JSTOR Daily: Have you ever gone to a performance of one of William Shakespeare’s plays and found yourself confused about what an actor is going on about? Take heart. Mort Paterson is a Shakespearean actor and he writes that even he has the same problem sometimes.
5 comments:
Ever since we started learning about Shakespeare in middle school I have had an intense hatred for iambic pentameter. It is so hard to understand and so hard to speak in, I just never got the point. Our teacher even forced us to read the play in iambic pentameter and it literally felt like torture. Then, I saw a few Shakespeare plays performed in which they just spoke normally, and I was even MORE confused by iambic pentameter because of how much better and more understandable it is without it! Our natural pentameter is infused with so much emotion because it is what we have been hearing and expressing feelings through our whole lives. And I agree with the author, certain actors have a way of speaking that feels just right for reciting Shakespeare, and it makes me so happy to listen to. In conclusion, I hate iambic pentameter a lot and I think we should focus more on human connection than accuracy.
This reminds me of the theater class that I had in my high school. We not only learn about design fields but also some sort of acting techniques. I knew that acting was not all about expressing emotions or gesticulations, but it was really surprising to learn how many features that the actors needed to focus on when they were reading these kind of plays. About the context, I think it is admirable of them and meaningful to question the long-rooted understanding that we have had for so many years. I am honestly surprised every single time there is a new opinion about Shakespeares’ works (and the other old ones) because I know that there were so many people that have studied the pieces throughout the centuries. In any case, while creating new works are important, such efforts to understand the foundational playwrights’ intentions even though they are several centuries old.
I feel like it may be pretty unpopular for me to say that I simply am not a fan of Shakespeare. I don’t find myself reading Shakespeare’s plays for fun and I don’t seek out Shakespeare performances to go see. This being said, I had worked on several Shakespeare shows in high school, and I would definitely say that the difficulty in understanding what is being said does contribute to my dislike of Shakespeare shows. I have also done some monologue work in acting classes where I was assigned Shakespeare, and I completely agree with the author of this article in saying that the traditional iambic pentameter that we use when reading Shakespeare simply feels unnatural. It’s a lot of effort to be able to recite Shakespeare in the rhythm we are “supposed to”, and it’s almost even more effort to try and understand what is being recited. I think that Shakespeare plays do have their own natural rhythm to them and adding iambic pentameter just makes it more confusing on top of the already 400-year-old language being used.
In my opinion, a good performance should be able to convey basic emotion and sentiment without any words at all. When words exist then, they should give clarification to the performance rather than confuse it further. Although I am curious about the historic accuracy of how Shakespeare is performed in the modern day, the way of speaking should be adapted to be the most clear to the audience it is being presented to. If one can’t understand a show at all, or is too distracted by the manner in which the actors speak, that will diminish a lot of the enjoyment one can glean from the performance. Having said this, I also think a lot of people that are more versed in Shakespeare, or have a particular interest in history would be interested in seeing a performance where the intentional rhythm of the script is preserved, even if it makes the experience more intellectually taxing. I would be interested in seeing a show in its most historically accurate form, but I would need to know the story beforehand to have the fullest appreciation for this, and universally I believe that modernizing the scripts in some way is the best method to help the show succeed.
Although this article had very little information it brings up an interesting topic. I think more often than not people underestimate the value of shakespeare’s language. Although very complex and daunting to analyze at first, it really holds a wealth of information. I think everyone knows Iambic Pentameter by now, nothing new to us, but we really need to look further into the study of the verse and understand that there are diversions from this. You cannot possibly think that every single line follows the rules? Of course Shakespeare broke his rules and a careful eye can see this in a monologue. Doing a scansion should be taught more and can reveal a lot more about how the lines are spoken. I think some people get oo caught up in making it historically accurate and make it sound grand, but on the other hand some people just try to ignore everything and speak it as modern text. I think neither of these methods are effective to a modern audience and there must be a combination of the two.
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