william shakespeare

Taking Scripts: Shakespeare vs. Marlowe?

groan thought young willy as he ploughed through yet another
shakespare play for h/w assignment

haha "semiliterate" = didn't know enough Latin and Greek by Dr. Johnson's lights

ps found the random button, thx for nothing.

Are we sure the questioner isn't asking who taught him about collage? I don't think collage had been invented then, so the answer is no one, I presume.

so i'm auditioning for a production of romeo and juliet next week, been sort of thinking about what parts i want to go for, and i think i like mercutio (i'm not romeo) anyone ever acted in shakespeare? they said i could do it with irish accent if i wanted but it is ten times better as soon as i adopt a shakespearean accent, it just feels better. not acted in anything since school really.

also any other parts that are particularly good or fun? i like tybalt as well just for the villain element.

i have to do this speech for mercutio:

O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep;
Her wagon-spokes made of long spiders' legs,
The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
The traces of the smallest spider's web,
The collars of the moonshine's watery beams,
Her whip of cricket's bone, the lash of film,
Her wagoner a small grey-coated gnat,
Not so big as a round little worm
Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid;
Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut
Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers.
And in this state she gallops night by night
Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love;
O'er courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight,
O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees,
O'er ladies ' lips, who straight on kisses dream,
Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,
Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are:
Sometime she gallops o'er a courtier's nose,
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;
And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig's tail
Tickling a parson's nose as a' lies asleep,
Then dreams, he of another benefice:
Sometime she driveth o'er a soldier's neck,
And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,
Of healths five-fathom deep; and then anon
Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,
And being thus frighted swears a prayer or two
And sleeps again. This is that very Mab
That plats the manes of horses in the night,
And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs,
Which once untangled, much misfortune bodes:
This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,
That presses them and learns them first to bear,
Making them women of good carriage:
This is she--

am i right in thinking, or "right" in whatever sense you can be, that the beginning of this is sort of benevolently sarcastic, like exaggerated fairytale metaphors then basically as it continues he's more into warning/anger, like "dreams cause bad things to happen", pre-empting the doom of the play?

any other tips would be fun too. or just talk about shakespeare...

I'm wondering whether the thread-starter is related to ILX's most-endowed!

I've been in three Shakespeare plays in my time. I tend to get typecast as comic relief, or clergy. Romeo And Juliet was not one of the three. The play isn't one of the ones I know particularly well, so I wouldn't know exactly how to play it other than 'don't just blithely recite it, think about every single word incredibly carefully'

See if you can do a better job than Simon here (at about 1:14). Definitely channeling Gielgud I think.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAlvxeCL7_E

(but godspeed! ILX theatrical FAP imho)

As chance wd have it I've been working with somebody who's doing that speech at the moment. Yeah I read it as you do: he starts off riffing on this silly idea, taking a rise out of lovestruck Romeo quite playfully, but he gets angrier and more misanthropic as he gets into his theme. Which is obviously a deliberate foreshadowing of where romantic ideals lead the play's protagonists as the plot develops. Mercutio is easily the funnest part in that play, Tybalt second.

Shakespearean language does sound better with a neutralish, clear enunciation I reckon but it's all down to individual performances yeah?

original shakespearean sounds very irish allegedly

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWe1b9mjjkM&feature=player_embedded

my natural speaking voice is basically 'shakespearean' so idht think about these things v much

weird...scottish/irish/cornish

x-post haha

great speech, great part - with speeches like that one i think the real key is to find the way to extract the maximum amount of FUN from it... shakespeare helps you out a lot by providing words and phrases that are just straight-up pleasurable to say

yeah like i sort of was thinking of doing a little "look at my pregant stomach" swivel for the last line...

curious about this part, what's he saying here:

O'er ladies ' lips, who straight on kisses dream,
Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,
Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are

herpes?

who's the dramaturg around here

and of course keep in mind what you're trying to DO with these words... you need to be striving for a goal. your tactics can change (perhaps from "teasing" to "warning"?) but the goal should stay the same. those fabulous words are part of your toolkit to try to achieve that goal

also like movement...not sure how much they'll analyse this, i've loads of time, but should i be walking around and shit? i mean, i won't be standing static but i can imagine in the actual play you'd be pointing to romeo or whatev...are hand gestures a bad way to go, i feel like this speech merits many of them.

x-post yeah that's what i've been trying to do, have a target for each line.

