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[CROSSTALK]

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[MUSIC]

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Thank you very much.

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Tiffany Stern, University College.

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And I'm going to talk a little bit about Shakespeare and the Stage.

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And the way he features about the stage,

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affects the way Shakespeare writes his plays.

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Because Shakespeare was of course, an actor as well as a playwright.

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So firstly,

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I'm going to see how we can see some actors in the plays of Shakespeare.

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I've shown you a picture here, so the man called William Kemp.

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And he was an actor who played a fool.

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We have this picture because William Kemp as well as being an actor,

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was also rather famous Morris dancer.

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And this was a book he wrote about the nine day Morris dance he made from

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London to Northridge.

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Well, he was an actor for Shakespeare's company a full player until about 1600.

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At that time, he left the company seemingly in disrepute.

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And angrily went off to dance the Morris over the Alps.

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Here is Kemp featuring inside one of Shakespeare's texts.

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This is a little bit from Romeo and Juliet.

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And you can see that the stage heading, instead of saying enter Peter,

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says enter Will Kemp.

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And that either shows us a moment when Shakespeare is writing with Will Kemp in

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his mind or at least when the prompter is deciding who to cast in that part.

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When all of Shakespeare's fools from the time when Will Kemp

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was there are extremely foolish, we have constable doll,

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we have Dogberry bottom in Midsummer Night's Dream.

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But then, as I say, Kemp leaves and the new fool is acquired for the company.

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And we also have a picture of him.

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This is Robert Arman.

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And he's a very different kind of fool as you can see.

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If you look at this picture, you can see that he has hanging on his belt,

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two things.

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One is the big sort of triangle in the front.

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That's his purse, which is why thieves will called cutpurses.

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On the left is his inkhorn.

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That's a horn, which has an inkwell,

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a quill pen, and a little knife to trim the pen.

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If you went around with an inkhorn, you are broadcasting to everyone that

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you might need to write in pen at any time that you were a literary person.

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Now, from 1600 when Shakespeare's company acquires this fool,

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suddenly all the fools in Shakespeare's plays become cerebral, wise,

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actually more trenched into knowing than anyone else in the company.

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So we get the Wise, Fool, and Lair, we get Feisty, we get Touchstone,

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these wise fools.

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And I'm simply showing you this so

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that you can see that Shakespeare's plays are shaped to his acting company.

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And that is really hardly surprising.

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There are other ways in which we can spot things happening in the company even when

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we don't know the actors.

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I'll give you a little example.

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He would have a moment in Cymbeline.

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What happens here is the two boys have found what I think is a dead body,

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in fact it isn't, but I won't go into that now.

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They decide to sing a song to this person they've been looking after.

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But then they change their minds they went to sing the song they will in fact say it.

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So now our voices have got to the manage crack,

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sing him to the ground as wants to our mother.

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And the reply is I cannot sing, I'll weepe, and word it with thee;.

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So one says the voices have to manage crack and the other one says I can't sing.

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And the second one agrees.

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Actually, why don't we just say our song instead?

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What's happened here is a speedy revision because of voice breaking in the company.

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These two boys were clearly originally supposed to sing the song.

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We even have music for the song they were supposed to sing.

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But at some point, a revision has had to take place to deal with

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the fact that their voices are going.

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So having looked at that, I'm liking to look more specifically at the way plays

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were put together, and at how that affects the way that plays were written.

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In particular, and this is something that has fascinated me for a long, long time.

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I get to look at what text actors were given, and

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how that affects the way the plays were written in the first place.

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So what you'd like to learn plays from?

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What they were given was something that looks a bit like this, and

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I'll explain its features to you.

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This is what's known as an actor's part.

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It's called the part because it's just part of the play,

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the actor doesn't have the whole play.

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This is the part for Orlando and a Robert Greene play called Orlando Furioso.

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What this part consists of is everything the actor is going to say as Orlando,

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but nothing that will be said to or about him.

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You can see he has a long queue, a long line, at the end of which are the last

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one or two or three words is to listen out for before his next feat.

