BLOG POST # 28 BEAUTIFUL VOICES & TWO LOVE STORIES

Alan Rickman has been married for three years now, at least according to recent news, to a woman he met when they were teenagers.  Their love has spanned decades and, apparently,
 in 2002 while they were in New York City,  after many years of living together (I believe the number cited was 40), they tied the knot.  It was a very private ceremony, and then they celebrated by walking across the Brooklyn Bridge and having a nice lunch somewhere.

Now, someone may  suggest that tax laws may have prompted this decision to wed, but I think that would be very unromantic.

 I think Alan Rickman is one of those men who has a voice that is not just a useful instrument for an actor.  It is a thing of beauty and a joy forever. One of those incredible English voices.  It conveys deep sorrow, deep joy, and the capacity for passion. And intelligence and wit.  Nuances of kindness and understanding.  Oh, man.

When my mentor and I were discussing casting my first play for its first public presentation, he asked me, "Ideally, who would you like to see in this?"  Now, "this" is a full-length play that takes ten actors to perform. And I said, "Alan Rickman and Michael Caine, doing all the roles." 

Michael Caine has his own wonderful love story, which he tells in his autobiography.  He fell in love with his beautiful wife when he saw her on t.v. in a coffee commercial.  I can't tell the whole tale the way he can; so you might want to look it up.  It is a lovely, wondering, and fond reminiscence.  And there is also this about Michael Caine: not every movie he's been in has been wonderful, but he has been wonderful in every movie he's been in.  This past Christmas we watched "A Muppets Christmas Carol" once again.  Michael Caine is Ebenezer Scrooge.  And there he is: his intelligence, his wit, his wide capacity, and that voice--and we are moved to tears--tears, even as the chickens dance and the rats rejoice at Ebenezer's return to humanity.

BLOG POST # 27 EXCERPT FROM MY SHAKESPEARE MONOLOGUE

In honor of the day, I have placed below a portion of my monologue "The Great Will Shakespeare Speaks."  If anyone reading this is interested in reading the whole thing, for fair use, please write to me at sarahredux@yahoo.com.  Thank you.  And Happy Birthday, once again, dear Will.

Whoe’er wrote aught unprompted by the call of heart’s ambition?

We would be great,

Would move the souls of fellow creatures of our Age,

Mayhap, of ages yet to come.

Would leave our stamp.

Would live on past our lives.

Ah, bitter, bitter, bitter jest.

I am renown-ed, yes.

Though some would place my laurels lightly

       On the heads of others.

Yet, this sensible warm motion,

This life.

How fleeting.

It matters not how poor,

Time passes and we sigh to see it pass.

We weep. (Rueful smile)

What folly.

We are creatures of a day.

And so we write,

In writing give relief to our despair—and to our joy.

We give the groundlings, and the Court, somewhat to fill their hours—

          their heads, if they do have them.

And their hearts.

What’s Hecuba to them or they to Hecuba that they should weep for her?

But weep they do

If we but put it to them fair,

If words we find which touch the chords of their great sorrows. . .

BLOG POST # 26 WHAT ALL THIS IS ABOUT: SHAKESPEARE

In two days we will be commemorating the 399th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare of Stratford.   And if tradition is correct, extrapolating from his baptismal date,
 we will also be celebrating the 451st anniversary of his birth.  The Man from Stratford
 has been both adulated and disowned by the world.  His amazing gift turned him into a god for some. But Nineteenth-Century adulation paved the way for the world's perhaps predictable reaction.  Today, his lack of breeding, rank,  and a university education makes him suspect as the unworthy  and false receiver of  Shakespeare Worship. 'Tis said the lavish credit  due to the plays and poems of "Shakespeare" undoubtedly belongs to  some highly educated aristocrat whose name has been lost in the mists of time.   

