"I sometimes think acting in Shakespeare is akin to singing opera. The technical demands are so intense that the concentration required simply to meet them makes it difficult to maintain an immersion in the human drama that the language is serving."
~ Charles Isherwood in the NYT, the rest is here.
Oh you are sweet. I rushed to the link, thinking, "I had no idea Christopher Isherwood wrote about opera! Or Shakespeare!"
ReplyDeleteCharles is maybe related, who knows.
But more to the point: since I have huge huge huge understanding problems with Shakespearean English, I try to find help wherever I can. This was recently very useful: Playing Shakespeare, an old BBC TV master class series with Shakespearean actors. A little showing its age, but generally solid for the contemporary viewer too:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.amazon.com/Playing-Shakespeare-John-Barton/dp/B001O7R75O/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1312338732&sr=1-1
Duly noted and corrected, with thanks. Where was the brain wandering off to while these hands were typing away? We will never know.
ReplyDeletePlaying Shakespeare, lol, 'twas not so old when I taped it off WNYC back in the day. Patrick Stewart and David Suchet @ Dueling Shylocks is awesome but the coolest moment is Michael Pennington just saying the words "Ah sir, there's many a Greek and Trojan dead since last I saw yourself and Diomed' in Ilion upon your Greekish embassy." Srsly killer line. (And that dude, btw, was a kick-ass Henry V.)
They were all amazing actors, didn't you find. You usually expect in a group of people one or two who will impress you, but there was not a mediocre actor in that crowd. And McKellar's "I know not why I am so sad today", and Judi Dench playing en travesti role, and the Shylocks and the Lears and the whole shebang. And Barton speaking the verses in (how the indications are) Elizabethan English (sounded)...
ReplyDeleteOh yeah, that crowd was pretty select.
ReplyDelete