Nay, I am the very pink of courtesy.

This month, among other projects, I'm preparing to play Mercutio. This is the role I was really gunning for in the Spring, and I'm thrilled to be playing it. It's going to be a BLAST. Four great scenes, a fight, AND an onstage death (well, technically, immediately offstage).

The last role I was this excited about was Oberon. I had seen several productions of Midsummer, including the film version with Judi Dench. Frankly, I'd never really been that taken with the play. But when I found out it was going to be produced here, I sat down and read the play again, and Oberon was the role that stood out for me, since I feel that age-wise, I'm pretty firmly out of Demetrius / Lysander territory and not yet in Egeus land. Oberon is the heart of what I feel is missing from other versions of Midsummer that I'd seen. He's often played as detached, cold, and uncaring. I see where that choice comes from, but I don't really think it's supported by the text (or particularly interesting). After all, at the beginning of the play, Oberon is "passing fell and wrath," so much so that the elves hide from him. And although he and Titania create the seasons, and have, every year since the dawn of time, the conflict between them is so great that they are prepared to let the world spin itself out of existence. As Titania notes,

                         ...the spring, the summer,
The childing autumn, angry winter, change
Their wonted liveries, and the mazed world,
By their increase, now knows not which is which:
And this same progeny of evils comes
From our debate, from our dissension;
We are their parents and original.

If this conflict is not HUGE, the other action of the play overshadows it, and it becomes unimportant. And it's the driving force for much of the other action of the play. To put it another way, when the Oberon/Titania conflict is understated, the entire play is on its head. So, I began my work on the character by focusing on the source of this conflict. What's different this time? Why is this time special? What has changed in the dynamic between Oberon and Titania?

Anyway, to make a long story short, I found a reason for it, based on the text and on common stories from myth (how the Greek gods behaved, since we're talking about Cupid's arrow, about Theseus, etc.) The director, however, had a different idea. I thought her idea was less interesting, and, honestly, unplayable. At least in a way that would give the conflict between Oberon and Titania the high stakes necessary to make the play work the way (I think) it should. Also, it's my opinion that the director's take on the conflict was only sustainable if certain things were cut from the text.

Mea culpa time. I was a bad actor. I could NOT let go of my take on the character. I probably should have quit. I had an absolutely *miserable* time working on the production. I kept trying to make my case, and ultimately, I began to feel that no matter what choice I made, I was always told it was the wrong one. I really struggled with how to make it all work, and once the run started, I slipped more and more into the way I felt the character should be played. By that point, the director was too busy dealing with other things to pay any attention to what I was doing. I know, it's terrible. But I KNOW my take was better. And I don't think I lack objectivity on this, either. The feedback I got from the audience was very positive - people saying they'd never seen it done that way and that it gave the show a new layer of meaning - and I was also offered some other roles by people who saw that production. I have very mixed feelings about that production. I know that I didn't hold up my end of the bargain, by taking my marching orders and carrying them out like a good soldier. But, on the other hand, I don't really respect choices that I think directly contradict the text.

So, here I sit, getting ready to emotionally involve myself in a take on a character again. From what I've heard, the director of this production is very hands-off with respect to actors' choices. That's looking good for my freedom to do what I want with Mercutio. But it also brings me to the other side of the coin.

One danger in a production where actors are given too much freedom is that when you have two or three actors who have different ideas of the scene, or who don't work together as a team, they can get into a competition. In those cases, the performances of each actor are improved by someone essentially watching the scene with a pointer, saying, "right now, the focus is here... here, it shifts to you, etc." Someone needs to steer the ship. When you're on stage with a group of clowns, and it's every man for himself... well, that's not going to maximize the effect of the scene, in my opinion. It's going to lack focus, it's going to be diffused, everyone can end up pushing to try to get through the clutter, and you end up with an audience who feels pummeled, even though they may not consciously realize it.