Haven't got an Arden of R&J to hand but yeah, kind of: Mab is pissed off that the ladies have already been kissing (tainted with sweetmeats) so she blisters their lips. Pretty sure it's an STI allusion.

Yeah, Mercutio's awesome, best bit of the play, it's like he distracts Shakespeare, a chance to cut loose, step outside things. Or to have a character who thinks he's stepping outside things - just the kind of mistake funny & clever people make. All the more painful when he dies. 'Grave man' a heartbreaking joke.

Always liked that the Queen Mab speech helps step on Romeo telling his dream, wch probably would have been something dull about love & omens anyway, spider swallowing a dove or some shit. (& a you say, the soldier/incubus part of the Mab speech gets the foreshadowing of death & darkness).

I figure Mercutio is moving around a fair bit - the speech is towards the end of an all-nighter iirc and everybody's pissed and giddy. If you're auditioning, you want to know exactly in your head where you picture Romeo being in relation to you - he's more static here cos he's moping for some girl - and pitch your act accordingly.

yeah i mean, i sort of am thinking things like the final "this" before "is she", you might gesture at romeo with the "this" being all his nonsense...

i've ordered an academic copy of the play obviously, audition not till dec 10th.

pro tip - when memorizing, memorize it "flat" i.e. with no emotion or tone at all in the words

am i right in thinking, or "right" in whatever sense you can be, that the beginning of this is sort of benevolently sarcastic, like exaggerated fairytale metaphors then basically as it continues he's more into warning/anger, like "dreams cause bad things to happen", pre-empting the doom of the play?

That's how baz luhrmann does it here, but he cuts the ladies lips/parsons stuff...

This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,
That presses them and learns them first to bear,
Making them women of good carriage:

is he saying that Queen Mab is a lesbian succubus who dry humps sleeping virgins to give them a taste of what it's like to get smashed by a man and get pregnant?

There's a lot of misogyny there - it's more like (imo) that even virgins are secretly smash-dreaming sluts.

an even more disturbing subtext (for incubi myths, anyways) could be, "all our young maidens are getting pregnant, but instead of confronting the real issue at hand (consensual sex before marriage; rape), let's explain it away as 'demons be demonizin'!'"

i've ordered an academic copy of the play obviously, audition not till dec 10th.

― I see what this is (Local Garda), Thursday, November 18, 2010 10:39 AM (1 hour ago)

definitely a good move. this may be obvious, but I'd recommend reading and re-reading the annotations until all the weird Elizabethan-isms make sense to you. it's possible to deliver a line like "And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs" competently without knowing what elflocks or foul sluttish hairs are, but it's hard to consistently nail the delivery if you gauge the meaning and tone of every unfamiliar expression based on context clues alone. it helps too to look up pronunciations ("ambuscado" is "am-buh-SKAY-doh, for instance) so the director will think you're smart.

Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut
Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers

the last line here, is that sort of a look at the audience type joke, like "who else would make fairies coaches but the joiner squirrel or old grub", or is there something more? i sort of am feeling a big change in tone just for that line to a matter of fact sort of dry "obv they are the fairies coachmakers" style...

Sometime she driveth o'er a soldier's neck,
And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,
Of healths five-fathom deep; and then anon
Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,
And being thus frighted swears a prayer or two
And sleeps again.

and this bit, obv the start i can understand, but is he saying that the soldier wakes up to actual military drums and then goes back to sleep, in fear of real war...

