Acting Shakespeare - John Barton - Patrick Stewart - Masterclass - Part 6 - Passion & Coolness - 4K - video Dailymotion

Shakespeare Network

"Barton’s legacy is the most exhilarating tribute one can pay to Shakespeare." Maximianno Cobra - Shakespeare Network - Founder and Artistic Director  The Royal Shakespeare Company founder John Barton holds a masterclass featuring: - CAST - JUDI DENCH IAN MCKELLEN PATRICK STEWART BEN KINGSLEY DAVID SUCHET PEGGY ASHCROFT and members of the RSC: Tony Church, Sinead Cusak, Mike Gwilym, Susan Fleetwood, Sheila Hancock, Terry Hands, Lisa Harrow, Alan Howard, Barbara Leigh-Hunt, Jane Lapotaire, Michael Pennington, Richard Pasco, Norman Rodway and Donald Sinden.  Playing Shakespeare - The series features nine master classes on Shakespearean performance.   First group - Objective Things:   - Part One: The Two Traditions - Elizabethan and Modern Acting - Part Two: Using the Verse - Heightened and Naturalistic Verse - Part Three: Language & Character - Making the Words One's Own - Part Four: Set Speeches & Soliloquies - Taking the Audience with You  Second group - Subjective Things: - Part Five: Irony & Ambiguity - Text That Isn't It Seems - Part Six: Passion & Coolness - A Question of Balance - Part Seven: Rehearsing the Text - Orsino and Viola  - Part Eight: Exploring a Character - Playing Shylock - Part Nine: Poetry & Hidden Poetry - Three Kinds of Failure  John Bernard Adie Barton, CBE (26 November 1928 – 18 January 2018), was a British theatre director and teacher whose close association with the Royal Shakespeare Company spanned more than half a century.  Co-founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company, John Barton was, with Trevor Nunn and Peter Hall, one of the legendary theatre directors whose work and acting collaborations in the mid twentieth century would effect the course of Shakespeare on stage in successive decades. His biography includes a range of landmark production through the sixties and seventies (including the 1969 Twelfth Night with Judi Dench as Viola, and the 1970 A Midsummer Night's Dream with Patrick Stewart as Oberon), and with his abilities in helping actors through workshops, his presence and influence are felt even further.  This recording is for educational purposes only and is covered under Fair Use doctrine - Copyright - All rights reserved to their respective owners.  Read the unabridged plays online: https://shakespearenetwork.net/works/plays  _______________________________  FUNDRAISING CAMPAIGN - DONATIONS - Shakespeare Network Website and YouTube Channel:  Donate with PayPal or GoFundMe today: https://shakespearenetwork.net/company/support-us/donate-now  _______________________________  Screen Adaptation - Co-Production : MISANTHROPOS – Official Website - https://www.misanthropos.net Adapted by Maximianno Cobra, from Shakespeare's "Timon of Athens", the film exposes the timeless challenge of social hypocrisy, disillusion and annihilation against the poetics of friendship, love, and beauty.  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6946736/

Transcript

00:30Blow, wind, and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow! You cataracts of hurricane who spout

00:59Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks! You sulphurous and thought-executing

01:05fliers! Hold it there. Don't you drop me there, John. I'm in full flight now. I'm just enjoying

01:10myself. Now sit you down, and we're going to talk about that. You sit you down there.

01:15Well now, passion, pain, and extremes. That's what we're going to look at tonight. Most

01:24questions about acting Shakespeare are questions of balance. If we go too far one way, we need

01:30to restore the balance and go a bit in the opposite direction. So if, for instance, we

01:34do start overdoing the heightened language a bit, it may be healthy to take the speech

01:39you're seeing in question more naturalistically and not to relish the words quite so much,

01:45or vice versa. What I want to look at tonight is something we've touched on already, how

01:50we should balance the emotional and intellectual demands of the text. I said in our last program

01:57that we should be venturing now into more subjective areas, but I'll try to be as selective

02:03as possible and to look at the problems which relate peculiarly and chiefly to Shakespeare.

02:08You can, of course, find them in other dramatists, but I don't think in quite so concentrated

02:12a form. What did Shakespeare himself think the balance between passion and coolness should

02:20be? As it's generally agreed that he was expressing his own views when he has Hamlet

02:26advised the players about acting, let's listen to that advice once again.

02:33Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue. But you

02:39mustn't... Oh.

02:40Try it again.

02:41I'll try this again, yes.

02:42Try it again. I'll say it to you if you like.