I cannot review here and now each claim, reviewing each absurdity and dismissing it. James Shapiro has done all the legwork needed and made well-presented and well-founded conclusions.  If you have the slightest doubt who wrote The Works of Shakespeare, please read a copy of Shapiro's Contested Will.  Not only will you be convinced of Will's authorship, you will also read a ripping good tale of fan lunacy, with one would-be debunker sadly but amusingly named Looney.  

SO, IT IS ALMOST HERE:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WILL!!  AND THANK YOU FOR ENRICHING OUR LIVES AND OUR CULTURE BEYOND MEASURE.

BLOG POST #25 NATHAN LANE CAPTURES THE EXPERIENCE

Nathan Lane recently accepted the Monte Cristo Award for his Outstanding Contribution
 to The Theater from the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center.  He pointed out that he was honored, of course,  but also a bit dismayed about starting to rake in Lifetime Achievement awards, as 'I'm not quite done yet.'  But then he described what it was like to perform in a play that works as serious theater should, as a temporary alteration of the audience members' consciousness:

About appearing in "The Iceman Cometh" and his experience performing in this play:

When it works, when you hear the stunning silence of a thousand people, listening, thinking and feeling and you're lost in the complicated. . .[tearful moment] it's what you hope and pray for as an actor.

I want to add it's what I hope and pray for as a playwright.  I've never had an audience of a thousand people, not yet.  But I've had audiences that were so rapt and quiet, it was uncanny. And the largest audience I've had, the 200 people who came to see the final reading of "Shakespeare Rising" at The Utah Shakespeare Festival, they made a bit of a racket when they arrived at the theater.  But they settled down, the play began, and they didn't move or cough or make a sound.  No, I think there was one line that got a gasp.  But, basically, they were absorbing the play, as Nathan Lane describes it.  At the end of the play, there was great applause, with the whole audience on their feet.  A standing ovation is exciting and wonderful. But their intense silence during the play was even better.

BLOG POST #24 STRANGER THAN FICTION: PART II

This dream took place while I was writing "Shakespeare Rising," and the dream came to me just before I woke up. So, instead of forgetting them, I wrote  down the details of this one.  It took place on the battlements of Elsinore.  Both sentinels were there, looking up, at a spinning object in the night sky.  As it descended, getting closer and closer, they realized it was a small farmhouse and that it was going to crash on the battlements.  Just before it crashed down on them, Barnardo called out the opening line of Hamlet: "Who's there?"  And then the house, with Dorothy and Toto in it, landed on them.  It was one hell of an opening!

BLOG POST #23 THOSE BEAUTIFUL VOICES

My husband has wondered why so many men of the United Kingdom seem to have incredibly beautiful voices: Burton, Olivier, Hopkins, of course.  Benedict Cumberbatch, to modernize the list a bit.  Ronald Colman  for fans of old films.  Nathan Page, to reach as far as Australia. But, seriously, their voices are, by and large, different from the voices we're used to hearing in America. 

Is it because their vocal cords are different, just genetically different? Is it because their schooling routinely allows for rhetoric, elocution, the training of the voice, as a routine aspect of being a gentleman, not merely a quality reserved for the stage? I know that in singing there are exercises to line up one's vocal cords.  Perhaps preparation for public speaking does the same thing?

Or for the bar!  Go to an English court or Irish court (I can't personally speak for the others), and you will hear magnificent voices worthy of the Royal Shakespeare Company presenting one side or another of a case.  These are not the kinds of cases you see in films, with movie actors letting out all the stops to make heart-rending pleas.  These are ordinary barristers who are simply trying to win an argument for the prosecution or for the defense. They have incredibly beautiful voices.

BLOG POST #22 THE SHIFTING OF SOCIAL RANK: OR, WHAT SHALL I WEAR?

Before Robert Devereux, the Second Earl of Essex (otherwise known as Errol Flynn), was
 sent to Ireland by Queen Elizabeth I to quell a dangerous rebellion by the Irish, she warned him, that whatever he did, she did not want him to create new knights.  She was very careful about whom to advance and whom to honor.   (And why she didn't follow her gut and keep him out of the Irish wars completely is undoubtedly investigated by exasperated historians; but I don't know if I'll ever get very far into that question.  English history can become an enticing maze that lures one away from establishing one's own plot line!)

