“Play to the lines, through the lines, but never between the lines. There simply isn’t time for it.” – George Bernard Shaw to actress Ellen Terry on performing Shakespeare, 1896
Today is (supposedly, roughly) the birthday of William Shakespeare. April 23, 1564. (Title of the post from Sonnet 98.)
I guess first off the obvious, if you’ve been frequenting these parts: I decided to read all the plays in chronological order (as roughly as can be guessed), and also read supplemental materials from books on my shelf. I’ve been writing posts about each play. I’m already deep into it!
Shakespeare Reading Project
Henry VI, parts 1, 2, 3 and Richard III
Two Gentlemen of Verona
The Taming of the Shrew
Titus Andronicus
The Comedy of Errors
Love’s Labour’s Lost
Romeo & Juliet
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Richard II
King John
The Merchant of Venice
Henry IV, Part 1
Henry IV, Part 2
The Merry Wives of Windsor
Much Ado About Nothing
Most of what I know about Shakespeare I learned by doing, by playing his scenes, by getting up and acting them out. These plays are meant to be spoken, not read. The plays are a whole different thing once you try to perform them, and actors often bring insights to the table which draws the subtext out, if you want to call it subtext, or at least the performance demonstrates the richness of psychology and motivation. A mystery that will never truly be solved – like the great movie stars of classical Hollywood – their allure can never be totally quantified and put in a box with a neat label. They beckon, we want to get to the bottom of it. So we go back to them again and again and again.
I treasure my Riverside Shakespeare: I splurged on the book at age 19: I figured: I’m a theatre major, I should probably have one of these. If you want to The book weighs 80 pounds. For some reason lost to history, I taped a dried autumn leaf on the inside of the cover. I’m sure it had major meaning.
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.
This is both educational and so heartening to me. I’m an online grammar/essay-writing tutor (pays the bills), and I’m daily annoyed by the disrespect commonly shown to grammar, syntax, and punctuation. Commas and periods organize, as does paragraphing; sentence structure dictates rhythm, which by itself contributes so mightily to tone and meaning; exclamation marks are as directorial on the page as in performance. (Ditto all-caps.) When you write, your reader is your actor. If I were still doing workshops, I’d focus a whole session on what you’ve written here.
Forgot to mention I’m totally with you and your dad on Who the Heck Cares? Reminds me of that old philosophy joke about how the Iliad and the Odyssey weren’t written by Homer but by another Greek with the same name.
My favorite:
One fell swoop
Happy birthday, Will!
Hi Sheila, regarding the acting class you described:
“Doug Moston made his students play scenes that way. He would have parts written out on “rolls” of paper and you would have to get up with other actors, and try to make the scene happen, only having your part in front of you, the other actor only having his part in front of him. It was so fun!”
–how did you know what was your cue, the first time or two you went through something? How did they know back in the day? Did the rolls include enough of the other characters’ lines to give you the cue, or did a stage manager give the prompts or something?
Interesting question! This is the brilliance: in general, because of how good Shakespeare was, the final lines are often prompts to the next actor – “what say you?” and etc. But mostly – it’s up to the actor to suggest – in behavior, intonation – that “okay it’s your turn now”. It also FORCES you to listen to what other people are saying. you can’t wait for your cue beause you don’t know what the cue is. You MUST listen. It forces you to be in the moment. It was so cool!
Ah, interesting that it can work like that!
Also, I remember asking this question a year ago, but I must have got distracted by other things before your answer came in, because I never saw it till now, funny! Glad I clicked the link again on this anniversary.
It so happens I caught a performance of Hamlet yesterday afternoon at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, I didn’t realize the timing was so apt. Not much use to anyone far from the greater Twin Cities but for what it’s worth: It was fantastic! The company really made it come alive.
Oooh Mike that sounds great – always a treat to see Hamlet live, it’s such a BEAST of a play – and so … weird. It’s amazing how long Hamlet doesn’t do anything. lol Just sits around and thinks about it. so glad to hear the cast did it justice.
I’m homeschooling one of my teenagers, and we are studying Shakespeare’s history plays. I went to college in the 80’s, and I too have my old and annotated Riverside Shakespeare. I do enjoy reading the notes I made when I was 19, though I lacked the foresight to preserve a leaf from one of the trees in the schools arboretum.
Enough of that. I want to thank you for comparing a scholars edition with the Folio. I mostly know the plays by having read and reread them. So tonight’s bout of insomnia has, thanks to you, proved fruitful.
Thomas – hi! sorry it took me a couple of days to get back to you. I love hearing from people!
Interesting to be homeschooling these! Curious as to your approach!