Loving Shakespeare
About a year ago, I was visiting Dublin and I wrote about blog about all the crap Shakespeare that I was seeing. I’ve just started teaching my own Shakespeare course for actors in Glasgow and it made me think about why I have so much reverence and respect for the Bard of Avon.
Shakespeare is the greatest writer in the English language, perhaps ever in any language. Why do I think that? Not because I’m ‘supposed’ to, because I’m English, and somehow I have to have some kind of deadly respect for him. Not because I was taught him well in school, cos frankly, most of us weren’t. I discovered Shakespeare while I was off sick from school. My Dad’s friends owned the local video shop and they used to give me a free video each week. For some reason I chose Kenneth Branagh’s film of Henry V. My dad’s friend looked at me as if I had two heads, but I wanted it.
I watched it. Then I watched it again. Then I watched it again with the play in my hand. I couldn’t believe it. I understood it, not only that but I felt it. I wasn’t confused by the archaic language. I got it, it clicked, I wasn’t translating. I was letting the language wash over me and I was just absorbing it. Until that time, I knew nothing of Shakespeare.
Living only 40 miles from Stratford upon Avon, I spent as much of the next two years at Stratford as possible, and in their two mighty bookshops, which I pillaged.
But this was only the beginning. At university, I met a brilliant tutor called Alan Beck, who was never my official tutor, but introduced me to one very important thing that Shakespeare had gifted us so much help and direction in his verse, that is almost instantly defies modern psychological acting techniques.
What do we mean that he gifted us these things?
Actually, quite simple, he’s deliberate and particular about telling actors when to slow down, when to speed up, when to pause, when to come in on queue, even how to breathe.
He might tell us when, sometimes he tells us how, but he never tells us WHY. That’s where our Practical Aesthetics skills come and that’s where following Shakespeare’s clues help.
And he starts this all by showing us the simple human heartbeat in his verse. Throughout all of his greatest writing, the human heartbeat is present, giving rhythm, and pace to his words, but also leading the actor by offering them clues, help, assistance and direction. This is why I love Shakespeare, because he actually chose precisely the right number of syllables in each line to make that heart beat within his verse.
Then he adds the most beautiful imagery, he is crediting with introducing, coining or being the first to cite 8,000 words.
Then we weave simile, metaphor, alliteration, assonance, dissonance and many other rhetorical tools and all other wonderful things into it that verse. Because actors have to deal with all of these things together: the verse ,the meter, the imagery, words, the rhetorical devices. It is my belief that its only actors that ever get to truly appreciate Shakespeare, which is good, because his work was not written for school boys or academics, but for his players and their audiences…
You probably use words that Shakespeare invented or coined every day, or at least every other day…
Assassination
Advertising
Well-Read
Watch Dog
Eventuful
Reclusive
Addiction
Alligator
Discontent
Mimic
Manager
Tardiness
Shudders
Urging
Switch
Retirement
And many many MORE.
You’re probably quoting Shakespeare even though you aren’t aware of it:
All that glitters is not gold (Merchant of Venice)
In my mind’s eye (Hamlet)
The green eyed monster (Othello)
Bated breath (Merchant of Venice)
My Mum’s Favourite (Hamlet) “Neither a borrower nor a lender be.”
Dead as a doornail (2 Henry VI)
It was Greek to me (Julius Caesar)
In a pickle (The Tempest)
The Naked Trust (Love’s Labours Lost)
Play Fast and Loose (King John)
A tower of strength (Richard III)
Wild Goose Chase (Romeo and Juliet)
He has had a profound influence on the English language and on the way that we express ourselves. And this is why I love Shakespeare, for his endless contribution to not only our language, but to our culture, and the gift of many many plays and sonnets.