My point here is that Essex ignored her orders.  He made many new knights as soon as he was out of her reach.  The upshot:  well, there were plenty of upshots.  Essex ignored many of her orders. But, this one had rather sad domestic consequences.  For the men whom Essex had advanced in rank wrote home to their wives that they had risen in the world and, according to the sumptuary laws of the time, the ladies could now go out and buy a higher quality cloth and have nicer dresses made.  Imagine the outcome when Elizabeth stripped all these men of their premature and forbidden honors.  Men came to her at Court, humble, hat in hand, saying, basically, "My Gracious Queen, whatever shall I tell my wife?  She hath spent a fortune on red velvet." 

BLOG POST # 21 THE "TRACKING DOWN" PROCESS

      I've been meaning to write another post, even though I've begun in earnest the "tracking down" phase of writing my third play.  What that entails is this:  I'm trying to familiarize myself as much as possible with the characters I plan to use.  Not all of them will make the final cut, as the story develops, but I'm trying to form a picture in my mind of the major players in The Lord Chamberlain's Company in 1601.  Can't write a backstage play about Shakespeare's men and ignore the information that is available about them all!  There are facts and there are hints and anecdotes.  So, I'm tracking down those.  My own conjecture will follow, as I select (or invent) details that will move my story along.

       I've also been researching a couple of noblemen and their roles in the events I plan to cover in this play.  This is a little tricky for me as, ironically enough, I have never been very good with dates.  It doesn't help me that in different generations of the same family the names and titles seem to shift with the family's fortunes!  Renaissance England was truly a shifting time!

        As I read through my printed sheets (from computer research) and the notes I've taken from some books (more to follow: I can hardly wait to get my copy of Henslowe's Diary), I'm sensing suggestions of how to plot my play, and how to sub-plot my play.  I hope I don't end up with too much material, although that is a GOOD problem.  As my Grandmother from Benevento used to say: Better too much than not enough.  Of course too much good material can clutter the atmosphere and cloud the judgment.  "Oh, I have to include this."  No, Mary Jane, no you don't.  Enjoy it, make a note of it for possible future use, and move on! That has been one of the hardest things for me to learn: to write a play that has a playing time of an hour and forty-five minutes.   Even then, I'm bucking up against the new Gold Standard: 90 minutes without an Intermission.   I'm counting on Shakespeare to bail me out as he set the Gold Standard as "the two-hours traffic of our stage."  And even then he went way past when he felt the need.  "O, reason not the need."  

        Tom Stoppard also seems to write what he needs to write.   He operates on the assumption that his canvas is his canvas, and if it's a whole wall, well, if it's interesting and beautiful enough the audience will want all of it.    Of course, I have been to plays by Stoppard (even Stoppard!)  where people with expensive seats have walked out at the Intermission never to return!!!! I believe this is called voting with one's feet.  But if a playwright starts out trying to please everyone and to follow each theatrical fashion, I think that playwright is putting on unnecessary shackles.  Audiences sort themselves out. The playwright needs to honor his/her voice.  Otherwise, what is the point of doing this at all?  What is that trimmer putting out into the world but an artifact that is half-hearted?  Faint heart ne'er won fair lady, nor the golden apple.
 

BLOG POST # 20 A LINK TO A MARVELOUS MAP

Thank you to my husband who sent me this link.  I was unable to transfer the illustration,
 but I believe the info. will still work for you.  This is a map of Shakespeare's London which you can use to travel through the City of his time.  I think this will be a lot of fun to use and also very helpful with my third play.

And here's the link:

Explore Shakespeare's London With This Interactive 16th ...

The project brings 16th century London into the present.  