"drums" is probably a verb here (as in "Queen Mab drums in his ear") which suggests to me that the soldier dreams about the drums of war, wakes up in a state of paranoid confusion, and falls back asleep once he realizes it was only a dream.

what do people feel about these lines, which i'm finding the hardest to get a good feel for:

She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep;
Her wagon-spokes made of long spiders' legs,
The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
The traces of the smallest spider's web,
The collars of the moonshine's watery beams,
Her whip of cricket's bone, the lash of film,
Her wagoner a small grey-coated gnat,
Not so big as a round little worm
Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid;
Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut
Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers

I mean, is he sincerely eulogising at the start here? My take is that he's being sarcastic, sort of "oh how wonderful dreams are", and so I'm going for a sort of fanciful benevolent pisstaking...slightly exaggerated gestures etc to match the really intricate description of the carriage. Then I'm choosing the "lazy finger of a maid" part to start turning things serious, followed by emphasising the "empty hazel nut" a little.

I know this is all open to intepretation but interesting to hear what people think of that opening part.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EUS5c-qHtk

Ignore the homebrew vid, I hear it in Homer's voice here

HA, that's EXACTLY the frame of ref I've been using, I was gonna say that but felt people might be like "what"

Well, reigned in a little but yeah I think he's taking the piss.

Noodle Vague otm. I can also imagine it being delivered in the formal, over-enunciated style of an old-school American politician, à la FDR or William Jennings Bryan. touches like emphasizing the t's in "grey-coated gnat", saying "worm" in a faux English accent with elongated "o" and omitted "r'", and rolling the "r" in "prick'd" would convey, for me, a mix of sarcasm and flowery self-indulgence. he's knows he's being ridiculous here, but at the same time he's proud of himself for pulling so much poetic whimsy out of his ass. he'd be doing a lot of dramatic finger-pointing and would have a wide-eyed expression of professorial intensity on his face, signaling to Romeo in a half-serious way, "child, I am making an important point here, so listen up!"

or to take the romance out of it anyway.

I guess I differ a bit here in that I don't think there's much point to it: M is being redundantly brilliant, because that's his nature - sharp little jokes, following clever metaphors too far, full of wit, and quite dark. He's telling Romeo to shut up about dreams, yes, but he needn't spend 40 odd lines doing that.

anyone in shakespeare can get a fancy speech

This doesn't sound right to me. There aren't many speeches like this, which show off quite so brightly for so long without really getting much done (ie exposition, persuasion or a character developing a thought about what's happening). Maybe Jacques' 'All the world's a stage' in As You Like It? Ulysses on degree? There's the Nurse I guess, but something similar is going on there - it's a lot of character (rambling, rustic, where Mercutio's controlled, urbane), with a big dash of darkness.

i'm reacting a bit against the rsc school of acting which at one time meant performers would try to say the lines as if they'd just thought of them. so before a particularly choice metaphor they'd pause as if searching for the right words, killing the rhythm and ensuring that you'd never get r&j finished in two hours. that sort of confused "realism" makes me wary of foregrounding the verbal dexterity too much, as in "he's proud of himself for pulling so much poetic whimsy out of his ass".

Or to have a character who thinks he's stepping outside things - just the kind of mistake funny & clever people make.

agree with this characterisation

Ah, right. That sounds awful. Incredibly annoying. I don't know anything about staging or acting traditions tbh - one of those academy-leaning poetry reader types who enjoys the play on the page more than most productions (ie Local Garda prob as well to ignore me).

(and good luck with the audition lg)

I dunno if it's on YOutube, but you should see Johnny Lydon doing Shakespeare in a Norfolk accent. To show how good it is!

thanks woof...it's two weeks on friday. i might post a recording of my efforts here in a few days, for a laugh!

