Twixt clock and …..

This looks like it’s going to be a fascinating exchange.

I’m excited to hear Ron Rosenbaum’s response.

Every single person I’ve heard of who saw Peter Brook’s Midsummer in 1970 had a similar response to it to Rosenbaum. BOOKS have been written about that production. Never ever to be forgotten. (Here are some images from that production if you are interested: Oberon, Titania and Puck , this one is of Hermia, Oberon, Titania, and the sleeping lovers ) …) But to hear about that production in this context, that on some level the memory of seeing that production and the revelations it provided led Ron Rosenbaum, almost 40 years later, to write his latest book…. Incredible.

Check out the Wikipedia entry on the play itself where Brook gets a whole section called “Brook and After”.

Another landmark production was that of Peter Brook in 1971. Brook swept away every tradition associated with the play, staging it in a blank white box, in which masculine fairies engaged in circus tricks such as trapeze artistry. Brook also introduced the subsequently popular idea of doubling Theseus/Oberon and Hippolyta/Titania, as if to suggest that the world of the fairies is a mirror version of the world of the mortals. Since Brook’s production, directors have felt free to use their imaginations freely to decide for themselves what the play’s story means, and to represent that visually on stage.

It goes on a bit more but Brook’s influence on this play cannot be over-stated. I didn’t even SEE the damn thing and I know all about that production.

I can’t wait to read Shakespeare Wars too, by the way. I love the Shakespeare controversies, the Shakespeare “wars”. I don’t have a problem with pondering authorship, pondering who did what, even accepting that I will never ever know the entire story. I’ve written about the “wars” before. I get obsessive and manic. I open up the Riverside Shakespeare, and then I open up my copy of the first folio – and do a line by line comparison, which is chilling, if you know what you’re looking for, and if you regard the printed word as somewhat sacred.

Also – I’m an actor, which gives a whole other perspective to this whole thing. These are not just pieces of great literature. They are PLAYS meant to be PERFORMED. I do not read them in a literary way, I read them as an actor, trying to imagine how I would say this shit out loud. And when you read the plays that way, and when you double-check the published standard texts that you can buy at freakin’ Barnes & Noble with the text in the folio, you realize how much editors have inserted themselves into Shakespeare’s words, probably to “make things clear”, or because the editors are wannabe directors themselves, and they think they know HOW a line should be said. The editors have added exclamation points, and ellipses, etc. etc., all of which are EMOTIONAL punctuation marks. An exclamation point conveys an emotion. Shakespeare didn’t have to add emotion to the end of a line with an exclamation point, all of the emotion is already in the line. Say the line as he wrote it and you probably WILL feel the correct emotion. He’s that good. But editors have added all kinds of stuff to the texts, because – whatever. Just because. So if the line is, originally: “Give me your hand”, maybe an editor, thinking himself being “helpful”, will change it to “Give me your hand!”

Actors notice EVERYTHING when they read a script. We are detectives. What’s the difference between an ellipses and a dash? There are 2 exclamation points at the end of this sentence. That is important. Etc. And so an actor will read “Give me your hand” much differently than “Give me your hand!” Ya know why? Cause it IS different. The exclamation point is a DIRECTION to the actor. It says, “Say it THIS way.”

If you’re interested in any of this and you have a copy of Shakespeare’s plays lying around (like a Penguin copy, or any of the regular copies you can buy anywhere), take it out and compare it to the text in the first folio, which is now online. And notice how many exclamation points have been added to the recent editions. There are more differences, and people have spent their entire lives digging through the first folio, looking for clues, because the folio is the earliest copy in existence of the works of Shakespeare. So it is thought that it is closest to what he actually meant.

(Oh, let me add one contradictory thing, but that’s just all of a piece with any conversation about Shakespeare: because the folio lacks those emotional landmarks – meaning punctuation marks besides periods and commas – the plays are more difficult to read. At least silently. You realize how much your eye, as it scans along, NEEDS those landmarks to orient you, to tell you what people are feeling, to skip from one place to another. The editors “made things clear” all right and it’s just flat out easier to sit down and read the Penguin version of As You Like It or whatever. But still: it’s good to know the folio is there, if you need it, and my copy of it is most treasured and most dog-eared.)