View on www.citylab.com

Preview by Yahoo

BLOG POST #19 A STORY YOU MIGHT LIKE

To avoid spoilers, all I can say is that you might enjoy reading a short story by Jane Gardam called "The Groundlings."  She's a wonderful writer, and this is a sweet story.

BLOG POST #18 STRANGER THAN FICTION

While I was writing the first draft of "Shakespeare Rising,"  I had the flu and a high fever. Also a cough; so I slept down the hall in the spare bedroom, to spare my husband the risk of contagion and also to help him get a good night's sleep.  While I was sleeping there, I woke repeatedly, partly to cough, but partly because of my dreams. 

In one dream Shakespeare came to me and told me things.  What things?  I have no idea.  I was hallucinating, my fever was so high. Even if I hadn't been ill, I doubt very much I would remember the contents of a dream unless I woke myself up to write down the details.  But I definitely came away with the sense that I had been visited and had a friendly connection with my esteemed friend Will. Oddly enough, this feeling persisted while I was writing that play. 

BLOG POST # 17 THE GREAT TOM STOPPARD

Or, Sir Tom, if we should ever meet.

How do I love him?  How can I count the ways?  I'd like to say he reinvented wit and brilliance for the modern stage, but I have to consider the possibility that this is a mite of an exaggeration.  Still, there is "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" to consider, both stage play and film.  All the rest of his amazing plays. My latest favorite "India Ink."   What an achievement to have written "Jumpers" and "Arcadia" and the "Coast of Utopia" trilogy.  Go down the list and stand back in awe.  (Well, that's my approach, anyway.)   And the most amazing thing of all:  He is COMMERCIAL.  For all that he's whimsical and demands a great deal of intellectual concentration from his audience, the audience is THERE for him, in great numbers, because he's clever, he's amusing, and he plays on our feelings at times so that we are helpless in his embrace but secure in his confident hands. 

And then there is the film "Shakespeare in Love."   What a delight.  An enchanting experience that brings the audience into the center of the Elizabethan theater world.  Some things never change ("I'm the money." "You may stay, but be silent.")  This is beautifully delivered by Ben Affleck, the successful and egotistical Edward Alleyn, along with the following:  "What is the title of this play?" "Mercutio."  "I shall play it."  And Rupert Everett as the witty, dark, but charming Kit Marlowe: "What are you calling it?" "Hamlet and Ethel the Pirate's Daughter."  "Good title."   These are some of the SUPPORTING cast, along with the great Tom Wilkinson (the money) and Geoffrey Rush.   And Colin Firth, detaching himself from his Mr. Darcy image, to play a man who is so undesirable one could almost call him "icky." Colin Firth! 

And, of course, there is the imagined presentation of the first performance of "Romeo and Juliet," with Gwyneth Paltrow and Joseph Fiennes bringing to life the best screen minutes I've ever seen of a play by Shakespeare, all the more poignant for the frame within which Stoppard has placed the performance.  Stoppard has done magic, affirming all along, "It's a Mystery."   He has taken the premise: What if the young Shakespeare has gone dry in more ways than one.  What if he has writer's block and is also very low on  sexual potency. What would he do in such a situation? See his psychiatrist, of course.  And here we are, pretending the past was so much like the present. Pretending.

BUT.  I have a very smart friend who assumed that everything in this delicious confection was true, ignoring the anachronisms, the author's finger pointing to the sign post: Isn't this fun?  It's not true, but don't you love the flavor?  And I ask myself, what am I doing in my plays?  Aren't I presenting my own versions of Shakespeare ? Aren't I trying to pull together visions of him that are plausible as well as entertaining? Or moving?  I write fictional stories about him based upon mere skeletons of historical facts. Not even skeletons, just a few bones.  And yet I'm searching for the truth, for MY Shakespeare.  Where is the REAL Shakespeare?  Is he lurking in the plays he wrote?  Well, yes, I think, in a way. But his plays are varied.  His mind created different mazes for us to run, as his imagination ran them.  Ultimately, I think the last word is that of Sir Tom:  "It's a Mystery."  Would we want it any other way?