02:45Trippingly.

02:46Trippingly. Thank you very much. Right. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it

02:51to you, trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I'd as

02:57Leaf the Town Crier spoke my lines. Nor do not soar the air too much with your hand thus.

03:03I never did that.

03:06But use all gently. For in the torrent, tempest, and I may say whirlwind of your passion, you

03:11must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.

03:16Trippingly on the tongue. Mouth it gently. In the very whirlwind of your passion, you

03:22must acquire and beget a temperance that will get it smoothness. Well, it's pretty clear

03:27where Shakespeare's sympathies lie. Hamlet does ask for what we'd call coolness in playing

03:33passion. But he too is aware that there must be a balance.

03:38Be not too tame, neither. But let your own discretion be your tutor. Suit the action

03:44to the word, the word to the action. With this special observance that you o'erstep

03:50not the modesty of nature.

03:52Yes, I think the key phrase here is, o'erstep not the modesty of nature. This is Shakespeare's

04:00way of saying we must be natural and not false or grotesque. So let's explore this balance

04:08now and see how far we should go. Shakespeare often builds his characters by creating deliberate

04:19and striking inconsistencies. Very often a character undergoes huge changes from speech

04:25to speech in the course of a scene. In Julius Caesar, where Brutus contemplates Caesar's

04:30murder and meets his fellow conspirators, his emotional and intellectual balance keeps

04:36on changing. He's volatile and he's variable. He prides himself on being cool. But how cool

04:43is he, and how much of a mixture? Let's look now at four speeches. The first is a soliloquy.

04:56It must be by his death. And for my part, I know no personal cause to spurn at him,

05:07but for the general he would be crowned. How that might change his nature, there's the

05:19bright day that brings forth the adder, and that craves wary walking. Crown him, that!

05:30And then I grant we put a sting in him that at his will he may do danger with. The abuse

05:37of greatness is when it disjoins remorse from power. And to speak truth of Caesar,

05:49I have not known when his affections swayed more than his reason. But tis a common proof

05:57that lowliness is young ambition's ladder, whereto the climber upward turns his face.

06:05But when he once attains the utmost round, he then unto the ladder turns his back, looks

06:11in the clouds, scorning the base degrees by which he did ascend. So Caesar may, then lest

06:22he may, prevent. And since the quarrel will bear no colour for the thing he is, fashion

06:32it thus that what he is augmented would run to these and these extremities, and therefore

06:41think him as a serpent's egg, which, hatched, would, as his kind, grow dangerous and kill

06:52him in the shell.

06:55Rational, exploratory, intellectual. Brutus is feeling his way and deliberately pushing

07:01down his feelings for Caesar. He's trying to justify himself, to elevate himself, kid

07:07himself. But a little later on we get a glimpse of his true feelings.

07:15Since Cassius first did wet me against Caesar, I have not slept. Between the acting of a

07:28dreadful thing and the first motion, all the interim is like a phantasma or a hideous dream.

07:38The genius and the mortal instruments are then in counsel, and the state of man, like

07:45to a little kingdom, suffers then the nature of an insurrection.

07:54This betrays his inner turmoil. But Brutus puts his unease into brooding generalisation.

08:01He still doesn't speak directly of his personal human feelings. But when the conspirators

08:06come to visit him, he's assured and very much the public man. And when Cassius urges

08:11them all to swear their resolution, he opens out.

08:15No, not an oath. If not the face of men, the sufferance of our souls, the time's abuse,

08:26if these be motives weak, break-off be times, and every man hence to his idle bed. So let

08:33high-sighted tyranny range on till each man drop by lottery. But if these, as I'm sure

08:40they do, bear fire enough to kindle cowards and to steal with valour the melting spirits

08:47of women, then, countrymen, what need we any spur but our own cause to prick us to redress?

08:56But do not stain the even virtue of our enterprise nor the insuppressive mettle of our spirits

09:03to think that our cause or our performance did need an oath. When every drop of blood

09:10that every Roman bears and nobly bears is guilty of a several bastardy if he do break

09:17the smallest particle of any promise that are passed from him.

09:23Can you hear how different the verse is here? It's rhetorical and ringing and more regular.

09:28Brutus lets his emotion out because he feels on safe ground. The speech is to be hot as

09:34his first speech was cool. Later he has one other long speech to the conspirators. It's

09:40triggered by Cassius urging that Mark Antony be assassinated as well as Caesar.

