I actually saw this online a couple of days ago. Thanks!
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Shakespeare?
- Thread starter Polymath257
- Start date
I actually saw this online a couple of days ago. Thanks!
Is this pronunciation guide any help? Something I put together a while back.
IF reading S’s verse, you find an apparent failure in the meter
AND IF an alternative pronunciation of the kinds below solves the problem
THEN feel free to use it : pronounce –
(the most common one) the past tense ending as -èd (eg damned as dam-nèd) –AND IF an alternative pronunciation of the kinds below solves the problem
THEN feel free to use it : pronounce –
the 2nd person present singular in -est as -st (eg receivest as receiv’st)
the 3rd person present singular in -eth as -s (eg soundeth as sounds),
even as e’en, ever as e’er, over as o’er, upon as ’pon &c.
elide ‘the’ eg the end as th’end, ‘in the garden’ as ‘i’th’ garden’ &c,
he will as he’ll, he had, he would as he’d, is as ’s, you have as you’ve &c
before a vowel, to as t’ eg to expel as t’expel
before a vowel, to as t’ eg to expel as t’expel
It isn't the vocabulary as much as the rhythm and word usage that bothers me. I often find that I cannot figure out what a phrase is referring to. It's like I try to get an image in my mind of what is going on, and, for some reason, that is contradicted by the next phrase.
"Long, convoluted sentences, bifurcating into many dependent clauses, especially those with verbs deferred to the end, with the consequent effect of requiring close attention of the reader and knowledge of specialized or technical terminology, are rebarbative and the sedulously avoided."
Shakespeare seems like that, only more so.
Well, I know that I often have a problem with metaphors in general. And I know that Will likes to use them a lot, so that might be part of the issue: Maybe I simply don't get the metaphors he is using.
Fair enough.
If you watch the whole episode this clip is from,
it just might make things understandable.
Even Homer can't get it to my level. I even had Gandalf tell me what it means and I can't make heads or tails of it.
I hear this and think 'huh'?
Well, I can read the Cliff's notes for the stories. I guess I want to know what the fuss is about. And I guess that means at least being able to watch a play and understand what is going on.
@Evangelicalhumanist - that is a wonderful video on Macbeth's soliloquy. I'm going to send a link to my acting teacher.
@Polymath257 - it sounds like you did not get to the part about all the interwoven meanings and words being for the actor not the listener at about 9:56 in. That really spoke to me because I've been interested in acting for many years.
Recently I was in a little play for friends playing a bookshop owner. I had to embody a flow of emotions that I developed from a very few lines of dialog and from knowledge of the play itself and the rest of the scene.
I had agreed to feature a new book and the publicist called me to ask if people were attracted and how many had been sold. This is the flow of about 1 1/2 minutes and five spoken lines on my part.
My emotional flow was first neutral, then hearing a phone ring (1950's timeframe), wondering who was calling, picking up the phone, hearing who it was, reacting positively because I liked the publicist, reacting happily telling him that people were attracted to the display, becoming crestfallen when he asked about sales, feeling uncertain how to tell him about people not being interested in the book but in the display items, searching for a reply looking to the heavens, deciding to be honest and saying "none" and then explaining with a touch of sadness at disappointing the publicist the lack of interest in the book.
@Polymath257 - it sounds like you did not get to the part about all the interwoven meanings and words being for the actor not the listener at about 9:56 in. That really spoke to me because I've been interested in acting for many years.
Recently I was in a little play for friends playing a bookshop owner. I had to embody a flow of emotions that I developed from a very few lines of dialog and from knowledge of the play itself and the rest of the scene.
I had agreed to feature a new book and the publicist called me to ask if people were attracted and how many had been sold. This is the flow of about 1 1/2 minutes and five spoken lines on my part.
My emotional flow was first neutral, then hearing a phone ring (1950's timeframe), wondering who was calling, picking up the phone, hearing who it was, reacting positively because I liked the publicist, reacting happily telling him that people were attracted to the display, becoming crestfallen when he asked about sales, feeling uncertain how to tell him about people not being interested in the book but in the display items, searching for a reply looking to the heavens, deciding to be honest and saying "none" and then explaining with a touch of sadness at disappointing the publicist the lack of interest in the book.