BLOG POST # 16 WHO'S THERE?

In preparation for writing my first play, "Shakespeare Rising, I did quite a bit of  reading  about the play Hamlet. I wish I had taken better notes!   I've read some things that struck me as
 brilliant and would like to credit them.  One particular observation, which I wish I could footnote for you, jumped at me out of a book I was reading. And if I can ever find the citation, I will put it into a new post, called "Who's There, Part II."   (Or, perhaps someone who knows where the idea originated would kindly write me a comment.)

Here is the idea:  The first words of the play are: "Who's there?" spoken by Barnardo, one of the sentinels guarding the battlements of Elsinore Castle.  This phrase, though a seemingly ordinary one, the attempt of one guard to determine who is approaching him in this dark and isolated spot, defines the core of the play in three or more ways.  On a simple level, who is this ghost that has appeared?  Is it the ghost of King Hamlet who is dead, buried, and thoroughly replaced, or is it an evil spirit who seeks to deceive young Hamlet, to provoke an unholy murder that will damn the young man? The second level of meaning underscores the extremely personal  issue of appearance and reality: what is the truth behind the façades of Gertrude, or Ophelia,  or Claudius himself? Or all who live at Elsinore? And, thirdly, the ultimate of "Who's there" is aimed at the very core of young Hamlet himself.  How can he say to himself, or to the girl he loves, who he really is, when he has lost hold of all the landmarks that have identified him to himself?  He needs to redefine himself for himself before he can take effective action, and, in the meanwhile, in his pretense of madness, he flirts with the real thing.  Ultimately, it is with a kind of euphoric relief that he announces, at Ophelia's grave site, "'This is I, Hamlet the Dane!"

BLOG POST # 15 CLEARING THE DECKS

    This is not much of a post.  It's more of an admission.  The third play of the trilogy will
 NOT be called "The Queen's Men" for the simple reason that I made a mistake a while back, but I will not be perpetuating it.   I had thought it would be such a lovely play on words, that the theater company in question should be called the Queen's Men, and that the play would also be about  Queen Elizabeth's emotional entanglements with the few significant men in her life in 1601, two years before her death.

       But history cannot be bent to our wills--well, not very much, nor should it be. And the fact is, I need to create a chart to keep straight  all the different theater companies during the reign of Elizabeth.  (Who's on first?) The Queen's Men is not the company I thought it was.  My husband had warned me I was barking up the wrong company, and I had resolved to look into his warning.  Now, alas, I have.   No, not alas, because I've been spared making a huge blunder.

         I'm working through the materials that have been accumulating in my office for a while now. (Oh, do not ask now long it has been since I started accumulating and stopped imposing order on it all.)  Now that I am making a serious beginning to write the third play,  I need to have my research materials easy to reach and consult.  It's important for me to start with things in order. And one of the things I needed to put in order was this title, The Queen's Men.  I see I will be making a chart of names and dates sooner than I had expected.

          It feels good to make an earnest beginning, with ideas in my head, the right books on my shelves, and lots of notes I've taken during the past couple of months.  So, this last day in March is the beginning of my new year.

BlOG POST #14 HAMLET: BRIEF COMMENTS

I spoke of Hamlet as he is sometimes spoken of by others, as a wimp who cannot make a decision.    I would like to make it clear that I do NOT think of him that way.  But it's been said. And, then again, there is Olivier's movie.  (More soon about the movies. Mel Gibson, astonishingly enough, may be the winner here.  My husband said I had a very odd perspective, and that was because when I first saw Gibson as Hamlet, I had never seen any of his other movies. So I came to him totally fresh. Have you seen it?  It is remarkable.

Hamlet's "indecision" is right up there with his "madness" as a topic that seems to bring out the worst in people.  As Bernard Shaw once wrote, and I paraphrase, Are the critics of Hamlet mad, or just feigning madness?