(and good luck with the audition lg)

yeah, this

I went to a version of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" once that featured a guy doing a loud and distorted "tapping solo" on a teal-colored Fender Stratocaster during the finale while being propelled skyward on a mechanical platform. I am not making this up.
And I looked out over the (large) audience hoping that I would make eye-contact with someone who perhaps saw the whole thing as being as absurd as I saw it, but everyone was really into it.

The magic of theater.

so the audition was last night!

i was so nervous, it was done in groups of 8 people or so and alphabetically so i went last. but a dude did the queen mab speech a few people before me and he was terrible, i felt bad for him cos you were allowed to read it but he just blatantly didn't understand it and put emphases anywhere and everywhere. that sort of got my confidence up tho i reckon you always do a bit worse in an audition esp since i hadn't auditioned for a play in about 11 years.

anyway i did a decent mercutio and after that they asked me to read for......friar laurence! i think it was because for "tickling a parson's nose as he lies asleep, then he dreams of another benifice", i put on a mocking fat robed monk type voice.

they gave me his speech about how men change their minds about women so quickly, and given i'd never seen it before i felt i did it really well. so i'll hear today if i'm called back. i'm hoping showing i can see a piece for the first time and do it well might get me called back for other parts too, tho can't argue with any part really, if they want to make an irish person the priest then that's grand!

hahaha first Shakespeare play I was in I got cast as the priest! Good luck and work on your fingertip-arching :D

i put on a mocking fat robed monk type voice.

This sounds like a good voice to be able to do down the pub. Good luck!

bah...no callback. felt i did a good audition and proud i'm doing shit that forces me to be nervous, but disappointed of course. still, lots of other plays to audition for, i still have self belief.

I for one have always enjoyed Francis Bacon's little side project, "Shakespeare"...

John Paul Stevens is a Shakespeare authorship nitwit!

were doing our shakespeare unit in english! we will watch a shakespeare movie after reading the play, our teacher spoilt us stating that movie will feature romeos bare ass and she wont skip it cuz itll add more to the awkward vibe.........Cant wait

There was a feature on Radio 3 asking whether we are taking his genius for granted and stifling a grown-up discussion of the great bits and the flawed bits. That was fine, I got utterly bored after 20 minutes, just think I get all of this matter and panorama on life from other writing that is more contemporary and not so suffocatingly discussed.

Sounds like this is what people at large are reading, like Dan Brown or Agatha Christie.

I'm reading Shakespeare in Company by Bart van Es, pretty good. it's up-to-date scholarly account of theatrical background, practice and finance, trying to place WS really concretely into that, showing how collaboration, competition, genre fads, and continuity and changes in the cast (eg Robert Armin replacing Will Kemp as fool) shape the plays. I don't think it's that much cop as criticism & a bit shy of ideas - but it's readable & seems like reliable scholarship or that quite Oxfordy old historicism - context context context…

But so much great writing from the very far away past (Catallus, Chretien, Rabelais or Petrarch, say) does not need that much context. I can pick it up, read it cold, be interested enough in the first place to then do the work and deepen my understanding.

btw, I don't think it reflects on whether he is great or not, just not the right time. It may never be the right time.

I don't think WS *needs* that much context either (I brought it up because I happened to be reading it, rather than as a response to anything); in fact it's slightly murderous & tends to make him seem duller or less available to interesting readings. But I can't see him cold at this point. fwiw I switch off v quickly when I hear vague marvellous-panorama-characters-humanheart praise from theatre/writer types.

The praise from the likes of Fiona Shaw *shudder*

I was reading a review of Piketty's Capital... and thiking that its an intresting angle to tackle Austen, and finally get to read her works. So open to context, but coming from unexpected places.

