which I maintain is always the same with all actors who are really true actors,

40:05is very difficult.

40:07You can't put it into decades.

40:08I mean, you can listen to Henry Ainley in 1938.

40:12Then I remember back in 1920, seeing the most miraculous,

40:17the first modern dress hamlet done by the Birmingham Repertory Theatre,

40:21which I shall always remember,

40:23which was very, very much at the same time

40:26as seeing John Barrymore play Hamlet at the Haymarket,

40:28which I thought even then was disaster.

40:31So I don't think time makes all that difference.

40:40I think of, well, the production of...

40:45John Gielgud's production of Romeo and Juliet,

40:49where I think the approach was very much as we make it now,

40:55although we had fewer weeks.

40:57This is the one you did in the 30s.

40:59In the 30s.

40:59Where now we had Edith,

41:01who had the most wonderful delivery of Shakespearean verse,

41:06I think, learnt from that master, William Poyle.

41:10There was John with his older tradition of perfect speaking of verse,

41:17but with that marvellous sense of phrasing that's almost unequaled.

41:26And Larry, who was in a sense the most of an innovator,

41:33who was after, above all, character.

41:37And that's where I think we all, as actors, merge.

41:41Don't you think so?

41:41I think so.

41:42I do.

41:43Yes, if you take some of John Gielgud's recordings of the 30s,

41:47they're almost as dated as the Ainley one, aren't they?

41:50Not as much, of course.

41:51Nowhere near.

41:51But they are dated today.

41:53Yes.

41:53But he's grown with it.

41:55Yes.

41:55And it is a question of style of a period, isn't it?

41:57I can't believe that that one of Ainley was done in 1938.

41:59I'm sure it's older than that.

42:01Well, you see, he might have been lured into a studio,

42:04mightn't he, and done a rather ham version of that speech.

42:07Quite. I remember hearing him during the war,

42:09recording on the radio, doing Les Miserables.

42:12Mm.

42:13Of course, they're too naturally over-the-top.

42:18It was extraordinary, wasn't it?

42:21But so many of those older actors, it's unfortunate, isn't it?

42:24They're, in a way, recorded.

42:26I think it's very unfortunate that any of us are recorded, John.

42:29You're responsible for, we should be held up.

42:32Ainley didn't have the experience of being in a studio like this, ever, in his life.

42:36No.

42:36You see, he had no...

42:37Yes, and I keep being filled with the melancholy thought

42:40that when we're looked at in years to come,

42:42we'll seem quite as strange as Ainley does to us now.

42:45I'm sure.

42:46So we mustn't laugh too much.

42:48But on the other hand, if you look at old films of actors,

42:50I think the film of Forbes Robertson's 1911 Hamlet,

42:53there are some performances in it that are so awful, it just isn't true.

42:56But he himself is marvellous, absolutely marvellous.

42:59And the film of Douzin, wonderful, wonderful, could be shot yesterday.

43:07But what really you're saying to us when you tell us about the 30s

43:11is that the sometimes made assumption today

43:15that our company, the RSC, found a new style with Shakespeare just isn't true.

43:20No.

43:20We picked up an existing tradition.

43:22And built on it.

43:23Because I think all theatre is continuity, don't you?

43:27Yes, I do.

43:30I think what you said a few minutes ago about time is very right,

43:34because we do have a long time to work now.

43:37And you used to have less time.

43:39But the Elizabethan actors who started the whole thing off had virtually no time.

43:44What we know of their conditions is that they learned their lines and put the play on.

43:47How they did it, God knows.

43:49Well, we've been learning a bit of that today, haven't we?

43:52And of course, when we have time and too much time,

43:56we dig a bit too much and we try to be too clever and try to do too much with it.

44:01So it's an awful salutary warning, I think.

44:04Let me ask you one naive, obvious, but important question.

44:09What, to you, is the most important thing to go for in acting Shakespeare?

44:16Well, I think it's too simple to say the truth.

44:22It is partly the truth.

44:24What do we mean by truth?

44:26Truth of reality, poetry, which is a little bit of super reality, and character.

44:37And it's the fusion of poetry, truth and character, that is required in extreme in Shakespeare.

44:50Reality, poetry, character.

44:54It's three balls that we have to juggle with all the time, throw them up.

44:59And if one goes up too far, the others suffer.

45:02And if one goes too high, we drop the other two.

45:05And I think it's true to say, don't you?

45:07I think we'd all agree that it's like the hen and the egg.