I plan to write about a few of the Hamlets I've seen, having already written about ones I would have liked to have seen: Robert Preston, Jackie Gleason, and John Goodman; also  Ralph Fiennes and Daniel Day Lewis.  Oh, and Paul Gross.  But my focus may very well be on Richard Burton's Hamlet.  Not sure yet. Right now I'm reading the Richard Burton Diaries, for which I'm very grateful to his devoted widow Sally Hay Burton, although Burton seems to have skipped the months I wanted to read about, his work on his famous production of Hamlet. Well, perhaps he stopped writing in his diary because he WAS working so hard on his role. Still, it seems a bizarre gap.

Thanks, also, to Mrs. Burton for her finding, preserving, and making available the tape of Richard Burton's stage version of Hamlet.  Apparently, all the tapes of that stage production, once shown in movies theaters (and colleges), were destroyed.  I cannot fathom why. A p.r. stunt?  But each actor was given a souvenir copy. And after Burton's death, his widow found his copy with some of his other personal possessions, in a garage, I think.  And that's why a DVD of it is available.  I do NOT intend to hold up this version of Hamlet as a model.  I just plan to discuss it. 

BLOG POST # 13 KILL ALL YOUR DARLINGS

   Well, perhaps not all. Let's give a little credit to the playwright's taste and sensibility. Everything needs to be edited carefully, of course, but not everything the author likes needs to be thrown into the flames just because it has met with the writer's emotional approval!  Only the things that don't fit or don't ring true.  Only the things that slow the action down instead of moving it along.

     Case in point:  I have written a scene that I hope some day I can use, or use at least part of it. It's a scene in which Shakespeare and members of his theater company are reminiscing about their experiences together over the years.  It captures a certain quality of Elizabethan London life, its earthiness and rowdiness.  Its rough humor.  I had written it for my first play, then called "Shakespeare in the Dark," when I was still reaching for the right ending.  It didn't work there! Oh, Lord, it didn't work anywhere in that play.  Nor was there any good place for it in the next.  A friend of mine read the scene and really really liked it. He said, "Surely you can make your play a few minutes longer and include it."  And I had to say, "But there's no place for it in the story arc of the play.  It's an extraneous blob." 

         I haven't thrown it out, expunged it from my computer; so I won't say that I've killed it. But I have put it in a little place to rest. May it have warm covers and happy dreams. And perhaps someday I'll wake it up and say, "Up now!  Get up now! You're on!"

BLOG POST # 12 SPEAKING SHAKESPEARE'S LANGUAGE SO THAT IT RINGS TRUE

      As an American actor, I have never had a problem hearing Shakespeare's words delivered in high stage, standard American English.  Recently, I've heard that the American accent is closer to how Elizabethan Englishmen spoke than modern British English is. But, the main argument I would make in favor of keeping the accent American for an American audience (and an American cast) is that it removes one possible obstacle between the meaning of the play and its audience.   The audience knows this is an English play from an earlier time and adjusts accordingly to the language. Why not keep the accent familiar?

        Having said that, I will admit that we Americans are watching a LOT of British tv, and the accent there doesn't seem to be a problem. Then again,  the language of Downton Abbey is pretty modern and familiar; even the breath-takingly great Maggie Smith does not speak in verse or iambic pentameter.  Other things I will admit, though I question their relevance:  Mark Rylance was born in New Jersey, and Damian Lewis is just as convincing as an American as he is as an Englishman.  But this next bit IS relevant.