Back to Mercutio. This guy is ridiculous. He has a quick tongue and a quick blade. Everything is a joke to him, and most of the jokes are dirty. When you read some of these speeches, you have to pity the scenery, because you know it's going to be chewed beyond all recognition. I'm looking forward to working with the guys playing Benvolio and Romeo - I'd really like to make this a team effort, instead of the Mercutio show. In fact, I'm going to suggest that we try stand, sit, lean in some of the scenes. I'd love for us to have a lot of physical interaction and movement while I'm yammering on about tithe-pigs and little atomie. But I suppose the main concern I have, and the reason for this post, is that since I have an outsized character in mind, I hope it will work with the director's concept and will not be out of place in the context of the show.

Thankful

Here's one of the many things I'm thankful for: I spent my evening participating in a table reading of a new play.

Sour grapes

So, I've hesitated to write this post. It almost seems inappropriate. But, I told myself when I started documenting  my work as an actor that I was going to be honest, even when it hurt. So here goes.

My last post was about challenging expectations. And although I was writing there about choices I was making while playing Marcus Andronicus, that post was heavily flavored with subtext. I was still stinging from a not terrible but certainly not positive review of a production of The Tempest that I had just been in.

A preliminary question - is it in bad taste to write a response to a review? Or is it legitimate to get a closing argument? I made my case on the stage, isn't that enough? The issue, I guess, is that it bothers me that someone might have read the review who didn't see the production.

The reviewer in question felt that Prospero embodies the wisdom and acceptance of old age, and he felt my performance lacked the appropriate wisdom and gravitas. I disagree with the assumptions that the review is based on. It's certainly true that I did not portray Prospero with wisdom - because I don't actually think anything in the play suggests that Prospero is wise. He places his brother, Antonio, in control of his dukedom, placing him in a position to usurp the throne. Does a wise man lack such an understanding of his own brother that he would put himself in this sort of position? Prospero allows Caliban, a monstrous hagspawn, to share the same cell with him and his young daughter, until the beast tries to violate the young girl's honor. Not the best decision. But looking deeper than just the facts of the play, looking at the text itself, Prospero speaks in very broken verse throughout the play, he repeats himself... in short, his speech does not reflect clear thoughout the majority of the play. After all, this is a guy who has commanded graves to open and let the dead walk the earth. Doesn't really seem like a good idea. Prospero is powerful, but he is not wise. He is capricious and reckless. He is much like a Tempest himself. He is dangerous to be around.

Now, I made some choices with my characterization that may be unusual. I chose to show - for lack of a better term - giddyness in Act I, scene ii, when Miranda and Ferdinand first meet. Why? Because Prospero repeats himself several times during this scene, which I felt shows a high level of excitement. The words are not identical, but the sentiment of them is. Prospero says "it goes on, I see as my soul prompts it..." He promises to free Ariel for this. he observes that at the first sight, Miranda and Ferdinand have changed eyes. He promises again to free Ariel. He notes Miranda and Ferdinand are both in either's powers. I wanted a reason for the repetition. I don't think you can make the argument that Shakespeare was just being sloppy here - I think you find a reason for odd things in the text. And it was my feeling that the repetition showed excitement, and a lack of certainty about whether this was going to work. This is not Gandalf stroking his beard, this is a much more emotionally bare character.

Keeping that giddyness in mind, I put a gag in Act IV, scene i. Also probably an unusual choice, I suppose. When I was about to give Miranda to Ferdinand, I decided to break the two speeches up into three sections. Prospero says

If I have too austerely punish'd you,
Your compensation makes amends, for I
Have given you here a third of mine own life,
Or that for which I live; who once again
I tender to thy hand:

Here, I acted as though I were finished speaking and brought her hand toward his. Then, I interrupted the motion with the next part of the speech.

...all thy vexations
Were but my trials of thy love and thou
Hast strangely stood the test. Here, afore Heaven,
I ratify this my rich gift.

Pause. Start to hand Miranda over. Interrupt.

O Ferdinand,
Do not smile at me that I boast her off,
For thou shalt find she will outstrip all praise
And make it halt behind her.

Ferdinand replies,

I do believe it
Against an oracle.

Prospero says, emotionally,

Then, as my gift and thine own acquisition
Worthily purchased take my daughter:

And then, the third interruption.

BUT
If thou dost break her virgin-knot before
All sanctimonious ceremonies may
With full and holy rite be minister'd...