09:46Our course will seem too bloody, Caius Cassius, to cut the head off and then hack the limbs,

09:53like wrath in death and envy afterwards, for Antony is but a limb of Caesar. Let us be

10:00sacrifices, not butchers, Caius. We all stand up against the spirit of Caesar and in the spirit

10:10of men there is no blood. Oh, then that we would come by Caesar's spirit and not dismember Caesar,

10:17but alas, Caesar must bleed for it. And gentle friends, let's kill him boldly but not wrathfully.

10:26Let's carve him as a dish fit for the gods, not hew him as a carcass fit for hounds.

10:32Great. Now stop it there. Now here, Brutus seems to me very emotional again. But there's also

10:40something of the rationalising and self-deception and the elevating of murder which we saw in the

10:46first soliloquy. He's at great pains to stress his humanity, but how much is he humane and how

10:52much a politician paying lip service to humanity? How much is he emotional and how much is he

10:58working on the conspirators' emotions? Well, I suppose it's a bit of both. He's using his

11:04feelings to work out feelings in his listeners. What do you think? Well, all those hypotheses

11:12that you just posed, all those questions, are I think the very source of Brutus's dilemma and his

11:20energy. And he must actually hand those questions over to an audience. That is the predicament of

11:28the play. And on first reading, of course, Brutus seems to be fraught with contradictions. And what's

11:39your word for it? Ambiguities. Ambiguities, contradictions, things that are set antithetically

11:47against one another. And if you, in any line or, of course, often Brutus's finer lines are only a

11:55microcosm of the whole part and indeed the whole play. If you try and iron out the inconsistencies,

12:03the contradictions, in order to make the line playable, what you're doing is in fact anesthetising

12:09the energy within the line. Because the energy of the character, the predicament of the character,

12:15is only available to an audience if the tension between the opposing forces is observed,

12:24relished, and played. But of course it's, I mean, that's all theory. It's very difficult to spread

12:33eagle oneself inside the giant silhouette of Brutus and remain faithful to all these seemingly

12:39contradictory elements. But they have to be played to the full. The character, in a way,

12:45is the contradiction. It's the contradictions. Thank you. Terrific. Thanks, sir.

12:54In stressing these particular points, I don't mean to gloss over the obvious fact that there

12:59are many possible ways of interpreting a speech. Shakespeare, more than any other dramatist,

13:04leaves it all pretty open-ended. So let's take a sonnet which lends itself to many kinds

13:11of emotional interpretation. Sue, you're talking about your sex life. See if you can look at it

13:19in three quite different ways. There's your bed and your lover is coming.

13:25All right.

13:36The expense of spirit in a waste of shame is lust in action. Until action, lust is perjured,

13:46murderous, bloody, full of blame, savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,

13:55enjoy it no sooner but despise it straight. Okay, right. Now, let's try another way at the

14:02moment of suspense. Let's imagine that you've done it and you're getting dressed and getting

14:07out of bed and deeply being disgusted with yourself for what you've done. Right. I am

14:14disgusted with what I've just done. Enjoyed it.

14:29The expense of spirit in a waste of shame is lust in action. Until action, lust is perjured,

14:40murderous, bloody, full of blame, savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,

14:47enjoy it no sooner but despise it straight. Past reason hunted and no sooner had. Past reason

14:57hated as a swallowed bait on purpose laid to make the taker mad. Okay, good. Now, both those

15:05versions were extreme in their emotions. Good. Now, let's do as we've been doing with the other

15:12speeches in the program. See what happens if you stand outside yourself and have a good,

15:19wry, sardonic look at yourself. So, the experience of what's happened, what you've just done,

15:25is there deeply in you, but you're trying to look outside yourself and perhaps to mock yourself.

15:30Yes. Uh-huh. Yes. Okay.

15:36The expense of spirit in a waste of shame is lust in action. Until action, lust is perjured,

15:46murderous, bloody, full of blame, savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,

15:54enjoy it no sooner but despise it straight. Past reason hunted and no sooner had. Past reason

16:03hated as a swallowed bait on purpose laid to make the taker mad. Mad in pursuit and in possession,

16:11so. Had, having and in quest to have extreme. A bliss in proof and proved a very woe

16:25before a joy proposed behind a dream. All this the world well knows,

16:37yet none knows well to shun the heaven that leads men to this hell. Good. Well, there you had the

16:46characteristic Shakespearean mixture of deep experience and feeling and yet standing outside

16:51it as well. And once you do that, the text begins to do more work, whereas the first way is, of