I've been reading the Piketty too & yes that stuff's good - like Marxist/materialist criticism of Austen's always been aware of that side of things, but it's more startling in the context of a stats-and-sums book properly arguing about the now.

i auditioned for antony and cleopatra tonight. the attendants in that--career followers--are great: enobarbus jumping ship for caesar's camp at the end, with antony's miserable blessing. or the guy who pulls sextus pompey aside from his yacht party with the whole second triumverate to recommend casting off and dropping them over the side: "would thou be lord of the whole world?" (pompey says no, and then says the guy should have gone ahead and done it without asking.) they remind me almost of campaign workers; in fact that's what they are. the part i covet is octavius tho, the college kid who scoops up the pieces: the villain i guess, but irl a minor personal hero. the very dice obey him. anyway i'm tired of oh-isn't-shakes-magic too but idk, whenever i open him up he's p fuckin real.

also the part where all of cleopatra's girlz have their (bleak) fortunes read by the soothsayer and one of them keeps getting mad at the others for not taking it seriously, like she's frightened it'll affect the fortune. VEX NOT HIS PRESCIENCE!

stop inviting me to your birthday, I don't know you!

also lol I am not a beautiful person.

I don't think WS *needs* that much context either (I brought it up because I happened to be reading it, rather than as a response to anything); in fact it's slightly murderous & tends to make him seem duller or less available to interesting readings. But I can't see him cold at this point. fwiw I switch off v quickly when I hear vague marvellous-panorama-characters-humanheart praise from theatre/writer types.

otm. +"modern relevance".

got v agitated about this recently but it falls into a wider category of "human characters" as main criteria of excellence and I'm still working it thru/getting more agitated, so will save for another post.

sting by iPhone posting on zing. you may have guessed only the second part of that post is relevant.

shakespeare truthers are by far the most maddening and infuriating conspiracy theorists out there. wd rather talk to a hundred 9/11 truthers than one of them.

depressing that stevens of all ppl falls for the disgustingly classist line that an ignorant commoner like shakespeare could never have been learn-ed enough to write his plays.

the part i covet is octavius tho

well hey coveting no longer

Octavius is great! I wouldn't call him a villain exactly. He has his admirable qualities, but you can't help but dislike him because he's the kind of guy who never loses. Not until Cleopatra kills herself, which feels like a victory on her part.

I imagine his mourning scene for Antony is a hard one. It has to be sincerely felt, but also no real disturbance to his sense of manifest destiny.

that's what they had me read! his what-a-pity shrug. "but we do lance diseases in our bodies." the line that makes me lol (from somewhere else) is "the time of universal peace is near".

it's def sincerely felt but what he's sincerely feeling i think isn't much more than "good game".

Maybe, but it seems like from lines 28 to 35 he's too overcome for speech. "Caesar is touch'd." I figure he's at least grieving for the man he used to know, Antony the great soldier and Roman, before he became Egyptianized.

Congrats dlh!

thx!

jmm yeah i think yr right in that sense he def mourns antony (also the passing age?) altho even that i think is a lil abstract to him, an idea of a roman rather than a close memory of a person. even tho it's caesar who describes antony eating "strange flesh" in extremis on campaign. a story he's heard.

I think Octavius has an abstract ideal in mind, something like Ideal Roman Manhood. I’m thinking back to his line

‘tis to be chid
As we rate boys who, being mature in knowledge,
Pawn their experience to their present pleasure,
And so rebel to judgment.

It’s not a totally unjust accusation, and Antony himself feels it too, but you also get the impression that Octavius still has a young man’s notion of mature manhood, where manhood means hardness and fixity of judgment. I think Shakespeare wants us to see Octavius as a better ‘Roman’ than Antony but not necessarily a better total person, since the qualities of love and passionate excess to which Antony sacrifices his hardness and fixity of judgment have value of their own, which Octavius is too much of a serious young man to appreciate. Octavius can only see Antony as lapsed, and the contrast between the two of them is painful because Octavius’s youthful single-mindedness is bound to defeat Antony’s diffuseness. When Octavius grieves for Antony, you feel both his sadness and his condescension.

Anyway, I love this play a lot. I love the scenes between Cleopatra and the Messenger, which seem a bit like filler at first except that they're a chance to watch Cleo and see how great and hilarious she is.

