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.