16:58course, you're overlaying something on top of the text. That's the point of the exercise. Now, let's

17:04make an experiment. It's sometimes pointed out that if an actor gets himself too emotionally

17:10involved in an emotional speech, he will actually move the audience less than if he was less carried

17:16away. If he actually weeps, for instance, it may flatten out his voice and somehow cut off

17:22communication. So let's take one or two speeches and see what we think. Sometimes the balance

17:29between thought and emotion goes wrong because of an excessive naturalistic thinking. In Henry

17:36IV, Part One, Hotspur and Prince Hal fight, according to the text, a long hour by Shrewsbury

17:44clock. So clearly they must be pretty exhausted. But finally, Hal gives Hotspur a mortal wound

17:50and Hotspur has a dying speech. Let's see what happens if the actor plays it with his exhaustion

17:56and his wound and his pain primarily in mind.

18:10Oh, Harry, thou hast robbed me of my youth.

18:17I better broke the loss of brittle life than those proud titles thou hast won of me.

18:26They wound my thoughts worse than thou sawed my flesh.

18:31Right. Well, now that's what I'd call the naturalistic fallacy.

18:35I was just getting into that.

18:36Getting into emotion, feelings and pain. But of course, the text gets strangulated and cut off.

18:44Often happens. We know actually that Shakespeare himself wants to do something else with the

18:48speech, doesn't we? Because Hotspur himself says, they wound my thoughts worse than I sawed my

18:55flesh. And that's quite a useful piece of direction by Shakespeare. I think that Hotspur's

19:00anguish is in the mind at that moment rather than his body. Well, pain's relative anyway,

19:04isn't it? I've known an actor fracture a bone on stage during a fight and not feel the pain

19:08until it gets off. It depends what you're concentrating on. If I've, as Hotspur,

19:14determined to put my life in order, as it were, before I die, that will supplant the pain,

19:19wouldn't it? That's right. So I could always find a psychological or naturalistic reason

19:24for doing a speech in such a way that you can release the poetic juices of it.

19:29So let's do it again, not necessarily feeling the pain, but feeling the wonder of, God,

19:36what's happening to me? I'm dying. And take a clue from the fact that you prophesy in the speech.

19:54Oh, Harry, thou hast robbed me of my youth.

20:05I better broke the loss of brittle life than those proud titles thou hast won over me.

20:12They wound my thoughts worse than I sawed my flesh.

20:16But thought's the slave of life, and life's time's fool,

20:26and time that takes survey of all the world must have a stop.

20:32Must have a stop.

20:37I could prophesy,

20:42but that the earthy and cold hand of death lies on my tongue.

20:50No, Percy, thou art dust

20:56and food for

21:03worms, brave Percy, and the old great heart. Good. Well, that way, the text can work upon us

21:13and stir us, which you can't do when the physical life's on top of it. Of course,

21:18these things are always a balance, because maybe one got too caught up in the text,

21:23because maybe one got too cool. And actually, I was more moved that way,

21:28obviously, than I was the first time. So it's really good. Thank you.

21:32We've stumbled here on one old problem of a speech which is partly Coric. So let's look now

21:39at another passage where the Coric element is even more striking. In Hamlet, Gertrude brings

21:44the news of Ophelia's suicide. Notice how she says nothing directly to show her feelings,

21:51the speech rather consists entirely of description. There is a willow, grows a slant

21:57the brook, that shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream. Therewith fantastic garlands did

22:08she make of crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples, that liberal shepherds give a grosser

22:17name, but our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them. There on the pendant boughs,

22:32her crowned weeds clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke,

22:40and down her weedy trophies and herself fell in the weeping brook.

22:48Her clothes spread wide, and mermaid-like a while they bore her up, which time she

22:57chanted snatches of old tunes, for like a creature native and undued unto that element.

23:09But long it could not be till that her garments, heavy with their drink,

23:17pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay to muddy death.

23:28I think you're absolutely right to keep Gertrude's feelings in check like that.

23:33Clearly the choric function is dominant, but it's still quite possible to ask and find out

23:39what Gertrude is feeling and trying to do inside herself while she speaks. What do you think about

23:44it? Well I think there's probably a great deal of guilt there. Yes. Because indirectly I think

23:56she probably feels she's responsible by the actions that have taken place previously for

24:01this girl's death whom she reveals in the next scene she loved very much and hoped would be the

24:07wife of her only son. And I think that is probably struggling inside her all the time,

24:21plus the knowledge of the appalling death that she has to bring to this young man who is

24:27an innocent party in the whole affair so far. That's right, so there's a hell of a lot of

24:31subtext going on underneath, inside, which you can play as Gertrude,

24:36while on the surface just playing the description. So both are going on. Very good. Thank you.