A cheap gag, maybe. But that is not a very interesting couple of lines without it. Not to mention the fact that starting that scene with levity provides great contrast to Prospero's moment of greatest anger in the play, which comes right after the masque.

The funny thing is... I usually try not to watch a version of a show I'm doing during rehearsal or the run, because I don't want to copy anything. I don't want to get up there and ape some other actor's great choices. But for whatever reason, the day the review came out, I watched some Youtube clips of various film versions of The Tempest, and I was actually quite surprised. In some of them, Prospero was played as the wise, old wizard, and to be frank... I thought it was boring.

The idea that Shakespeare was Prospero has gone around for years, that The Tempest was Shakespeare's farewell to the theatre, at least as a full-time writer. So I suppose there's a desire to have Prospero be a serious character. And while the epilogue definitely plays that way, I absolutely do not think that's the case for the play as a whole. The closest thing to a reference to Prospero's age I can find in the play is included in the excerpt above - that Miranda is a third of his own life. An ambiguous statement, to be sure, which makes one wonder what the other two thirds are. One possible interpretation is that he is three times her age. She's "twelve years since" plus "not yet three years." Somewhere around 42. Richard Burbage was 44, I believe, when he played Prospero in 1611. A recent American Shakespeare Center podcast I listened to placed the possible age of Prospero even younger than that.

At any rate, I don't think there's anything in the text that demands that Prospero be an old, wise man, other than the fact that he's a wizard, and when we think of wizards, we think of old men with purple, pointy hats and robes with stars on them. I think this is probably not the idea that necessarily prevailed in the Elizabethan era. Or at least, not what is represented by the text of the play. And my characterization of Prospero was based on my interpretation of the words on the page, not on a pre-conceived idea of the character.

So when I wrote about challenging the expectations of the audience... this is what I was actually writing about. I'm not so vain as to think that anyone who doesn't like my choices must necessarily be wrong, but I will say that the choices I made about how to play Prospero were based on a very close reading of the script, and were informed by the verse, by repetition, by what was said, how it was said, and when it was said, by what Prospero knew when he asserted fact and what he didn't know. I am absolutely willing to allow that there may be a better way to play the character. But to convince me would require an argument from the text. And that's what I think was lacking in the review.

Challenging expectations, or actor insecurity.

Titus Andronicus opens tonight. Working up Marcus has been a great experience. I've enjoyed working with the cast and crew. For me, most of what I enjoy about doing theatre is working with the text, about finding secrets. Those moments of discovery, when you feel you find a deeper level of meaning - that's what I love. And I've found that over the course of this process, I've changed how I initially felt about almost every single line Marcus has. At this point, I see almost nothing Marcus says the same way I saw it the first few times I read the play. It's been very rewarding.

However, I'm also somewhat nervous about that fact. I've already posted about the difficulties with the speech I have when Marcus finds Lavinia. The natural instinct is to comfort her, but the words of the speech are in no way comforting to Lavinia. On the contrary, Marcus seems to be focused on himself, on accepting and coming to terms with the violence that has been done on his niece. I put a good deal of thought into how this speech worked, and ultimately decided that it should generally be played *away* from Lavinia, instead of to her, because it's so internal. As much as I'd love to run to Lavinia and make everything okay, that's not the speech that was written for me. The speech I have is about my character's anguish, even though it's in the face of much greater pain. I'd also note that playing the speech this way allows for a contrast with Titus' reaction when he first sees Lavinia. Playing the speech to her, comforting her physically - I think they are safe choices, uninteresting, and contradict the text. But I think those choices are exactly what people will expect. I imagine people will ask me why I didn't do those things, or go home wondering.

I'm looking forward to getting this run started so I'll have a little more time to write about this topic. The question, as I see it, is how much should an actor let the expectations of the audience (and the critics) inform how he or she portrays the character? Do you give the people what they want, or do you stick to the meaning you've wrestled out of the text? For better or for worse, I'm going to be faithful to my understanding of the text - I think my choices are supported by the text, they are emotionally true to me, and they are consistent. And yet, I fear that people won't appreciate or understand the choice. I suppose if that happens, the fault will be mine, for somehow not selling it enough.

More on this to come.