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So he has an entire script of everything he is going to say but

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are very much without context.

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He doesn't have the arc of the narrative but he does have the arc of his

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own character's progression, and this is what actors learned from.

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So what the actor has, it is everything here is going to say in the play.

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But nothing that will be said to or about him, cues aside.

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And there were various other things he is not given.

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He doesn't know within his dialog with one or several actors.

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He doesn't know how long he has before his next cue.

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Will he say something immediately cued and immediately say something again?

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Or will he say something and 12 people will come on and do a dance and

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kill one another before he gets to speak again?

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It's not clear from this.

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So he does not have much narrative sense, but

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he has a great deal of sense of his own character.

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So what happens when we think of plays in these terms?

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Well, amongst other things,

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we must remember that actors learned texts such as this by themselves at home.

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They didn't learn them with the other actors present.

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Here's an example which says, the player so beateth his part to himself at home.

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That he gives it right gesture when he comes to the scaffold or stage.

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I have another example of that, but I'll hop past that.

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How did actors who had learned the separate parts so

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far from the narrative work together to put on a production?

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This picture helps explain.

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This is actually a medieval picture of a medieval play about the Martyrdom of

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Saint Apollonia.

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And that Saint Apollonia in the middle, they're being murdered by having her teeth

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pulled, which is why Saint Apollonia is now the patron saint of dentists.

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Around her, our fellow actors, for

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the person I'm interested in is this one the prompter.

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The prompter holds a book and the baton and

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indicates with his baton when the next actor should speak.

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And as you can see, he's something rather like a modern conductor.

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And when you think actually of an orchestra,

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if you imagine you're playing the bassoon in the orchestra, you're not going to

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be given the entire score of music that you're going to play in.

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You're going to be given your bassoon part.

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And that's a little bit the way early modern performances took place.

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But what does this mean for Shakespeare?

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I can just show you a few examples.

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Here's Hamlet, a bit from Hamlet.

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This is the entire cute part for Reynaldo.

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I'm going to look not at his cues but at his words.

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This is what the actual we'll see.

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I will my Lord.

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My Lord, I did intend it.

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I, very well my Lord.

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As gaming my Lord.

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My Lord that would dishonor him.

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But my good Lord.

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I my Lord, I would know that etc.

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The actor sees that he is to say My Lord repeatedly.

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This gives him rhetorical information about how to play that little

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stripped role.

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He knows that he is obsequious.

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He probably thinks he'd better say My Lord in an amusing way.

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He knows that something happens in the single sentence where he doesn't say

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My Lord, a place is in the consequence at friend also and gentleman.

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That's when Polonius with whom he is talking, loses his place.

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Reynaldo has to put him back in his place.

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I think this tells him to be a bit annoyed.

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He forgets to say My Lord.

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He's bored with his interlocutor.

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Anyway, this is a part that, as you can see,

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helps to stage itself by rhetorical devices put in the part.

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Let me show you something else an actor might look for,

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looking again at an actor's part.

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We have to imagine the exit, turning or quite possibly unscrewing what

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was sometimes called his role, because it was handed to him or rolled up.

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So much in the actor playing Olivia unscrolling this role.

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You don't have to read any of the words at all,

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to see that the text moves from pros to first halfway through this scene.

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Now, what's happening in the play is that Olivia is talking to Viola and

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Viola is dressed as a man.

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And Olivia at this moment falls in love, in this scene falls in love with Viola.

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And the actor playing Olivia will see it one that it'll be a man player.

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He will see it once that his method of speaking changes very

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significantly halfway through the scene.

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And this is of course, at the moment when he falls in love.

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That sounds a little reductive but

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you could clearly fall in love with a gesture because we have various

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stage directions from the time saying he falls in love as a thing you can do.

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So the actor will see that what he would call this is a change of passions.

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Artists would divide their hearts into passions and look for

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clues to see that their passions were changing.

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Acting at the time was sometimes called playing,

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but was sometimes called passionating.