24:42Thank you. Now, here's a fearfully difficult passage for a woman. In King John, Constance

24:49laments for her dead son Arthur. There's no doubt here about the degree of her passion.

24:55Oh, that my tongue were in the thunder's mouth! Then with a passion would I shake the world!

25:04Now, let's take the passage much cut and see what we can learn from it.

25:10Patience, good lady. Comfort, gentle Constance. No, I defy all counsel, all redress, but that which

25:16ends all counsel, true redress. Death, death, oh amiable, lovely death, thou odoriferous stench,

25:30sound rottenness. Come, grin on me, and I will think thou smilest and kiss thee as thy wife.

25:42Misery's love, oh come to me. Oh, fair affliction, peace. Good. Now, I think that the question of

25:52variety comes up here as much as the question of balance. Constance is distracted and wild,

25:58but it's dangerous if you take the whole passage that way, because the grief could become monotonous

26:03or generalized. So let's see what happens if we say, go as far as you like in some places

26:09and hold back in others. I think probably that's the way Shakespeare's written it.

26:14Yes, I think her striving for order, in that she in fact puts into a list form her feelings,

26:22seems to indicate the amount of control that she has. And I think that Shakespeare's

26:28owes are some indication of emotional reliefs. That's very good counsel, Shakespeare's owes.

26:37I think that one other thing that I would say is that it's important that however distressed

26:44you are, one bit of her enjoys the speech in the sense of enjoys the emotional release,

26:51so that she needs the words to give herself release. So use the words as ever as much as you can.

27:04Lady, you utter madness and not sorrow. Thou art not holy to belie me so.

27:10I am not mad. This hair I tear is mine. My name is Constance. I was Geoffrey's wife.

27:21Young Arthur is my son, and he is lost. I am not mad. I would to heaven I were,

27:30for then it is like I should forget myself. Oh, if I could, what grief should I forget?

27:42Preach me some philosophy to make me mad, and thou shalt be canonized, cardinal.

27:50You hold too heinous a respect for grief. He talks to me, but never had a son.

27:59You were as fond of grief as of your child. Grief fills the room up of my absent child,

28:08lies on his bed, walks up and down with me, puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,

28:17remembers me of all his gracious parts, stuffs out his vacant garments of his form.

28:24Then have I reason to be fond of grief.

28:29Fare you well. Had you such a loss as I, I could give better comfort than you do.

28:36Oh, Lord, my boy, my Arthur, my fair son, my life, my joy, my food, my all the world,

28:55my widow comfort, and my sorrow's cure.

29:01Good. Well, the feeling was all there, but because you took it lightly,

29:07the words and the language worked on me as well as the feelings.

29:10Yes.

29:11And the feelings didn't get between you and it.

29:13Yes. I think I could have inflected more and had more variation. I got a bit stuck in this bit.

29:19Well, we never think it's perfect, do you?

29:21Certainly not.

29:21You moved me. Good.

29:25Now, let's go back to a speech where there's no doubt,

29:28whatever, of the emotional intensity of the speaker.

29:32Lear is going mad. He's on the heath in the storm.

29:36Donald, take us back to the speech which we began the evening with.

29:43Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks. Rage, blow, you cataracts and hurricanes,

29:55spout, till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks.

30:01You sulfurous and thought-executing fires, vault couriers of oak-cleaving thunderboats.

30:08Singe my white head, and thou, all shaking thunder,

30:15strike flat the thick rotundity of the world.

30:19Crack nature's moulds, all Germans, spill at once, that makes ingrateful man.

30:29If you do it as flat out as that in a small studio,

30:33it's a bit like a dinosaur sitting on a teacup, isn't it?

30:37I must confess, though, that I don't quite know how I think this speech should be done.

30:42Part of me does question the full-bloody-busting-a-gut version which you were going for,

30:46but I'm not sure. It could be, however, that when you do it like that,

30:50it's an overlay on Shakespeare rather than a realisation of the text.

30:54It seems to me that, as ever, the text could do a great deal of work

30:57if your emotions don't get on top of it.

30:59You would like me to do one over the top, then?

31:01No, I thought... No, I don't think so.

