In the endless mess of schools, classes, books, websites, and video learning how to act/speak well (especially with Shakespeare’s text) can be daunting, confusing, and just downright hard. How does Ian McKellen do what he does best? What makes Patrick Stewart so easy to listen to? Or Kenneth Branagh, Judi Dench, Derek Jacobi?

There are a lot of wonderful resources out there that can help; I’ve blogged about a few that may help. But when looking for a real concise, simple (though not easy) resource why look any further than the works of The Bard himself?

Shakespeare’s own melancholy Dane has a speech in which he instructs the tragedians how best to play.

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounc’d it to you, trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and as I may say, whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who (for the most part) are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and noise. I would have such a fellow whipt for o’erdoing Termagant, it out-Herods Herod, pray you avoid it. Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance: that you o’erstep not the modesty of nature; for any thing so o’erdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is to hold as ’twere the mirror up to nature: to show virtue her feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now this overdone, or come tardy off, though it makes the unskillful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of which one must in your allowance o’erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be players that I have seen play—and heard others praise, and that highly—not to speak it profanely, that, neither having th’ accent of Christians nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellow’d that I have thought some of Nature’s journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably. O, reform it altogether. And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them, for there be of them that will themselves laugh to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too, though in the mean time some necessary question of the play be then to be consider’d. That’s villainous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go make you ready.

Over the next few posts I will be dissecting the speech and discussing individual parts of it so that I can cover some specifics of the advice about acting. In the mean time: look it over, familiarize yourself with it. It’s a good one to know.

On monday night I saw a solo performance night (followed by a tribute to) a wonderful local actor who is a genius actor. Especially when it comes to acting Shakespeare. He has half a century of experience acting and teaching Shakespeare and there’s really no one better.

There’s something incredibly humbling yet superbly inspiring in seeing a performance by a seasoned actor… one whose YEARS of training and experience have given them a great deal of wisdom and huge sense of ease in performance. Younger (and I don’t just mean kids, teens, or college) actors have a tendency to show an audience how hard they’re working and expel so much energy that we may lose track of the story being told. Emphasis is placed all over the place and it become a show “full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.”

“O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags…” A WISE actor knows that their lines should seem to just fall out of their mouths. To just talk to the other characters and the audience. Text that is ingrained into an actor’s soul because it has been there for years, as well as the wisdom of how to effectively tell a story to (not AT) an audience create a truly spellbinding performance.

Actors: aspire to this kind of performance wisdom. I sure do — I’m trying to figure out how to be like someone who has had more years experience than I have existed — I’ll let you know if I ever figure that one out. Everyone else: be aware of it this quality in people in performance. If movies are all you have access to, that’s fine. But there’s a different sort of magic when you’re right there in front of such a powerful actor.

Next time you see a play by Shakespeare (or not), recognize if the actor is proclaiming their lines or if they’re just talking. Are you seeing “a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more,” or “A showing of a heavenly effect in an earthly actor”?

Since a few of you seemed to like Animaniac’s take on Midsummer, I’ll share with you their excerpt of Hamlet.

I really like Animaniacs. It’s one of those smart entertaining, yet educational show fun for kids as well as their parents. That show has songs that are responsible for many students being able to learn state capitals and all the U.S. Presidents.

Happy July everyone! The days are getting hotter for me and places with air conditioning are very appealing. So is staying inside and reading, but I’m much too busy for that. I’ve noticed that I haven’t been setting enough time aside to post here as often as I’d like so I’ll try to be more diligent about that and keep you entertained at least every couple days. In this fourth edition of the Blog Carnival there are a few posts that I will be sharing with you that will hopefully educate or entertain you in some fashion. So here it is!

nandita shares the post, Justice, Scalia and The Merchant of Venice. It’s a law blog (say that 5 times fast) but it ties it in to certain legal actions taken in one of Shakespeare’s plays. Think about the questions it raises. Discussion welcome in the comments.

Hannah discusses some interesting casting decisions in a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in her blog post, When I a Fat and Bean-Fed Horse Beguile.

Did Shakespeare’s plays originally use horses on stage? Craig Bryant explores the possibility in “A horse! A horse! My kingdom…”. Who knows for sure? It may have been a big crowd pleaser to ride through the groundlings…

Duane Morin wonders What Exactly Is A Collier?. This simple question sparks an interesting discussion on Shakespeare bawdy wordplay and intentions.

That concludes this edition. Stay tuned for more Bardy Bawdy fun here and elsewhere in the ShakesBlogosphere. And now Feste the clown will wrap it up with a [slightly edited] song…
A great while ago this post began
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
But that’s all one — the carnival’s done;
And we’ll strive to please you every day.