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 37
... thought it was a very healthy stage of work . You were grappling with a really difficult bit of verse . I thought that the balance between going with it and having a freedom from it , which you have to have in a late play , was pretty ...
... thought it was a very healthy stage of work . You were grappling with a really difficult bit of verse . I thought that the balance between going with it and having a freedom from it , which you have to have in a late play , was pretty ...
Page 56
... thoughts , And these same thoughts people this little world , In humours like the people of this world . For no thought is contented ; the better sort , As thoughts of things divine , are intermixed With scruples , and do set the word ...
... thoughts , And these same thoughts people this little world , In humours like the people of this world . For no thought is contented ; the better sort , As thoughts of things divine , are intermixed With scruples , and do set the word ...
Page 92
... thought it should have been driven more . I thought you found the right mixture of passionate feeling and clarity of thought . If you had driven it more it would have become a nag . Of course the verse helped you , especially those ...
... thought it should have been driven more . I thought you found the right mixture of passionate feeling and clarity of thought . If you had driven it more it would have become a nag . Of course the verse helped you , especially those ...
Contents
Foreword by Trevor Nunn page | 1 |
Objective Things | 5 |
The Two TraditionsElizabethan and Modern Acting | 6 |
Copyright | |
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Common terms and phrases
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