Playing ShakespeareTogether with Royal Shakespeare Company actors including Patrick Stewart, Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, Ben Kingsley, and David Suchet, director John Barton demonstrates how to adapt Elizabethan theater for the modern stage. Barton begins by explicating Shakespeare's verse and prose, speeches and soliloquies, and naturalistic and heightened language to discover the essence of his characters. In the second section, Barton and the actors explore nuance in Shakespearean theater, from evoking irony and ambiguity and striking the delicate balance of passion and profound intellectual thought, to finding new approaches to playing Shakespeare's most controversial creation, Shylock, from The Merchant of Venice. |
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Page 120
... irony . Most of us use it rarely , if at all . The best people at handling irony in Shakespeare that I've ever come across have been New York drama students . That's because irony is part of their natural idiom and they use it daily ...
... irony . Most of us use it rarely , if at all . The best people at handling irony in Shakespeare that I've ever come across have been New York drama students . That's because irony is part of their natural idiom and they use it daily ...
Page 121
... Irony always involves ambiguity . So that's what we've got to dig into and see if we can find out how to handle it . I think that perhaps a useful starting point is to say that irony involves the speaker in being at once inside and ...
... Irony always involves ambiguity . So that's what we've got to dig into and see if we can find out how to handle it . I think that perhaps a useful starting point is to say that irony involves the speaker in being at once inside and ...
Page 132
... irony did come out more through the courtesy . Tony Church : Because if we do it that way , the irony is a shared irony and not one that's against each other . We both know the score and what's going to happen , so it isn't actually a ...
... irony did come out more through the courtesy . Tony Church : Because if we do it that way , the irony is a shared irony and not one that's against each other . We both know the score and what's going to happen , so it isn't actually a ...
Contents
Foreword by Trevor Nunn page | 1 |
Objective Things | 5 |
The Two TraditionsElizabethan and Modern Acting | 6 |
Copyright | |
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actor actually Alan Howard ambiguity antitheses Antonio audience Barbara Leigh-Hunt believe Ben Kingsley blank verse Brutus Caesar character course Cressida David Suchet de-dum death Desdemona director Donald Sinden dost doth Elizabethan EMILIA emotions example FALSTAFF feel FESTE give Hamlet happens hath heightened language Henry honour Ian McKellen intention irony Jane Lapotaire Judi Dench King Kingsley Lisa Harrow listen look mean Merchant of Venice Michael Pennington Mike Gwilym naturalistic Norman Rodway once ORSINO Othello passage passion Patrick Stewart pause perhaps Playing Shakespeare poetic poetry PORTIA prose question rehearsal rhythm Richard Pasco Roger Rees scene sense sentence Shakespeare's text Sheila Hancock Shylock soliloquy sometimes sonnet sooth I know sounds speak speech strong stresses talking tell theatre thee there's thing thou thought Tony Church tradition Troilus Tubal verse line verse-line VIOLA words