Too many mysteries, too many unexplained things. But it’s so fun to speculate!

Gotta put The Shakespeare Wars: Clashing Scholars, Public Fiascoes, Palace Coups on my list.

Speaking of Shakespeare, I was preparing for an audition last week while Michael was staying with me. Working on the monologue from Cymbeline. Act III, sc. 4 where Imogen receives the cold letter from her husband telling her that he has found out she has been “false to his bed” while he is in Italy. She has NOT been false to his bed and so she is shocked (shocked!) to hear his accusations (it comes in letter form). So she reads the letter and then says to herself:

False to his bed! What is it to be false?
To lie in watch there and to think on him?
To weep ‘twixt clock and clock? if sleep
charge nature,
To break it with a fearful dream of him
And cry myself awake? that’s false to’s bed, is it?

(See, even just looking at that I feel the need to go check my folio to see if there’s an exclamation point after ‘bed” in the first line. If you think it doesn’t matter, then you’re wrong.)

I memorized the monologue while Michael read his paper. Occasionally Michael would read out loud to me from the paper, and occasionally I would proclaim parts of my monologue to him. Randomly. 20 minutes of silence would pass and suddenly I would start shouting with no warning, “FALSE TO HIS BED???” Etc. This went on for a couple of hours.

During one of my random proclamations, I messed up the lines and said,

To lie in watch there and to think on him?
To weep ‘twixt clock and cock?

Twixt clock and COCK.

Which, naturally, became the big joke. We couldn’t stop saying it. We tried to work it into every sentence, until it actually made me frightened that I would slip and say it that way during the audition. I started to think that THAT was the line. Wait … what is the line again? Twixt clock and CLOCK or twixt clock and COCK?

The morning Michael left I was weepy. The emotions snuck up on me (they always do, I’m slow). I walked around in tears. I had to go take a walk to try to calm down. I could not calm down. At some point, Michael called me and said, “Hey, before I go let’s meet up for coffee.” I said, acting all chipper and breezy, “Cool! When?” He said, “How about 12?” Me, acting all chipper and breezy, “12 sounds great!” Michael said, “Are you upset about something?” (I am laughing out loud. All my chipper lying was for naught!) I responded, “Oh, it’s nothing. I’ve just been weeping twixt clock and cock.”

I’ll be checking back in on this conversation – and I will definitely be getting the book. I’m excited.

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11 Responses to Twixt clock and …..

  1. steve on the mountian says:

    I’m reading through the original folio collection right now and I’m momentarily jarred every time I come across the word ‘suck’ even though I well and good know that’s not an ‘f’.

  2. And when you read the plays that way, and when you double-check the published standard texts that you can buy at freakin’ Barnes & Noble with the text in the folio – you realize how much editors have inserted themselves into Shakespeare’s words, probably to “make things clear”, or because the editors are wannabe directors themselves, and they think they know HOW a line should be said.

    Thats it exactly! Is probably why I had difficulty reading it in high school/college : I kept wanting to read it as an actor (I dabbled…still do, in community theatre) whereas the English teachers droned on about iambic pentameter…”but what does it MEAN?!” I wanted to see/hear/experience where the emotions were supposed to go.

    Off topic totally, while you are squeeing over Shakespeare as an actress, I am squeeing over seeing a professor I had, Dr. David Glassman, Forensic Anthropologist, featured in a small documentary (??) about a case he helped solve in southern Indiana.

    Just..had to share …

    *will shut up now*

  3. red says:

    Sharon – it is interesting – there is a huge disconnect (and that’s okay – it’s just a fact) between the scholars and the actors/artists. It’s like they are on two separate trajectories. Which is funny when you think about it because – these are plays. They were written to please/thrill/horrify an audience – I like to think of them in very practical terms. That’s MY fantasy. That Shakespeare was a practical man, a business man, an actor himself – and he was writing things that he thought would be HITS – not things that would be picked apart by scholars 3 centuries later. I am grateful for the scholars, though – the footnotes in all the plays and all that crap is so useful – but still: let’s never forget that these are PLAYS.

    Have you read Will In the Wolrd, by any chance? I read it last year and thought it was just marvelous. I highly recommend it – think you might dig it.