Why scan Shakespeare's verse?

Not too long ago, I posted a page from my work with the text preparing to play Marcus Andronicus. Someone I respect very much asked me if doing this sort of work didn’t take away from the flow and/or the meaning. I replied off the cuff that, on the contrary, I think this kind of work adds to the meaning. It was not a very useful response. I thought I’d expand on my ideas on this a little more, in what is almost certain to be a rambling post.

First of all, I think of a script as similar to a sheet of music. But we’re used to modern scripts that generally only have the notes – no time. A sheet of music that just says “g, g, g, e, f, f, f, d,” only gives you part of the information you need to play the music. Obviously, there are many, many ways that those notes could be played. But when you start with an eighth rest, play three eighth notes and then a half note, you get the opening motif of Beethoven’s Fifth.

Modern writers are sometimes conscious of time and sometimes not. Some of them write in pauses, ellipses, etc. But in Shakespeare’s time, verse was a very common form, and one in which plays were very commonly performed. It was something the actors and audiences were used to. And for that reason, something the playwrights generally used as a tool. That’s one of the reasons why if an actor wants to wring the most possible out of the text of an early modern play, the actor has to pay close attention to the verse.

Take this line from Hamlet, for example:

Adieu, adieu! Hamlet, remember me.

The first thing we do is see if we can read the line in ten syllables, with stress on the even numbered syllables.

a DIEU, a DIEU! ham LET, re MEM ber ME.

Nope, that doesn’t make sense. It has to be

a DIEU, a DIEU! HAM let, re MEM ber ME.

Now, I certainly don’t think there are no errors in the text of Shakespeare’s plays. Note how Orsino is called both Duke and Count in Twelfth Night. That seems like an error that just never got fixed. But placing that stress on the first syllable of Hamlet in that position seems to be done for a reason. That line could easily have been written in regular verse.

Adieu, adieu! And Hamlet, don’t forget.

It seems obvious to me that there’s meant to be a lot of emphasis on Hamlet’s name in this line. The ghost is disappearing, but wants to stress the importance of the message before he goes. A final plea. It’s an exclamation point. Many actors would probably treat that last sentence that way regardless of the verse, but in many cases, the verse will reveal emphasis that you might not otherwise think of. Emphasis that was specifically written in by the playwright. To disregard it is to ignore an important piece of the text.

Prompt script

Some of my fellow actors seemed surprised last night when they saw what I had done to my script. I guess it may be a little unusual, but I think it's a good exercise. First off, I create a prompt script, meaning a script than contains only my lines and cues. It's easier to carry around and easier to find things in. It also has the psychological effect of making it seem to me that I have less to memorize. If I have lines in verse, I create a table with ten columns and scan each line into the chart. I use this script to memorize the lines. This way, I learn them phonetically. If I scan the line and realize a syllable needs to be elided, every time I look at the prompt script, that syllable isn't there. Typing the entire part over again also helps with memorization.

I'm posting a page of my prompt script as an example, subject to the proviso that I'm not asserting this is the only way the lines on this page can be scanned. There are often many ways a line can be scanned. One of the things I enjoyed most about George Wright's Shakespeare's Metrical Art was a passage in which Wright noted the various ways scholars had scanned certain lines of verse. If people who know a LOT more than I do disagree, it's liberating. It becomes another creative process instead of something to dread.

Names

I heard something in rehearsal last night that made me think of this. 

In his book Shakespeare’s Advice to the Players, Sir Peter Hall states that because the sanctity of the line is paramount, an “actor must therefore try to make every line scan.” In other words, if there’s a way to reduce a line to ten syllables, following the pattern of unstressed, stressed, unstressed, stressed, we should try to do so. Of course, even in an early play like Titus Andronicus, not every line scans. Working my lines for Marcus, I’ve found at least a couple of feminine endings (this refers to a line that contains 11 syllabes, the last of which is unstressed), and one line with only nine syllables. Sometimes, to make the line fit, we have to expand a word, as when we pronounce the –ed at the end of a word like banished, or drop a syllable we might otherwise pronounce elide (called an elision – the dropped syllable is “elided”). A trap for modern actors is the idea that words are pronounced the same every time we say them. This is particularly a problem with names.

