More about rules for the rule-averse!

ANARCHY & CREATIVITY

There is a strand in contemporary thinking that believes 'rules' get in the way of originality and the creative process.  In recent times some have tried to do away with the formalities of Shakespeare-speaking, in particular the architecture of verse, in pursuit of rehearsal room spontaneity and 'keeping it real'.  In each and every case this has proved disastrous.  Actors are unable to unleash the full potential of the text, and audiences are left with Bard-lite and not a little boredom.  Peter Hall (co-founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company) and Giles Block (former ‘Master of the Words’ at Shakespeare’s Globe) elaborate on this in their respective books Playing Shakespeare and Speaking the Speech (see Bibliography).

"The skill, therefore, is not to ignore the rules or parameters, but to make them second nature so that you transcend them.  Pushing against 'walls' produces great art, while anarchy leads to mediocrity"

The truth is all great art forms, whether opera, comedy, painting, dance, etc., have parameters and rules.  These, in turn, give rise to the technique necessary to master them.  The same can be said of sport.  Unlike sport though, the rules of engagement in art are hidden from public view, but they are there and actually help the performer - just as they do in sport.

Take, for instance, Olympic ice-skating.  The stage is the rink and you may not skate outside this architectural parameter.  You may not wear roller blades instead.  You may not fall over without incurring penalties and certain moves are banned.  You may not take forever to complete your routine - besides the official time limit the audience will get restless.  Yet, despite these 'irksome' rules, Olympic ice-skaters repeatedly find ways to give sublime performances.

Moreover - to continue the analogy - they get marks for technique and marks for creative interpretation.  The rub is that you cannot do a great interpretation without great technique - the very point emphasised by the scoring system.  It is also true to say that technique alone is unlikely to secure you gold at this level of competition.  There has to be some imagination and flair in their somewhere - some creative spark, some personal stamp.  But fluid and seamless, not self-indulgent.

The skill, therefore, is not to ignore the rules or parameters, but to make them second nature so that you transcend them.  Pushing against 'walls' produces great art, while anarchy leads to mediocrity.

VERSEBUSTER'S 70% RULE - THE 'GET OUT OF JAIL' CARD

For those who remain allergic to the notion of rules in Shakespeare we offer three comforts.

The first is that there is almost no facet of Shakespeare about which experts can be 100% absolutely sure.  Unless a personal diary emerges sensationally proven to be written in the Bard's own hand filling the many gaps that still exist in our knowledge of the man and his methods, the best anybody can say is that "such and such in Shakespeare generally holds true" and acknowledge there are occasions it doesn't.  For this reason Versebuster has framed two rules with regard to Shakespeare performance - the 'Golden Rule' and the 'Seventy Per Cent Rule'.  By far and away most things fall under the Seventy Per Cent (70%) Rule.

We call it the '70% Rule' because it trips off the tongue better than, say, the '82% Rule', even though that may be nearer the truth.  It means that the rule in question works very well somewhere between 65% and 98% of the time.  Experience and our guidance will tell you towards which end of this spectrum a given rule leans.

As to 'Golden Rules' these are rare, but there are a couple.  One such is that, as John Barton (RSC) says, you must always identify antitheses in Shakespeare's text and point them up.  Arguably this rule trumps any other rule.

YOUR PERSONAL STAMP

The second dollop of comfort is that rules don't negate the personal acting choices which make your performance unique.  For instance, a certain rule may say that when such and such is encountered the actor must emphasise it.  But HOW you emphasise is up to you.  Typically one emphasises by increasing volume, but many interesting alternatives exist.  You could, instead, alter tone, pace, pitch, or switch to sotto or a whisper.

AMBIGUITY

The final comfort that ensures no two performances in Shakespeare will be alike is ambiguity.

When the Hostess recounts the death of Falstaff at the beginning of Act 2:3 in Henry V and relates that "he cried out 'God, God, God' three or four times", what tone does she assume?  Is she inferring that Falstaff, in his final moments of senescence, is excitedly greeting God, or that he is in absolute terror of Him for a lifetime of thieving and whoring?  Shakespeare provides no answer.  So two (or more) perfectly valid, but diametrically opposed interpretations are possible which might substantially alter, if the actor were alive to the possibilities, their delivery of 'God, God, God'.