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Again, I think I'll hop over this one, and let's go straight to this one.

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This is a moment when an actor would read this text in one way, but

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when we see it in context, we'll see it in a different way.

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Here's the actor playing Solanio.

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Solanio is listening out for a queue of have my bond.

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And when he is have my bond he's going to say it is the most impenetrable curre that

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ever kept with men.

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A curre is a dog, he is going to say something insulting.

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So it's listening out for have my bond.

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And now let me show you the bit of Merchant of Venice in which this occurs.

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And I'll read this out to you, but imagine your Solanio you listening out for

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have my bond.

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Jew, that's Shylock.

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I will have my bond.

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It's the key, it is the most impenetrable.

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I will not hear these speak.

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I will have my bond.

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It is the most important and therefore speak no more.

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I will not be made a soft and delight fool to shake the head for

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land and cited and deal to Christian intercessors.

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Follow not, I'll have no speaking, I will have my bond.

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It is the most impenetrable care that ever kept with men.

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And as you can see, this text that we might read in a linear fashion actually

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anticipates and in fact demands these early interruptions.

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And again, we might think of a musical analogy where the music sometimes

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demands that you go back to the beginning and play through again.

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So this I go to suggest is Shakespeare scripting for actors.

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And I'm playing to their strengths obviously,

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the actor playing the true Shylock will know that he speaks his cue many times.

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The actor playing Solanio, may or may not have that information,

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but the actors can play games with one another using devices such as this.

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And these are all ways in which plays that are not very collectively rehearsed.

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Actors tend to have one collective rehearsal before performance.

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These are all ways in which plays can stage themselves although they are not

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very collectively rehearsed.

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Sticking with the Merchant of Venice.

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Shylock repeatedly gives out early cues.

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Here's an example of ill lucke, ill lucke, is it true, is it true.

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Fourscore ducats, etc.

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What's going to happen as a result of this?

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Is that actors,

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the people to whom Shylock is speaking will be continually interrupting him.

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And Shylock does repeatedly say that no one will listen to him that no one hears

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him through.

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And the text stage, stages itself such that will indeed happen.

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This is my last slide.

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I've shown you Shakespeare writing for actors receiving that kind of text.

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As I say he was a theater man and theater was the element in which he thought.

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So here he is playing a little game with this whole idea of cues and parts.

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This is Beatrice saying and Much Ado speak count tis your Qu.

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If you're Qu, you might want to speak but it's what we would call a meta dramatic or

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a meta theatrical joke.

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And here he is in A Midsummer Night's Dream,

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where he has actors putting on plays from part.

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At first he has some rehearsing and being so poor and in their rehearsal,

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that they cannot in fact tell the difference between the part the lines that

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he speak and the cue the lines that listen for.

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Peter Quince, who's there prompter says,

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you speak all your parts at once cues and all.

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Well, here in the performance, the actors have finally learned the difference

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between cues and parts and they're delighted by it.

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Wicked walls for whom I see no bliss, cursed be thy stones for

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thus deceiving me.

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The wall me thinks being sensible should curse again.

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No, in truth sir he should not deceiving me is Thisbies cue.

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She is to enter, and I am to spy her through the wall.

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So these are amateur actors proud at finally understanding the nature

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of cued parts.

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And that takes me back again to specific actors in Shakespeare's company.

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I get to end on an epitaph for man called Richard Burbage.

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Richard Burbage was Shakespeare's lead actor, the first player, the first

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fellow the first Hamlet, and this is an epitaph written when Richard Burbage died.

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I think it's one of the shortest epitaphs ever.

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Here it is.

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Exit Burbage.

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But what I like about it is it isn't just an exit,

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it's a queue of excellence as you can see from the long line before it.

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This is Burbage's final ever exit as he goes off into oblivion.

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But this does tell us that even poets that people at the time were very

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familiar with the construction and the look of the cued part.

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And as I say Shakespeare in particular, wrote to and about those things,

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because they were also the very ways in which he himself had learned this texts.

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Thank you >> [APPLAUSE]