31:05I don't think the roof and the lights and the cameras would stand it, actually.

31:09I tell you what we'll do. We'll try an exercise and an experiment.

31:13Don't bash it this time. Just breathe it, whisper it, as quiet as you can.

31:20Don't try to shout the storm down.

31:22Just imagine that there's a dip in the storm and you're out of breath

31:26and you're very, very old and you haven't got a big voice.

31:29And remember Hamlet's advice to the players.

31:32What was that?

31:35Speak the speech trippingly on the tongue, but if you mouth it,

31:40that is the cut-down crier spoke my lines.

31:43Have a go.

31:45I must admit, I do think here that Lear is asking for a storm,

31:49actually not commenting on one that's already there.

31:52Good. Good counsel.

31:54Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks.

32:01Rage, blow.

32:03You cataracts and hurricanes, spout, till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks.

32:14You sulfurous and thought-executing fires, vaunt couriers of oak-cleaving thunderbolts,

32:21singe my white head.

32:24And thou, all-shaking thunder, strike flat the thick rotundity of the world.

32:34Pfft, break, no.

32:37Never mind.

32:39I thought you were getting much more richness,

32:43both of feeling and of text, out of it than when you brought the roof down.

32:46Yes.

32:47It was a strange experience for you, wasn't it?

32:50Well done.

32:50Lovely.

32:54Let's have a look now at Mistress Quickly describing the death of Falstaff.

33:00And we'll do it first in the same way.

33:02Be very moved and carried away by what you're seeing.

33:05All right.

33:09All right, then?

33:10Yes, yes. Wait a minute.

33:13Would I were with him, where Sir Mary is, either in heaven or in hell?

33:19Nay, he's not in hell.

33:22He's in Arthur's bosom, if ever man went to Arthur's bosom.

33:26He made his finer end, and went away, and in being any christened child,

33:34he parted inches between twelve and one,

33:38either the turning of the tie,

33:42or after I saw him fumble with the sheets,

33:46and play with flowers, and smile upon his fingers' ends,

33:51I knew there was but one way.

33:56I think that's enough of that, don't you?

34:00Okay, well, try it that way.

34:02Now, hold in your feelings, because they're so painful.

34:07They're still there, but you hold them back.

34:09And try describing exactly what it's like in Falstaff's bedroom,

34:14exactly what it was like to be there.

34:18Would I were with him, where Sir Mary is, either in heaven or in hell?

34:24Nay, sure, he's not in hell.

34:27He's in Arthur's bosom, if ever man went to Arthur's bosom,

34:32and made his finer end, and went away, and in being any christened child,

34:39he parted inches between twelve and one,

34:42either the turning of the tie,

34:46or after I saw him fumble with the sheets,

34:50and play with flowers,

34:51and smile upon his fingers' ends, I knew there was but one way.

34:57For his nose was as sharp as a pen,

35:00and her babbled of green fields.

35:04Oh, now, Sir John Quarthai, what man be a good cheer?

35:12So I cried out, God, God, God, three or four times.

35:21So I, to comfort him, bid him he should not think of God.

35:24I hoped there was no need to trouble himself with such thoughts yet.

35:29So I bade me put more clothes upon his feet.

35:35I put my hand into the beds, and felt them,

35:38and they were as cold as any stone.

35:43And I felt up to his knees, and so upward, and upward, and upward,

35:49and so upward, and upward, and all was as cold as any stone.

35:57Good, well, you moved me quite a lot there.

36:00There's no doubt, is there, which way works the better.

36:03I suppose that it brings up another point which we've made before.

36:08How much is the speech about Mistress Quickly,

36:12and how much is it about Falstaff?

36:14Well, obviously, it's about both,

36:15but my experience of it in the theatre

36:18is that the balance is often wrong.

36:20The speech becomes a bit too much about Mistress Quickly,

36:23and her grief, and her sentimentality, and her tears,

36:26but the actress has to make a sea for Falstaff on his deathbed.

36:30So perhaps the moral is that it's sometimes more important

36:34to make the text resonate than to be moved oneself.

36:40But these are rather dangerous words.

36:43I sound as if I'm suggesting that an actor given half a chance

36:46will always tend to indulge his emotions at the expense of his text.

36:50Well, that does sometimes happen.

36:53But on the whole, I believe that the main reason the balance goes wrong

36:56is something quite different.

36:57It's very often simply to do with the size of the theatre.

37:00In the rehearsal room, a small area like this,

37:03he can work quickly and lightly,

37:06and it's much easier for him to maintain the balance.