           Richard Burton, whom people differ on but who was more astute, I think, than people give him credit for,  Richard Burton, I say, said in a radio interview I heard years ago that one of the best Hamlets he had ever seen/heard was in San Francisco, and it was Robert Preston.  Now, Robert Preston was wonderful, but how many people think of him as a Shakespearean? Apparently, he was.  I believe just about any good actor can play Shakespeare if he/she avoids descending into Shakespeare Panic, and plays AT Shakespeare instead of just playing the character to hand.  And the Great One, Jackie Gleason, did you know he longed to play Hamlet, but no one would go along with this longing?  Today, being such a big star, he could have done it easily, no problem.  I would have LOVED to see Gleason's Hamlet.  Do you remember The Poor Fool?  This guy had range. 

                John Goodman:  I don't know what he aspires to, but whatever it is, I hope he gets the chance. His talent is just dazzling.  But, and forgive the tangle of this post, as I'm trying to re-create one that I lost, which had an impeccably logical thread, and this one not so much, but Richard Burton's Hamlet needs to be discussed.  Not now, but at some point.  I remember hearing Burton recite "To Be or Not To Be" in German.  Now, there was something to chew on.  The language was so firm and rich and assertive, Hamlet sounded like a general giving himself marching orders, instead of some dreamy, vacillating wimp. 

BLOG POST # 11 SPEAK THE SPEECH, I PRAY YOU, AS I PRONOUNC'D IT TO YOU

        Aye, there's the rub, dear Will.  How DID you pronounce it? 

       There have been serious studies going on in this field recently,  trying to pin down how Shakespeare and his men pronounced Elizabethan/Jacobean English.  Texts are combed in order to deduce, through repeated rhymes, how certain words were pronounc'd. The vowels, of course,  are key, although intonation would influence the delivery as well, I would think, and the rhythms of a line.   

       I saw a Youtube, which is probably still available, of a scene from "Romeo and Juliet" which is delivered by its actors using the kind of pronunciation that experts on Shakespeare working at the Globe Theatre in London,  have deduced, after quite a bit of study,  must be how the language actually sounded  originally.  It is sweet and sounds kind of Scottish, with a  tinge of rough Anglo-Saxon consonants. I can certainly understand the temptation to try to reconstruct what the Elizabethan audience actually experienced.  Here is a link you can go to hear some of it:  http://twentytwowords.com/performing-shakespeares-plays-with-their-original-english-accent/        (Thanks to Edward Pospiech for the link.)

(There is also a CD available called "Shakespeare's Original Pronunciation: Speeches and Scenes Performed as Shakespeare Would Have Heard Them" put out by the British Library, with an Introduction by David Crystal.  You can get it from Daedalus discount books on line for $12.  Their address is: salebooks.com.)

        But--to do this in a theater for a general audience,  or even as general practice for an audience of Shakespeare-lovers who happen to be living in the 21st Century?    Many people now regard Shakespeare's language as Old English, although scholars label it Early Modern English, as opposed to Chaucer (Middle English), and Beowulf (Old English, i.e. Anglo-Saxon).  Shakespeare's language is already far enough back in time that it requires some study, exposure, and acclimation to follow fairly easily.  Indeed, it has been predicted that in 200 years time, if the English language continues to be spoken, and, in fact, if the human race continues to exist, Shakespeare will be as obscure to English-speakers as Chaucer's English is to us now!  Of course, that doesn't make allowance for the possibility that Shakespeare's plays will be performed continuously, so that there is no danger of his language dropping out of sight, to mix a metaphor.

        In my next post, I'd like to talk more about pronunciation, especially as it has to deal with British English for Shakespeare vs. American English.  And what Richard Burton had to say about it all.

BLOG POST # 10 MIA DILLON AND "JUDITH SHAKESPEARE HAS HER SAY"

     MIA DILLON, Tony-nominated for her performance in "Crimes of the Heart," is a member of The Theatre Artists Workshop where my plays are receiving their initial development.  She is an amazing actor, without vanity, intense in the simplicity of her work, and very intelligent.  On top of all these qualities, she's insightful and helpful.  Not only did she appear as Old Judith at the National Arts Club recently, when "Judith Shakespeare Has Her Say" was presented, but she was  a catalyst for the play's creation.