Within a Shakespeare play there might be a run of such ambiguities one scene after another and each time actors have to choose a plausible motivation, because, if not, performance and delivery lose focus and become generalised.  Generalisation is theatrical boredom.  So you have to commit.  And the way you interpret (with or without the help of a director) will not be the same as the actor who played the same role last month.  You are unique and this will bring, willy-nilly, a different perspective to the interpretation and a different way of dramatising it - gestures, voice, pace, expression and all.  

Whatever motivations actors commit to in these moments of ambiguity will 'ring true' to the audience so long as they can be justified by the text, and external stuff (like a director's political agenda or an actor's personal hang-up) does not take precedence.

CONCLUSION

Don't imagine rules will cramp your style and individuality.  Within the rules you have creative choices.  Trust in Shakespeare's architecture; it's there to help you.

It does great harm to his plays and a major disservice to the audience if these are ignored.  Many have written about these clues and the demands they make on speaking and performing Shakespeare.  For the first time on the Internet, Versebuster^© brings it all together under one roof.  Here are some of the clues and topics we cover (many overlap):

• Prose v. verse

  • Differences in form / layout / architecture

  • Disguise v. truthfulness and other implications

• Different types of prose & verse

• Regular v. irregular verse

• Long lines (hexameters {Alexandrines}, heptameters, etc), short lines, half lines and shared lines

• Metre & rhythm

• Elision (contraction) & expansion

• Verse line-endings & mid-line endings

• End-stopped v. enjambement [or enjambment]

• Masculine line-endings v. feminine line-endings

• Masculine caesuras (caesurae) v. feminine caesuras (caesurae)

• Monosyllabic lines v. Latinate lines

• Simple lines v. complex lines

• Major v. minor punctuation

• Verbal conceits / patterns such as antitheses, repetitions (synonyms and their modifiers), rhymes, puns, alliteration & assonance

• Short vowels v. long vowels

• Lists and speech builds

• 'You' v. 'thou' & other modes of address

• Irony, sarcasm, sardonic humour & bawdry

• Illustration

• Which script to use.  It comes as a surprise to many people there is no settled and fixed text for many of Shakespeare’s plays.  Part of the reason is that virtually nothing survives in the Bard’s own hand.  Some argue the First Folio ('F1') of 1623 is the only true performance text, while others prefer an earlier Quarto for some 12 or so of his plays.  For instance, for Richard lll, our inaugural play, expert opinion is divided whether Quarto 1 ('Q1') of 1597 should be deemed the true original performance text, or the F1 version which came seven years after Shakespeare's death in 1616.

  The most commonly used script for performance though, either through unawareness or conscious choice, is the modern ‘literary’ texts devised for schools – Pelican, Penguin, Arden, (New) Cambridge, (New) Oxford, Signet, etc – even No Fear has its advocates.  

  Though we agonised about it for two years we decided in the end to make Versebuster^© modern as well.  However, we gear our script to performance needs rather than those of the classroom.  This is most evidently manifest in the 'performance punctuation' which, in this respect, glances at the original texts.

  For those interested, Section D our ePlay resource sets our modern script side-by-side with First Folio and a Good Quarto (where applicable) for easy comparison.




• Line-endings in verse.  Some believe that the end of a verse line whose sense is incomplete nonetheless marks a caesura (a pause); and that this, in turn, invites a breath - or at least a little lift - at the end of the verse line before tumbling into the next.  Others believe this is nonsense and, in essence, verse should be read as prose.  

  To consider this issue Dr Abigail Rokison-Woodall - now a senior Lecturer at the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon - wrote a doctoral thesis at Cambridge, later published as Shakespeare Verse Speaking.  We incorporate the findings of her award-winning, critically-acclaimed book into our output.

• The Soliloquy

• Pronunciation and the 'Great Vowel Shift'

• Acoustic punctuation v. literary punctuation

• First Folio punctuation

• Where to breathe in verse

• The earned v. the unearned pause

• Vocal delivery

  • Speed v. pace

  • Enunciation v. slurring

• Vocal facility