  4. red says:

    Oh and Sharon – speaking of you and acting: you mentioned getting cast in Bus Stop a while back – but then no updates!! How did it go??

  5. Erik says:

    That discussion is so fascinating! (Or maybe I should say: “It’s so fascinating.” without the exclamation point.) (Because the punctuation thing is huge–you come at it as an actor, and I look at it as a playwright, and punctuation is absolutely specific. There is a world of difference between a dash and an elipse.)

    Your post makes me miss acting. (I started acting when I was ten, but then gave it up to focus on writing about four years ago.) One of the most exciting periods of my life was going to acting conservatory in London, where we studied the folios and had the opportunity to perform monologues on the Old Globe stage (!). I performed Angelo’s “What’s this” monologue from Measure for Measure. It was such an exciting time.

    The piece of Shakespeare lore that I love the most is…(and who knows if this is true or not, but it’s what they tell you when you take a guided tour of the Globe theater)…have you ever heard that in the original productions of several of his plays at the Globe, the actors were only given scripts with their specific lines and their cue lines–(i.e. if you weren’t in the scene, you didn’t get a copy of the scene)–no one was allowed to have a full copy of any script for fear that someone would steal it and plagarize the text–and so the first time any of the actors heard the entirety of the play they were working on was actually DURING the first live performance. How crazy (and kind of thrilling) is that? It’s like, you couldn’t possibly be “false” in those first productions because you were living the play for the first time. You couldn’t get away with NOT listening. Listening is such an important part of acting anyway, but during those original productions it was IMPERATIVE.

    Oh, and weeping twixt clock and cock is hilarious.

  6. red says:

    Oh Erik so much to say. First of all, I am intensely jealous that you got to perform in the Globe – how unbelievably awesome.

    Second of all – I took a classics class with Doug Moston – the guy who is responsible for publishing the folio in book form. He died a couple years ago and I wrote a tribute post to him if you’re interested – Such an interesting man. And he, a tough Manhattan guy who never went to college, was this huge Shakespeare scholar. Fascinating. And we learned SO MUCH about the scripts of Shakespeare in his class – we learned the thing about each actor getting only their part – or their role (and they called it a “role” because your script came on a “roll” of paper. “Which roll of paper is mine? The Mercutio roll or the Romeo roll?” amazing!!)

    Also – I’m sure you learned this in England – but because of the actors getting their “rolls” a day before the damn play went up or whatever – Shakespeare had to put EVERYTHING into the words. Nowadays, you see playwrights rely on stage directions. A playwright will write: “Scene opens. Jeff walks into his apartment, it is dark. He turns on a lamp.” But because Shakespeare didn’t DO stage directions – he had to put all of that INTO the language – so the actors would know what to play. So the same scene as above, in Shakespeare’s play, would be all in the language. It would be (and forgive me, I know I’m not Shakespeare):

    “I enter my lair and ‘lo
    there is no light.
    Fetch me a torch!”

    Okay, that’s so stupid but you get the idea. The actor will read that and know: Oh. It is dark.

    IT’s so fun to try to read Shakespeare in that way – because you’re right – it is SO immediate. Everything is RIGHT THERE.

    Anthony Hopkins tells a great story about his first big break in the theatre – Olivier cast him in something. Hopkins’ idols were people like Brando, Montgomery Clift – he had much more of an American Method-acting style – so he was putting all of these pauses in, to “think”, to “make it real” – you know, typical stuff. I do it, too, with Shakespeare – it’s so hard not to – Doug Moston would try to whip that out of us. But anyway, Olivier stopped him in the middle of one of his monologues and said, “Don’t stop to think. The thought is IN the line.”

    It gives me goosebumps, man.

    Tell me more about what you learned in England – I’d love to hear!! I will listen to you twixt clock and cock.

  7. red says:

    Oh and dude – again with my yearning for a time machine. I would do pretty much ANYTHING to go back in time and to see one of Shakespeare’s original productions.

