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Zusatztext “One of the sanest! wisest! and most practical volumes I have ever read about Shakespeare.”–Michael Billington! The Guardian (London) Informationen zum Autor John Barton has been associate director of the Royal Shakespeare Company for more than thirty-five years and has directed more than fifty productions. He lives in London and conducts Shakespeare workshops throughout the U.K. and the U.S. Klappentext Playing Shakespeare is the premier guide to understanding and appreciating the mastery of the world's greatest playwright. Together with Royal Shakespeare Company actors-among them Patrick Stewart! Judi Dench! Ian McKellen! Ben Kingsley! and David Suchet-John Barton demonstrates how to adapt Elizabethan theater for the modern stage. The director begins by explicating Shakespeare's verse and prose! speeches and soliloquies! and naturalistic and heightened language to discover the essence of his characters. In the second section! Barton and the actors explore nuance in Shakespearean theater! from evoking irony and ambiguity and striking the delicate balance of passion and profound intellectual thought! to finding new approaches to playing Shakespeare's most controversial creation! Shylock! from The Merchant of Venice. A practical and essential guide! Playing Shakespeare will stand for years as the authoritative favorite among actors! scholars! teachers! and students. part one Objective Things chapter one The Two Traditions Elizabethan and Modern Acting [The following actors took part in the program that forms the basis of this chapter: mike gwilym, sheila hancock, lisa harrow, alan howard, ben kingsley, ian mckellen, david suchet.] Playing Shakespeare. Not reading him or writing about him but playing him. Over a thousand books or articles are written about him every year. In 1980 there were 195 books and 877 articles, many in Japanese. And yet very little is put on paper about how to act him. I think I can guess why. I have been urged to write about this but I have always felt I couldn't do it. I thought that the sort of points that need to be made could only arise truly in the living context of working with actors. On this subject each actor and his experience of acting is worth many books. So what I shall be saying in Playing Shakespeare is by itself worth nothing. It only has value if it comes alive in the performances of living and breathing actors. The best guide to an actor who wants to play in Shakespeare comes, I think, from Shakespeare himself, who was an actor. Listen to Hamlet's advice to the players. It can't be quoted too often. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced 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 . . . 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 anything so o'erdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is to hold, as t'were, the mirror up to nature.Hamlet: III:2 I believe that speech goes to the very heart of it. It's one of those utterances which seems a bit simple and limited at first, but if you live with it you will find that it begins to resonate and to open doors. I also believe that in the Elizabethan theater the actors knew how to use and interpret the hidden direction Shakespeare himself provided in his verse and his prose. I believe that the kind of points we shall be making in these workshops work best in the theater, not...