Here’s an example. In Act III, scene ii of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Oberon gives instructions to Puck. During the speech, he pronounces Demetrius two different ways in as many lines.


Then stir Demetrius up with bitter wrong;
And sometime rail thou like Demetrius;


In the first of these two lines, the “i” in Demetrius is elided, so that the name has three syllables: then STIR de ME trus UP with BIT ter WRONGS. In the second line, all four syllables are pronounced: and SOME time RAIL thou LIKE de ME tri US.

Not even names are immune to this. But hey, what's in a name, right?

Marcus Andronicus

Next in the queue: Marcus Andronicus.

Titus Andronicus is known as Shakespeare's bloodiest play, although the body count in other plays is higher. Titus seems to be Shakespeare's attempt to outdo the writers of a then-popular genre, the revenge tragedy, which probably started with Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy. The play has a bad reputation. Some critics refuse to admit the possibility that Shakespeare even wrote it. According to a Wikipedia article, Harold Bloom, in Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, calls the play an atrocity, and flatly says that he can concede NO INTRINSIC VALUE to the play. So, it's not a stretch to say that this play contains some challenges.

The greatest challenge for me, not surprisingly, is a speech that is almost always mentioned in any discussion of the play. I'm referring to the speech Marcus has in Act II, scene 4, when he first finds Lavinia. Marcus has a lot of poetic blah-blah upon finding his mutilated niece. Whether this is supposed to serve a choric effect, show that Marcus is in shock, or to magnify or diminish the horror of what has happened - I have no idea yet. All of those theories have been posited. I am looking forward to working on it, though, to see what I can come up with.

Here's the speech:

Who is this? my niece, that flies away so fast!
Cousin, a word; where is your husband?
If I do dream, would all my wealth would wake me!
If I do wake, some planet strike me down,
That I may slumber in eternal sleep!
Speak, gentle niece, what stern ungentle hands
Have lopp'd and hew'd and made thy body bare
Of her two branches, those sweet ornaments,
Whose circling shadows kings have sought to sleep in,
And might not gain so great a happiness
As have thy love? Why dost not speak to me?
Alas, a crimson river of warm blood,
Like to a bubbling fountain stirr'd with wind,
Doth rise and fall between thy rosed lips,
Coming and going with thy honey breath.
But, sure, some Tereus hath deflowered thee,
And, lest thou shouldst detect him, cut thy tongue.
Ah, now thou turn'st away thy face for shame!
And, notwithstanding all this loss of blood,
As from a conduit with three issuing spouts,
Yet do thy cheeks look red as Titan's face
Blushing to be encountered with a cloud.
Shall I speak for thee? shall I say 'tis so?
O, that I knew thy heart; and knew the beast,
That I might rail at him, to ease my mind!
Sorrow concealed, like an oven stopp'd,
Doth burn the heart to cinders where it is.
Fair Philomela, she but lost her tongue,
And in a tedious sampler sew'd her mind:
But, lovely niece, that mean is cut from thee;
A craftier Tereus, cousin, hast thou met,
And he hath cut those pretty fingers off,
That could have better sew'd than Philomel.
O, had the monster seen those lily hands
Tremble, like aspen-leaves, upon a lute,
And make the silken strings delight to kiss them,
He would not then have touch'd them for his life!
Or, had he heard the heavenly harmony
Which that sweet tongue hath made,
He would have dropp'd his knife, and fell asleep
As Cerberus at the Thracian poet's feet.
Come, let us go, and make thy father blind;
For such a sight will blind a father's eye:
One hour's storm will drown the fragrant meads;
What will whole months of tears thy father's eyes?
Do not draw back, for we will mourn with thee
O, could our mourning ease thy misery!

It seems completely against human nature to blather on like this after finding a loved one in such a state. I haven't found the flow of this yet. I guess the first thing I need to do with this speech is to see if it breaks into chunks, each containing its own intention, and then see if I can find a path between those ideas. Off to the drawing board...

One more thing

I meant to mention this in my last post, but forgot to include it.