       When Mark Graham and I had an early version of "Shakespeare Rising"  read to the TAW membership, Mia pointed out a great flaw in the funeral scene that ends Act I.  She said that Judith and her sister would have to be included in the group of mourners.  Even though they were children, they would not have been left out of the family group at the grave.  When I protested that I was trying to avoid the use of more child actors than was absolutely necessary, she said, "Put a wig and a dress on Bartek and have him walk in the procession!"  (I'm sure Bartek, the fifteen year old boy in our cast, would have loved that!) But I don't think she really meant that literally.  What she meant was that I was being terribly inauthentic if I didn't include the two Shakespeare girls in the funeral for their brother--or provide a very good reason why they weren't there.

          Providing reasons and explanations can be deadly in a play.  A play has to unfold with a feeling of inevitability, I think.  I think, as well, that the playwright has to cast a spell on the audience, much like a dream-state.  Explanations interrupt both of these elements:  inevitability, the spell. The funeral scene ending Act I of "Shakespeare Rising" does not include the presence of Judith or Susanna, but so much is going on, I don't think the audience is too concerned about them.  However, Mia was right.  Some explanation needed to be made somewhere.  In the next play of the trilogy.

             "Judith Shakespeare Has Her Say" shows that Judith had fallen deathly ill at the same time as her poor twin brother, and the family left Susanna behind to watch over her while they followed Hamnet's body to his grave.  They even thought it possible Susanna would rush in with news of Judith's death, and the twins could be buried together.  The fact that Judith was the twin who did not die shapes the entire second play.  Hamnet's illness and death are historical facts.  Judith's sickness is a germ fostered by the imagination and by Mia's suggestion.  Thank you.

BLOG POST # 9: MORE ABOUT ACTORS: Katie Sparer & Nadine Willig

     How actors interpret their characters is not only interesting in itself, but also worth taking note of if a playwright is trying to get a solid grip on the play. In one draft of "Shakespeare in the Dark," I had written a scene in which Shakespeare is home in Stratford, retired, etc., and he's staying up late, waiting for the arrival of two of his friends who will be visiting from London.  He's excited and happy, anxious for some conversation and theater gossip. Anne is exhausted and wants to go to bed.  So, she tells Will she'll just go to bed quietly and leave him to his Boys' Night In. However, she starts to FUSS over what he'll serve the guests: is there enough ale?  There's one loaf that was fresh that morning, some cheese, etc. Will that do? 

        When the scene was first read, it got one big laugh, as the actor who read Shakespeare's lines did NOT say, "They are players. They will eat anything."  He said, "They are players. They will eat everything."  Even the actor who said it joined in the genial laughter.  But, afterwards, Katie Sparer, playing Will's wife Anne, said to me, not in these exact words, "This scene doesn't work.  You're making Anne for the first time in the play all pink and wifey.  That's not her character. That's not what Will married her for."  She was ABSOLUTELY RIGHT!   Out went that scene.  Just, out with it, and I wrote something else.

             At a different reading, this time of "Judith Shakespeare Has Her Say," we tried having Katie read The Dark Lady of the Sonnets, Emilia Lanyer.  Of course, she was wonderful.  But Katie also got to sit there and hear another actress doing Anne Shakespeare, Nadine Willig. Nadine brought an earthiness to the role that was strong and interesting.  She gave Anne a real edge.  And Katie realized, and brought to my attention, that in this play Anne was presented as a different person, a different character,  from the one she was in the first play, one that was not very kind to her younger daughter and, in fact, seemed to hate her younger daughter.  Katie was right.  It was there.  When she was doing the role, she instinctively smoothed that over. But when she heard Nadine's frank, honest reading, she saw what I had done IN THE WRITING.  So, I combed that script and adjusted lines, even whole speeches, so that Anne is still shown to be edgy and prone to rashness when emotional, but, also, a loving mother who actually means well.  Much better. Thank you to both Katie and Nadine!