Wednesday, February 19, 2020
From rep to reps: can a 'Shakespeare gym' solve the crisis in verse-speaking?
Stage | The Guardian: ‘Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue.” So says Hamlet to the players. But has his advice gone unheeded at a time when Shakespearean verse-speaking is widely held to be in decline? The RSC clearly thinks there is an issue as it has set up a Shakespeare “gym” in Stratford-upon-Avon to ensure, in the words of its artistic director Gregory Doran, “Everyone has the iambic pentameter in their bloodstream.” That’s a welcome trend, but I suspect the crisis goes deeper than that – and that classic texts are often regarded as alien, hostile territory.
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To hope that everyone will have the iambic pentameter in their bloodstream is the one of the most extreme cases of wishful thinking that I have ever come across. To even hope that every "theatre person" will have the iambic pentameter in their bloodstream is a bit of a stretch. I assume that that statement wasn't to be taken literally, but used to highlight the how they felt about the language. I think that a Shakespeare gym is a really good idea. I don't know if this is a part of actors' training already, but I feel as though this is something that can be extremely useful to everyone who it relates to or who is interested. I personally have always struggled with Shakespeare. Granted, I haven't made the effort to try and properly learn the language, so therein lies the root of my problem. But I don't think that it is as easy to learn on your own. Maybe, maybe not. Sure, you can translate words or figure out sentences as you read it more and more. However, if you are working with these texts or just trying to really get into it, I feel like you need more. Something like a Shakespeare gym would definitely help to get a better and deeper understanding, especially for analyzing. Being taught and surrounded by others can facilitate the learning process. Also, people tend to shame you for reading No Fear Shakespeare, and to a certain extent I understand, but they have been helpful. However, I do recognize that I am missing out on something by not familiarizing myself with the language. Which is why I think it'd be great to be a part of a gym like this.
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