I've made a choice in playing Prospero that I think bears mentioning. In the scenes with Ferdinand and Miranda, I've chosen to play Prospero with a bit of a comical edge. I had difficulty figuring out how to deliver all of the lines in Act I, scene ii, in which P expresses that it's working, and that he'll free Ariel for this - there are several of them, and some of them are fairly close together. This suggests a high degree of excitement - almost giddiness. Once I made the choice to play those lines in that way, it didn't make sense to show actual anger toward Ferdinand when threatening him. So, I decided to make it clear to the audience that I'm acting tough for Ferdinand's benefit - the text supports this, obviously. Setting this dynamic up allows for some semi-comic moments later in the show with Ferdinand, and also shows contrast to the interaction with Caliban and the brace of lords.

I think it may be an unusual choice, and i was concerned about how it would play at first, but the audiences so far have seemed to like it, and I think it's supported by the text.

The race.

When I started doing this, I hoped I'd have time for more posts - more reflection and what not - but the Tempest rehearsal process was really a race for me. It was a great experience, it just went so quickly. I think I had 3 or 4 rehearsals, then 3 of 4 run-throughs, and then we opened. During which, I had to learn a *lot* of lines. Racing to get all of this up on its feet has kept me from posting here as much as I'd have liked, or even from doing the amount of thinking about the character I'd have liked to do. It'd be great if I could spend all my time doing this, but, I've got to work too. What can I say? Wizard needs food badly.

I struggled for a while, and in retrospect, I think that struggle was mostly against my own preconceptions. I kept looking for a "hook." I had this idea that at some point, I'd find something in the text that made the character suddenly come into focus. I've had that experience with other characters I've played, and it's an amazing feeling. But now I have the sense that Prospero is so complex that I could play him for months and still feel I was only scratching the surface.

One thing that presented a problem was Prospero's relationship with Caliban. My early thoughts were, why would Prospero keep a creature around who tried to rape his daughter? The idea that they need someone to fetch in wood and make fires is somewhat ridiculous. A man who can command graves to wake their sleepers, who can bedim the noontide sun and call forth the mutinous winds, can probably handle such mundane business with negligible effort. No, there's something more there. And I no longer think it's simply a need to dominate. When Prospero and  Miranda arrived on the island, Caliban was a thing most brutish, and apparently lacked speech. The exchange Prospero has with Caliban in Act I, scene ii suggests Prospero took on a paternal role toward Caliban. Caliban says when Prospero and Miranda first arrived, they made much of him, gave him water with berries in't, taught him how to name the bigger light and how the less that burned by day and night. This is actually a very tender and honest speech, I think. I imagine Prospero sitting with Caliban, staring up into the night sky, showing him the constellations... This makes Caliban's betrayal of Prospero possibly more painful than the betrayal by Antonio.

I've also wondered as I worked with this play whether or not Prospero planned the events of the twelve years leading up to and including the play (excluding the plot by Caliban, which I don't think Prospero foresaw, being focused on other matters). I still don't really know how I feel about this. Dramatically, I think it's important for the audience to feel that Prospero has a change of heart when he says, "the rarer action is in virtue than in vengeance," in Act V. But the comments about the future in the final scene are frequent enough that I wonder. Alonso's wish that Miranda and Ferdinand were "living both in Naples, the king and queen there," and Gonzalo's wondering whether "Milan was thrust from Milan so that his issue should become kings of Naples" make me wonder if Prospero planned or at least shaped all of the events that led to the action of the play. He was, after all, able to make Miranda "more profit than other princes can," and shelter her from other people so that she could be truly amazed upon seeing Ferdinand. It's also worth noting, I think, that Ariel was instructed to place Ferdinand on the island alone. Why? If revenge was the goal, why separate him from the rest of the nobles? Prospero is most concerned when Ariel tells him Ferdinand jumped overboard - as soon as Ariel tells him that happened, the rhythm of the scene changes from long speeches to a short, choppy exchange, with Prospero asking whether it was near the shore, and then following up with, "but are they, Ariel, safe?" Ferdinand is obviously key to Prospero's plan. The plan, then seems to be much more than simple revenge - Ferdinand is a key element. Of course, for every textual argument to support the theory that the entire thing was planned, there's probably another counter-argument that can be made from the text. It's still something I'm exploring, but I find it very interesting.