37:09But when he has to fill a big auditorium,

37:11he naturally feels he has to project

37:13and make both his voice and his emotions bigger.

37:16And, of course, he's right.

37:18But very often he loses something thereby.

37:21So in our present context, a small, intimate studio,

37:26we don't have the pressure of a big space to fill.

37:28So let's look now at this difference.

37:31Lisa, do the speech of Portia when she's finally getting Bassanio

37:38because he's chosen the right casket,

37:40and go absolutely full out as if you were in the big theatre at Stratford.

37:47How all the other passions fleet to air

37:50as doubtful thoughts and rash embrace

37:52despair and shuddering fear and green-eyed jealousy.

37:56Oh, love be moderate!

37:58Allay thy ecstasy!

38:00In measure reign thy joy!

38:03Scant this excess!

38:05I feel too much thy blessing.

38:07Make it less, for fear I surfeit.

38:10Good.

38:10Now let's bring the camera very close

38:13and see what happens if, like Donald, you just breathe it, whisper it.

38:26How all the other passions fleet to air

38:29as doubtful thoughts and rash embrace

38:32despair and shuddering fear and green-eyed jealousy.

38:36Oh, love be moderate!

38:39Allay thy ecstasy!

38:41In measure reign thy joy!

38:43Scant this excess!

38:45I feel too much thy blessing.

38:49Make it less, for fear I surfeit.

38:52Lovely.

38:53Well, now, what do you feel about those two extremes and possibilities?

38:58Um, well, the first one, you just need to, uh,

39:04express the huge joy that she's feeling

39:06and also the release of the enormous tension.

39:08I mean, the tension of years, I suppose, of waiting for this casket to be chosen

39:12and the right one and the fact it's the right man.

39:13So, therefore, you have to use the language to push that emotion up and out

39:19because it's actually one huge, great sigh, isn't it?

39:22One huge cry of joy and of, uh, also amazement.

39:27Um, so, in the huge theater, you'd use all that outwardness,

39:31all those, the words to push it out, to push emotion out.

39:35But when you're in a small space, you have to, and because it's an aside,

39:38he's actually written aside, um, and you're very close to the person who's playing Bassanio,

39:44you'd have to bring it right in, contain it, um, and you would be able to whisper,

39:48you'd be able to say, oh, God, I can't bear it that closely,

39:53which you couldn't possibly do in a big house.

39:55Which do you prefer?

39:56Well, obviously, as a, uh, I would prefer the latter, um, but mostly we have to do the former.

40:02I think most actors would say the same thing.

40:05Now, I seem to be coming down rather strongly on the side of cool Shakespeare.

40:10If so, it's not because I'm fighting shy of the emotions,

40:14but because I believe that it's the way to make a scene or a character or a speech more moving.

40:20What I'm saying is that Shakespeare's language

40:23could be made to work on an audience as powerfully as an actor's emotions can.

40:28That at least is my experience.

40:30I don't mean that the actor shouldn't have emotions,

40:33but they need to be channeled and controlled like the rest of his performance.

40:38Thought, emotion, and text must be balanced and in harness.

40:44But in a poetic play, the text should surely be the prime thing which is working on the audience.

40:52Now, Hamlet is, I suppose, the supreme example of a part in Shakespeare

40:57which is an intense mixture of passionate feeling and intellectual and intense thought

41:05all the time.

41:06That's the balance.

41:08So go for it in this bit.

41:16How all occasions to inform against me

41:22and spur my dull revenge.

41:28What is a man if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed

41:37a beast no more?

41:40Sure, he that made us with such large discourse

41:44looking before and after gave us not that capability and godlike reason

41:52to fuss in us unused.

41:54Now, whether it be bestial oblivion

42:00or some craven scruple of thinking too precisely on the event,

42:07a thought which courted hath but one part wisdom and ever three parts coward.

42:12I do not know why yet I live to say this things to do

42:18as if I have cause and will and strength and means to do it.

42:25That's great.

42:26You gave us the thought and you gave us the feeling and they were both intention and balance.

42:30But I've said enough about that.

42:32You tell me about it because you've played Hamlet and you know more than I do.

42:36This speech seems always to me very much like somebody going down for the third time.

42:43It comes at a point in the line of the part

42:47where Hamlet's life seems to have spun more than ever out of his control

42:53after a bewildering series of catastrophes in which he's become

42:57an exile and a murderer but of the wrong man

43:01at a point at which his assumed madness and his real disturbance

43:07are that the border between them has become very, very shadowy indeed.