  8. Erik says:

    I have a journal with lots of great notes from that time period, but it’s in storage right now (as is most of my book collection, it’s a travesty, I cannot wait to be living in a place where I have room for my books again, I know you understand THE PAIN of not being surrounded by books). My Shakespeare teacher was Michael Maloney, who’s been in several of the Kenneth Branaugh Shakespeare movies (he played Laertes in KB’s Hamlet) and he was the love interest in Truly, Madly, Deeply–oh, and he’s one of the nicest men in the world (and totally crushable, it was kinda impossible not to have a crush on him) (I remember we used to sit on the bus going back to our flats after class having these verbal pissing contests: “Did you notice the way Michael looked at me?” “What about that thing he said to ME?”) (just: total teacher crush).

    We literally spent weeks just studying the folio versions of the scripts. (I know, I know, we could have spent the whole semester doing that and we would have only made a dent into his work.)

    I remember the first monologue we did–he had us all memorize the “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, or close the wall up with our English dead” monologue from Henry V, which is basically a battle cry, and we all did the monologue and it totally didn’t really feel like a battle cry from any of us, just standing there, still on the stage, and so he took us out of class, we all walked to Primrose Hill–this beautiful park around the corner from us, with a big hill–and he had us all run up this hill (there were twelve of us in the class) while one of us did the monologue, using the monologue to help inspire the rest of the group to follow us up the hill, and then as soon as one person would finish, we would run back down the hill and someone else would start running up the hill and we’d all follow after them as they did the monologue. By the time we’d all run up the hill twice, we were all exhausted, and we had to do it TWELVE TIMES without stopping. So we were all out of breath and it felt like we were dying–so I wouldn’t say that any of the monologues were, like, brilliant or anything, (I mean, we were all out of breath, just spitting the words out), but what the exercise did is it immediately put us all in the moment, suddenly the stakes of the speech were completely and utterly pure, if that makes any sense: just get your fucking troops moving. None of us were overthinking, and suddenly the speech kinda came alive for all of us, and then when we all did the monologue again in the classroom the next day, I swear, all of the monologues were ions better than they had been the day before.

    But don’t take any of the above story to mean that he was teaching us to take our time to “think” and to “make it real”–Michael was a major stickler for the rhythms of iambic pentameter–but we spent so many hours and hours studying Shakespeare’s rhytms so that by the time we were working on our monologues it was second nature, we weren’t thinking about it.

    That was the main thrust of our studies. Don’t overthink it, just know it and feel it.

    Oh, and performing on the Old Globe stage was definitely the highlight of my semester in London, but a close second is the masterclass we had with Fiona Shaw. She only worked one on one with a few of us, and I got the chance to work with her–at this point in the semester we were working on scenes, and my scene partner and I were doing the “Kate” scene from Taming of the Shrew. We did the scene for Fiona Shaw, and it was obvious that the scene was missing something, and she told us to do it again, but this time, every time Petruchio says “Kate,” to say “c*nt” instead (I put the asterix there to save you from unwanted google hits) and the scene was suddenly SUCH a different scene. I suppose the Kate/c*nt thing seems sorta obvious now, but I was young and it was a revelation at the time. It’s a brutal scene.

    Okay, I’ve rambled on long enough.

    But before I sign off: yes, ditto to your wish for a time machine.

    And AMEN to what you said about playwrights relying too much on stage directions. I try to use as few as possible. My biggest pet peeve is when I read plays that have descriptions like “there’s a table upstage right and a door backstage left and etc. etc.” (let the set designer do their job!) or when every line of dialogue has an emotional direction (let the actors do their jobs!).

  9. red says:

    Erik – that is a totally brutal scene. What a great way to handle it – because that really IS what is going on in that scene! I love Fiona Shaw – you’re so lucky!

    I also love the idea of running up and down a hill while doing that monologue. So often (especially with the ol’ Bard) actors get in their heads – make it all about the words, because the words are so daunting – we want to dwell on them, we want to GET IT RIGHT … but sometimes when you engage the body like that – boom, magic can happen. You actually can start to feel like you approach the truth of the moment. What an awesome thing – I’d love to have seen the puzzled passersby watching these actors race up and down a hill shouting “unto the breach” – hahahaha!!

  10. Erik says:

    I’m sure that the passersby in the park were incredibly puzzled, but they were also British, so they just politely ignored us and let us do our thing!

  11. Erik says:

    And I agree with you on the love for Fiona Shaw thing. I’m doing a follow-up to that Good Faces meme (could that have been considered a meme?) that you inspired me to do and I’m going to include a picture of Ms. Shaw in it.

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