Okay, brace yourselves for this one. Are you seated? Here’s my latest discovery: I think Prospero is a very complex character. Shocking, right?

I’ve been going through the text, paying much attention to the verse. It seems obvious that the way a thing is said can affect the meaning – it can give context clues, for example. In analyzing things that are written in verse, though, there’s another layer of meaning. The rhythm of a speech can give clues as well. More on this in a minute, because I’m going through my weekend of “discoveries” in chronological order.

I’ve mentioned that Prospero seems very self-centered and appears to have a need to dominate. Keeping that in mind as I was working through the rest of the text, I came across one passage that I thought unlocked everything. Once Ferdinand and Miranda meet, Prospero says, in an aside, “The Duke of Milan / And his more braver daughter could control thee / IF NOW ‘TWERE FIT TO DO’T.” Well, that’s it, I thought. That’s the plan – all of the action of the play is set up so that Prospero can control Ferdinand, and by extension, Naples AND Milan. Perhaps the profit which Prospero has made as Miranda’s schoolmaster involved reading The Prince, and so on… But, after more reflection, I don’t think it’s that simple, because I believe Prospero really does love Miranda. She’s more than a tool to be used to dominate others.  When Prospero turns his attention from the brace of lords after the illusory feast appears to them, and turns his attention back to the young lovers, he says, “and in these fits I leave them, while I visit / Young Ferdinand, whom they suppose is drown'd, / And his AND MINE LOVED darling.” This last line could have been written, “and his beloved darling,” and would scan in perfect iambic, as the previous two lines do. As it is, I read it as, “and HIS and MINE LOVed DARling.” Whether or not the –ed at the end of Loved is sounded, I think you still have “mine” and “loved” together, both stressed, after several lines of regular verse - to me, that says so much. Serious emphasis is being placed on Prospero's love for Miranda in this passage.

Much more work to do.

Prospero: Kind of a dick.

Saturday, we had our first read-through of The Tempest. I’d already started learning some of my lines, but then I decided to wait until we got the final script. No sense learning lines that had been cut – mostly because it’d simply confuse me.  Incidentally… according to the online public domain version of The Tempest, the play contains 17,462 spoken words. Of those, Prospero says 4,786. That’s a little over 27%. I have enough work ahead of me without learning lines I’m not going to say in the production.

Nevertheless, when I got the script and started looking at the cuts, I was a little disappointed. Some of the earliest exchanges between Prospero and Miranda were cut – the business about what Miranda could remember before they came to the island – I felt there were some golden opportunities to show the affection between the father and daughter.

But then I realized that Prospero is really kind of a dick. Maybe we aren’t supposed to feel sympathetically toward him. After all, when he first appears, Miranda thinks she’s witnessed a few dozen people killed by Prospero’s magic. He tells her to calm down, because EVERYBODY IS TOTALLY SAFE. Well, that’s a lie. When Ariel first appears, shortly thereafter, he asks the spirit if everyone is safe. He actually had no idea whether those people were killed or not, but he told Miranda everything was fine. He also tells Miranda he has done nothing but in care of her. That’s a lie, too. He’s plotted out a big revenge strategy. Although there’s a component of it that MAY be in care of Miranda, even that seems questionable. His motivations for arranging the marriage to Ferdinand are as likely to be to profit himself as for Miranda’s well-being.

Then comes the issue of Caliban. So, let’s say you’re a Gandalf-level wizard. You’re alone on an island with your only daughter. You find a horrible creature there, a thing of darkness. And then it tries to rape your daughter. What do you do? Obviously, you keep the thing around, right? Because it makes the fire and fetches in wood. Things a wizard can’t do. Right? Obviously, I’m just at the beginning of this process, and I’m sure I’ll have more thoughts about this later, but it seems that Prospero has a need to dominate. He keeps Caliban around because he wants someone he can boss around. This fits with the more recent criticism of the play which suggests that it’s really about imperialism, but I feel that’s grafting an idea onto the play that didn’t even exist when it was written.