That's how I made it thru high school.
I had (& have) no interest in Shakespeare.
OK, a specific example. I am reading the Merchant of Venice. I can kind of get that Antonio is sad and is isn't about his ships. Then some other people come in and somewhere Gratiano's stuff that starts 'Let me play the fool' and ends 'I'll end my exhortation after dinner', I am lost. I briefly recover and then am lost again with Bassanio's part that begins 'Tis not unknown to you, Antonio'
So is the whole point that he is sad?
The rhythm and word usage are a huge part of how Shakespeare makes his intention clear. Unlike modern authors, he doesn't tell his actor how to say things in marginal notes -- it's right there in the language.
You begin with understanding a very simple thing -- blank verse (I don't like using the term iambic pentameter -- too fussy). Blank verse is very much like natural speech. It's basically 10 syllables long, and each syllable unstressed an stressed like this: de DUM de DUM de DUM de DUM de DUM.
Now, what happens when a syllable that is naturally stressed occurs in the off-beat position? It makes itself OBVIOUS. Same thing in reversed -- and unstressed syllable in the stressed position calls attention to itself.
So here's a couplet from Midsummer Night's Dream:
"Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
Therefore is winged Cupid painted blind."
In blank verse, the stresses would look like this (and it would be bloody dreadful):
"Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
Therefore is winged Cupid painted blind."
But look what happens when you stress it naturally, but keep up the rythym of the verse:
"Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
Therefore is winged Cupid painted blind."
Read those two versions stressing where I've bolded. You can here a wonderful difference between the two, with the latter so evocative of a girl wondering why the guy she's hot for isn't feeling the same about her.
NO. It's just a conversation! Like in a movie, or in a restaurant (I've seen that scene done in a restaurant, by the way.)
It's very late -- I'll deal with your previous post tomorrow. I think you'll like how I resolve it for you.
That saddens me -- but you're not the first person I've liked who's felt the same.
Something like this:
Merchant of Venice I.1.79-104
Gratiano
Let me play the fool:
Let me grow old laughing
And let my liver rather heat with wine
and boozing
Than my heart cool with mortifying groans.
than feeling rotten like this
Why should a man, whose blood is warm within,
Why should I, a young man
Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster?
Sit like his grandfather's statue [on a tomb]
Sleep when he wakes and creep into the jaundice
Wake up and still be asleep, and going yellow
By being peevish? I tell thee what, Antonio –
For being snarly?
I love thee, and it is my love that speaks –
I speak to you as a friend
There are a sort of men whose visages
Some men have faces
Do cream and mantle like a standing pond,
that are so motionless, if they were a pond they'd grow scum
And do a wilful stillness entertain,
With purpose to be dress’d in an opinion
Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit,
intended to make them look wise
As who should say ‘I am Sir Oracle,
As if they were saying, I'm the smart one
And when I ope my lips let no dog bark!’
and when I speak, all of you shut up,
O my Antonio, I do know of these
That therefore only are reputed wise
For saying nothing; when, I am very sure,
and are thought wise by looking wise but saying nothing
If they should speak, would almost damn those ears,
Which, hearing them, would call their brothers fools.
and if they spoke, would speak only abuse of their fellows.
I’ll tell thee more of this another time:
But fish not, with this melancholy bait,
but I won't fish for your sympathy
For this fool gudgeon, this opinion.
with this little bait
Come, good Lorenzo. Fare ye well awhile:
I’ll end my exhortation after dinner.
We'll talk later
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I think too many don't see how archetypal the situations are; how often human nature is captured by him. The whole theme of "star crossed lovers" is a root of that story. West Side Story is Romeo & Juliet. We read in the news how two people from different religions are in love and tragedy results.
He even tells us this in the speech he gives about how to act to a company of actors in Hamlet SCENE II. A hall in the castle.