43:11And it seems to me to be a final attempt to assert his capability and godlike reason

43:18in an attempt to understand the volcanic emotions that he feels.

43:23And he hangs on as it were by his fingers ends.

43:26Now Hamlet's fingers ends are his exceptional ability to rationalize and reflect on his emotions

43:33and you could say that that saves his reason though it ultimately destroys his life.

43:41So that he makes this attempt and comes up against a sort of a blank wall

43:47which is these four extraordinary lines of monosyllables.

43:50I do not know why yet I live to say this things to do

43:53said I have cause and will and strength and means to do it.

43:56Which are like a sort of banner headline that come blazing off the script

44:00at an actor who's again scanning the text looking for clues.

44:03And what is very interesting indeed is that

44:06the need of the actor to control a flood tide of emotion

44:14and discipline it mentally and technically using the essential eye of the needle

44:21which is the language through which and only through which that emotion can be fed

44:28coincides in a very peculiar way with the character's

44:31need to understand and rationalize on his emotions.

44:35So that not for the first or the last time in the play

44:38the borderline between actor of Hamlet and the character of Hamlet

44:43begin to coincide and a truly theatrical metaphor is set up.

44:46And the borderline between passion and coolness our theme

44:50that's terribly intense and locked together here isn't it?

44:53Yes because I mean a lot of the language in the plays is terrifically wrought and elaborate

44:58and it is possible through an excessive feeling to distort the language

45:03instead of working through it.

45:07How all occasions to inform against me

45:13and spur my dull revenge.

45:19Let's end by looking at a passage which to me at any rate

45:22is one of the most moving in the canon.

45:24We can't do it full justice here because it's much cut and it needs the theater

45:29but let's just have a look and listen.

45:32At the end of the Winter's Tale

45:34King Leontes thinks that he's killed his wife Hermione

45:40and for 15 years he's been grieving for her but she's actually still alive.

45:46At the end of the play Paulina presents her to him as if she was a dead statue.

45:50A fairy tale situation, a thing full of wonder.

46:03I like your silence.

46:05It the more shows off your wonder but yet speak.

46:12First you my liege.

46:14Comes it not something near?

46:17Her natural posture.

46:19Chide me dear stone that I may say indeed thou art Hermione.

46:26Oh thus she stood.

46:28Even with such life of majesty, warm life, as now it coldly stands when first I wooed her.

46:39I am ashamed.

46:42Does not the stone rebuke me for being more stone than it?

46:49Oh would I were dead.

46:52But yet methinks

46:57would you not deem it breathed and that those veins did verily bear blood?

47:03The fixture of her eye has motioned as we are mocked with art.

47:09I'll draw the curtain.

47:10He'll think anon it lives.

47:12Oh good Paulina make me to think so.

47:1420 years together.

47:15I could afflict you father.

47:19Do Paulina for this affliction has a taste as sweet as any cordial comfort.

47:26Still methinks there is an air comes from her.

47:29What fine chisel could ever yet cut breath?

47:34Let no man mock me for I will kiss her.

47:39Good my lord forbear.

47:40You'll mar it if you kiss it.

47:42Shall I draw the curtain?

47:43No not these 20 years.

47:47Either forbear, quit presently the chapel or resolve you for more amazement.

47:55If you can behold it I'll make the statue move indeed descend and take you by the hand.

48:04What you can do I am content to look upon.

48:08What to make her speak I am content to hear for it is as easy to make her speak as move.

48:14It is required you do awake your faith.

48:19Then all stand still.

48:23All those that think it is unlawful business I am about let them depart.

48:28Proceed.

48:29No foot shall stir.

48:32Music awake her.

48:36Strike.

48:41It is time.

48:44Descend.

48:46Be stone no more.

48:50Approach.

48:52Strike all that look upon with marvel.

48:57Come I'll fill your grave up.

49:02Stir.

49:05Nay come away.

49:07Bequeath to death your numbness for from him dear life redeems you.

49:14You perceive she stirs.

49:20Start not.

49:21Her action shall be holy as you hear my spell is lawful.

49:25Do not shun her lest she die again.

49:46Present your hand.

49:56When she was young you wooed her.

50:00Now in age is she become the suitor.

50:08She's warm.

50:25Oh.

50:55So.

Acting Shakespeare - John Barton - Patrick Stewart - Masterclass - Part 6 - Passion & Coolness - 4K

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