Anyway, with all of Prospero’s lies and self-centeredness, I’ve started to question many of the things he says. When Miranda asks why they were exiled instead of killed and Prospero replies that the schemers DARE not, because the people loved him so – really? Prospero didn’t give a shit about the people. He couldn’t be bothered. He didn’t have any interest in running the government. He skulked off to the tower to read. He abdicated his power to govern and improve matters for his people so that he could further his own personal interests.

Later in the play, he mentions that he forgot about Caliban and the plot to kill him. I suppose it’s possible that he isn’t a complete bastard, he’s just completely self-absorbed. At any rate, though – not exactly a warm, cuddly dude. He’s the kind of guy who would make you walk all the way to Mordor, while he rides a giant eagle everywhere. 

Prospero, or how I learned to stop worrying and love the verse (I hope)

I recently read an essay by David Tennant about his work as Touchstone in As You Like It. Excited about the chance to work with the RSC, he showed up expecting to audition for the role of Orlando. Instead, he was asked to read for Touchstone, a role he hadn’t prepared for. In the essay, he discussed some of the difficulties he faced with the character, and frankly admits there are some things he never felt he got right. It’s very heartening to know that other actors struggle like this, particularly ones whom I respect so highly. I think about that every time I get stumped.

I mention this because I’m working through something right now, something I hope will not stump me completely. I’m gearing up right now to play Prospero in The Tempest.  There is a basic rule in dealing with Shakespeare’s verse that when a line of verse can be delivered in iambic pentameter, it should be. The actor is supposed to go through his or her text and see if it can be made to fit the pattern. This is much more of an art than a science. Read a few books on the subject, and you’ll see disagreement on how different lines should be scanned. One thing seems really clear to me, though. In Act I, scene ii, when Prospero begins his long exposition to his daughter, Miranda, about how they came to be stranded on the island, the verse gets extremely difficult to scan. This isn’t unusual in a later play, as Shakespeare’s use of verse really changed over the course of his career. But there are passages that are simply unnecessarily difficult. Here’s a prime example:

Out of the dukedom and confer fair Milan

I start to scan this, and at first I think it looks simple. It starts with a trochee, “OUT of,” and then goes back to iambic; “the DUKEdom AND conFER,” and then lo, and behold. “FAIR MiLAN?” The rest of the line would scan perfectly if it simply said “Milan.” The last foot could be an anapest (unstressed, unstressed, stressed) or a cretic (stressed, unstressed, stressed), but the point remains – the meter is irregular because of the inclusion of a word that doesn’t need to be there. Since the meter is so uneven, it suggests to me that Prospero is pretty agitated. It may seem obvious that he would be upset as he relates how he was deposed as Duke, but I don’t really think it’s that obvious. I could see an argument that since he planned out so many of the details of what is to befall his brother and the others on the ship, that he’s already planned to forgive them, too, but that doesn’t seem to work with the verse in the speech.

Which brings me to another problem. The story Prospero tells Miranda is a long one. I mean, the guy goes on for PAGES about this – a really long time – so long that he keeps asking Miranda if she’s paying attention. It’s going to be a challenge to find levels in the speeches, to pace it all, so that it keeps the audience’s interest.

But here’s the real goocher, the thing that really concerns me – from Julius Caesar on, Shakespeare started to use a LOT of shared lines. Sometimes shared lines are easy to deal with. If the line obviously has ten syllables, it’s pretty easy to deal with them. There’s either a caesura in there, or not, which means the other actor should generally pause, or pick up the line without a pause, respectively. But when the verse is as choppy and uneven as it is in I.ii. of The Tempest, it poses problems. I’m going to have to work with the other actors on how we’re going to scan these lines. But I don’t want to seem like a dick. It’s not my job as an actor to tell the other actors how to say their lines.

When I start working on an early modern English play, the first thing I do is see if my lines are in verse or prose. I make a prompt script for myself. I type all of my lines out into a word document. For the lines that are in verse, I create a table with ten columns, and try to scan the verse into the table, one syllable per cell. This process has been a huge pain in the ass so far, with the verse being so irregular. I’m going to actually try something else for this play, copying all of the text over and then scanning it by hand, drawing the little stress marks out and isolating the feet, so I can really look at the endings that may be three syllables and give them more thought.