...the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.
The last part of that quote even refers to the parts of the plays that people in his time and place would get as topical references that we miss today. There was a TV show that explored just that bit.
Eyes to See
Well-Known Member
If you speak another language read it in that language. I found this to be the case in my experience. I watched movie Much Ado About Nothing subbed in Spanish once and understood it perfectly. Whoever translated the Shakespearean English did it into perfectly understandable Spanish. I was amazed at how many old English words I learned by reading the subtitles in Spanish and listening to it in the Shakespearean English.
To me Shakespeare is like an open book.
He must have been an Italian in his previous life...lol...
Jokes aside...I think he speaks my language.
Ofelia's madness, Juliet's suicide...they are all metaphors we Italians use.
Let us not forget that Shakespeare studied so much Italian literature.
I think Shakespeare is not difficult. It is a world one has to decodify .
He must have been an Italian in his previous life...lol...
Jokes aside...I think he speaks my language.
Ofelia's madness, Juliet's suicide...they are all metaphors we Italians use.
Let us not forget that Shakespeare studied so much Italian literature.
I think Shakespeare is not difficult. It is a world one has to decodify .
exchemist
Veteran Member
Sit at the back of university lectures or seminars on one of the plays.
It takes a while to get on his wavelength and really studying one of the plays in depth, as most of us Brits did for O level back in the 60s and 70s, really helps a lot. Much of it is poetry really, full of similes, metaphor and analogy, so one can't expect to get it all straight away. And the language is archaic, too, so one needs to get used to some of the expressions which are not the ones we use now. I know Romeo and Juliet because that was my O level set text, but having done that one in depth I can follow with interest some of the others. I do find the English history plays a bit tedious: all that military stuff and plots and murders, often designed to paint the Tudors in a good light. But Julius Caesar for instance has a lot to say about modern politics. One of the subtleties of Shakespeare is the ambiguities that are embedded in so many of them. There are almost no neat divisions into good and bad people and the issues dealt with are themselves often ambiguous. But it is very rich: you cannot hope to read the plays like a novel. Each speech needs to be digested. But, as with Bach's music, a work may seem a bit dull, complicated and impenetrable at first, but the more you are exposed to it the more you get out of it. With Bach, who is my favourite composer, I've learnt to listen to each piece that is new to me several times over before I can expect to start to get it. But then the patterns emerge (usually from the bass line) and from there the enjoyment grows and grows.
RestlessSoul
Well-Known Member
Movies I’d recommend;
Baz Lurhman’s Romeo and Juliet. But maybe watch West Side Story first, so you have a handle on the plot.
Franco Zeferelli’s Hamlet, with Mel Gibson as The Dane
Justin Kurzel’s Macbeth, with Michael Fassbender and Marian Cottilard as the power crazed couple
For some light relief, the BBC production of a Midsummer Night’s Dream, with Maxine Peake as Titania
The language is archaic, there’s no getting away from that; it is a considerable challenge to the untrained ear, but it’s worth making the effort to become attuned. Once you are familiar with the rhythm and cadence, it will get easier to follow. Never expect to understand everything, you aren’t meant to; pretty much every line of some of the plays is so dense with metaphor and meaning, that there’s enough in there to justify a lifetime’s study.
Baz Lurhman’s Romeo and Juliet. But maybe watch West Side Story first, so you have a handle on the plot.
Franco Zeferelli’s Hamlet, with Mel Gibson as The Dane
Justin Kurzel’s Macbeth, with Michael Fassbender and Marian Cottilard as the power crazed couple
For some light relief, the BBC production of a Midsummer Night’s Dream, with Maxine Peake as Titania
The language is archaic, there’s no getting away from that; it is a considerable challenge to the untrained ear, but it’s worth making the effort to become attuned. Once you are familiar with the rhythm and cadence, it will get easier to follow. Never expect to understand everything, you aren’t meant to; pretty much every line of some of the plays is so dense with metaphor and meaning, that there’s enough in there to justify a lifetime’s study.