sorry to be pedantic outside of the tags but i love these as exhibits a b and c of why the âshakespeare is meant to be performedâ cliche is real; on the page they look wild but actors know how to read the embedded stage directions
two of these examples canât be shared lines of iambic pentameter (both gertrudeâs line and brutusâ are already rushed and irregular at eleven syllables, so laertes and cassius both get their full ten beats for two or three words) and one of them doesnât have to be (macduff and malcolmâs lines add up to ten beats indicating that itâs shared but no one will call the scansion cops on you if you split it into two and divvy up the extra ten syllables between them, which imo is the more playable option)
remember that verse is symphonic and that those extra syllables are notes in the orchestration of the sceneâ they have to go somewhere, either into beats of rest or sound. thereâs a lot of ways to score any of these moments but one possibile notation for the first is
MACD: your royal fatherâs murdered.
(rest/ rest/ rest/ rest/ rest/)
(rest / rest / rest/ rest/ rest/) ...
all that silence affords the director a moment to let a lightning-fast scene (the entire cast pouring onstage in ones and twos, yelling over each other at varying levels of authenticity) come to a screeching halt, and the severity of the situation set in. for the actor itâs playable as all hell, and ultimately very human: the kind of raw shock that makes you ask stupid questions. you get the same thing with laertes. tbh iâve always found âdrowned? (rest / rest /) oh. (rest / rest / rest / rest/ rest /) .....where?â to be utterly goddamn devastating in how realistic it is, bc what else can you say to that? if someone told you with no warning that your sister drowned, what else would come out of your mouth in the moment but something stupid and mundane? oh. ..........where did it happen?
the other notable similarity in these three moments is the use of un-words: two âoâs and a âhaâ (they arenât meant to be pronounced exactly like âOhâ or âHaâ; traditionally shakespearean un-words are performed as unarticulated sounds, sighs, groans, exhalations etc). un-words leap out to the actor because it is a character rendered speechless. i made a post a few weeks ago about how big of a deal it is when people written by william shakespeare dont have words for what theyâre experiencing/when the pain is so big that even in a metanarrative universe where you are only the words you speak you are forced to admit that something is unspeakable, and every âoâ or âhaâ or âahâ etc is a moment of this horror, this defeat at the hands of your own medium
itâs a rich moment for actors because in classical text itâs frowned upon to act âoutsideâ of the line (to waste vocal qualities on things that arenât words, ie to take a pause from speaking your richly layered monologue to let out a pained exhale. âact on the lineâ says your director, smacking you on the knuckles with a copy of freeing shakespeareâs voice), itâs diva-y and amateurish to take more syllables than youâre given. but when youâre given the space of ten beats for âha portiaâ, who will dare call you a scene hog for stretching that âhaâ into five notes of agonized, wordless noise?
in the same way that learâs âhowl howl howlâ is very much not just the word âhowlâ said three times these moments demand full, shattering vulnerability from the actor, a dive into the place in the body where pain lives. maybe laertes and malcolm really do say âoh.â, quiet and childlike, or maybe that âoâ is a stand-in for the all-air sound that shakes out of you when you get punched in the lungs and try to talk through it, or for that deep animal groan you heard that made you think what was that before you realized it was coming out of your own throat
anyway you get what i mean. you wouldnât look at a blueprint and say you saw the house, you wouldnât read the sheet music and say you heard the symphony, etc
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