I think Shakespeare wants us to see Octavius as a better ‘Roman’ than Antony but not necessarily a better total person, since the qualities of love and passionate excess to which Antony sacrifices his hardness and fixity of judgment have value of their own, which Octavius is too much of a serious young man to appreciate. Octavius can only see Antony as lapsed, and the contrast between the two of them is painful because Octavius’s youthful single-mindedness is bound to defeat Antony’s diffuseness. When Octavius grieves for Antony, you feel both his sadness and his condescension.

yeah all this--"tis paltry to be caesar" etc..

Be absolute for death; either death or life
Shall thereby be the sweeter. Reason thus with life:
If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing
That none but fools would keep: a breath thou art,
Servile to all the skyey influences,
That dost this habitation, where thou keep'st,
Hourly afflict: merely, thou art death's fool;
For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun
And yet runn'st toward him still.

my octavius has improved. otm that his mourning speech is a bitch, plus he actually has two of them (one for antony and one for the couple). the former isn't so hard--"that our stars unreconciliable should divide our equalness to this"--but the latter crams an incredible variety of shit into like eight lines, almost gnomically, plus it brings down the curtain. the line that feels like the key is "their story is no less in pity than his glory that brought them to be lamented"--when i can say this to my satisfaction i will be done.

btw i have four other parts, including iras who is way fun. i get gradually more agitated through the whole play until cleopatra kisses me and my heart explodes. then i get up, wait imperiously for my purple to arrive, and bend to examine my invisible corpse. this works better than it sounds.

we broke off rehearsal early today because a messenger fleeing cleopatra's wrath accidentally hurled himself off the stage, ripped off a toenail, and slammed his head into a rock wall. this shakespeare is no joke.

I like Montaigne so maybe reading Florio's translation might help.

that time--oh, times!
i laughed him out of patience, and that night
i laughed him into patience. and next morn,
ere the ninth hour, i drunk him to his bed
then put my tires and mantles on him, whilst
i wore his sword philippan.

(this shocks my iras, not unpleasantly)

Cleo's on fire in that scene.

Ram thou they fruitful tidings in mine ears,
That long time have been barren.

i'm demetrius this (mid)summer, in a show running more or less at farce speed. exhausting. love how in the end it stops bothering to make a distinction between fairy-drug love and "real" love -- "are you sure we are awake?" -- then becomes an episode of mst3k.

finished our run -- tropical storm darby shut down a whole weekend, which was a bummer, but the crowds the next weekend were twice as big and laughed at everything.

what a nice play! unusual for WS in not being an adaptation, and you can tell because the plot is so neatly integrated w the themes+imagery in a way even the major plays usually aren't (more often they're subverting or outright attacking their borrowed plots, as in hamlet and arguably othello) and also so perfectly balanced. two sets of lovers, two sets of royals, two blissful incompetents, two themed gaggles of innocents, two plays (inner+outer), two audiences (same), two wedding parties (same again). "your vows to her and me, put in two scales, will even weigh." two days, two nights, two dreams, two wakings. exactly four references to shadows. two worlds (golden-age greece; elizabethan england). "like to a double cherry, seeming parted, but yet a union in partition." the "mechanicals" are all professional uniters: a joiner, a mender, a tinker, a tailor, a carpenter, a weaver (leading, and dreaming). when the athenian court finds the lovers the morning-after (concealed through reams of poetry by an impermeable canvas beneath which i feared every night at least one of us might actually die) hippolyta is enthusing about a hunt she was once on with hercules: "the groves, the skies, the fountains, every region near seem'd all one mutual cry." very dr. bronner. what a nice play.

anyway here's demetrius as douchey athenian rich kid; i think i'm checking out hermia.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v87/Inuxx/193acd17-d807-4a08-b8fc-c628bf35b7be_zpsmdhf25vu.jpg

<3 happy summer dlh

play's brought me around to the season tbh

(thank you! <3)