Shakespeare's Advice to the Players"Shakespeare tells the actor when to go fast and when to go slow; when to pause, when to come in on cue and when to accent a word. His text is full of such clues. He tells the actor when but never tells him why or how. That is up to the actor. It is much like making a musical score live; Shakespeare heard the lines as he wrote them. Shakespeare's Advice to the Players makes watching Shakespeare or reading Shakespeare a richer experience, for audiences as well as actors." "The book is also a celebration of Peter Hall's fifty years as a director of Shakespeare, from his early days at Cambridge, through founding the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-upon-Avon, and later to his fifteen years as Director of the Royal National Theatre. During these years he has worked with the greatest Shakespearean actors of our time, including Laurence Olivier, Edith Evans, John Gielgud, Peggy Ashcroft, Judi Dench, Anthony Hopkins, Ian McKellen and many others. The experience of working with these great actors is at the heart of this book." --Book Jacket. |
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS | 9 |
PROLOGUE | 10 |
SHAKESPEARES ADVICE TO THE PLAYERS | 13 |
Copyright | |
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accent ACT 5 SCENE actor alliteration Angus McBean antithesis Antony assonance audience beat Berowne blank verse breath Brutus Caesar caesura caesura break caesura line change of pace character Claudius Cleopatra colloquial comic contradiction Coriolanus cross-rhythm dagger define director drama emotional express eyes Falstaff feeling Friar full stop George Rylands gives half-line Hamlet heaven hyperbole iambic line iambic pentameter invents irregularities Judi Dench kill King lady Launce Leontes LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST Macbeth means Mercadé metaphor modern monosyllabic line monosyllables murder National Theatre needs never o'er Oberon Olivia Orsino Othello paradox pause Peggy Ashcroft Peter Hall phrase play Poel Prince prose Prospero regular iambic relish rhyme rhythm ROMEO AND JULIET Royal Shakespeare Company scansion sense Shakespeare's verse slow smooth sound speak speech Stratford-upon-Avon sweet syllable tell tempo thee thou thought trippingly Troilus Viola WINTER'S TALE word young