45:13You see, you can appreciate a line, but it's no good thinking you know how to say the line

45:20until you've found the character.

45:23And Shakespeare's drawn the character, and we have to find that character.

45:27And only when we have found the character are we able to say the line as it should be said.

45:33Not by everybody or anybody, but by us, because we've made that particular character.

45:37That's right.

45:38So it has to fit with that.

45:40And then it comes out natural.

45:42Well, that's why I haven't really talked about poetry till this last final program.

45:46We looked at it first in terms of character.

45:49And I think poetry has to come last in the queue for acting,

45:53even though in the end, it may be the most important thing.

45:55It's not the thing the actor can start with.

45:57But oh dear, it's so hard, isn't it?

46:00Those three balls in the air.

46:03We'll work on Shakespeare's just like that.

46:05We never do him justice.

46:07What we think's good and splendid at one moment is only true for that moment.

46:13We go too far one way or the other.

46:15Too heightened, too naturalistic.

46:17Too hot, too cool.

46:19Too quick, too slow.

46:20Yes, the list is endless.

46:23But as we've covered so much ground, I suppose I should try to sum up and

46:27say what are the key points or what are the golden rules, if there are any.

46:33I hate generalizations, but we'll have a go.

46:37We've talked of possibilities, not rules.

46:40Of questions, balances, not absolutes.

46:44So are there any rules?

46:45Yes, there are.

46:46Try to find what goes on in the text and ask yourselves if you can use it.

46:51You must not reject it until you've smelt it out and asked the questions.

46:57Never forget the verse is there to help you.

47:00It can be heightened, and yet very often it's close to our own humdrum human speech.

47:07We often use it, but we never notice.

47:11Which of you noticed while I have been talking that what I've just said was in

47:15bad blank verse?

47:21Shouldn't we end then by taking a crucial bit of Shakespeare and, well, just listening to him?

47:28Yes, I think we should.

47:29And the obvious emotional farewell for any Shakespeare program

47:33is Prospero's much-quoted speech after the Mask in the Tempest.

47:37Now, this is often being worked and used out of context and debased as an anthology piece

47:44and taken by itself, it can easily be sentimental.

47:47But I think it's relevant here, and good to end with,

47:51because it does catch something of the elusiveness we've been talking about,

47:55about any theatrical performance.

47:58Shakespeare was an actor, and he knew as well as we do

48:03that playing him could never entirely do him justice.

48:06They say this is his farewell to the theatre.

48:10You do look, my son, in a move it sought, as if you were dismayed.

48:16Be cheerful, sir.

48:18Our revels now are ended, and these our actors, as I foretold you,

48:26were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air.

48:33And like the baseless fabric of this vision, the cloud-capped towers,

48:41the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself,

48:48yea, all which it inherit shall dissolve.

48:53And like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind.

49:03We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.

49:16We hardly ever know what Shakespeare himself really thinks about it all,

49:21but let's just listen once again to a bit of Hamlet's advice to the players.

49:27The speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue,

49:33but if you mouth it as many of our players do, I had as if the tongue-crier spoke my lines.

49:39Nor do not soar the air too much with your hand, thus, for anything so or done

49:46is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and last, was and is,

49:54to hold, as it were, the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image,

50:02and the very age and body of the time, his form and pressure.

50:08Now let me make a personal choice. I'd like to end with another passage we've already looked at,

50:15because so much that we've talked about can be found in it. It's not an obvious example,

50:20but it stirs me, and I love it. It's the little dialogue in Trolus and Cressida

50:27between Ulysses and Hector. They're both looking at the walls and towers of Troy.

50:37I wonder now how yonder city stands when we have here her base and pillar by us.

50:45Sir, I know your favour, Lord Ulysses, well. Ah, sir, there's many a Greek and Trojan dead,

50:55since first I saw yourself and Diomed in Ilion on your Greekish embassy.

51:01Sir, I foretold you then what would ensue, for yonder walls that pertly front your town,

51:11yon towers whose wanton tops do bust the clouds, must kiss their own feet.

51:21I must not believe you. There they stand yet, and modestly, I think,

51:30the fall of every Phrygian stone will cost a drop of Grecian blood. The end crowns all.

51:40And that old common arbitrator, time, will one day end it. So, to him we leave it.

52:40you

Acting Shakespeare - John Barton - Peggy Ashcroft - Masterclass - Part 9 - Poetry - 4K

Category

Transcript

Recommended