Theater has Changed

[This is the second in the How Theatre Changed series. There is an outtake that links to this one: Realism in Theatre.  The series began with Starting with a Lie and includes The Actor Audience Relationship.]

You walk into a theatre. You find your seat down toward the front because you paid a little more for your tickets to be close to the actors. You settle into your comfortable theater seat. The audience is buzzing. After a moment, the house lights dim and a hush falls over the crowd. The stage lights come up or the curtain rises. The set is the interior of a modest home. It is not exactly naturalistic, though clearly a home with designed accents. Actors enter. The clothes they wear fit the house setting. They begin speaking. The language is familiar and colloquial like you speak in your home. They do not address the audience. There is an imaginary “fourth wall” of the house that you are peering through to see the action of the play. This helps you “suspend your disbelief.” It puts you in the place and time of the play. You are there to see the play. You are an observer of the play.

At this edge of the early 21^st century, we would call this a traditional theatre experience. It is familiar, not one of those experimental, avant garde productions. It’s what we expect from our theater. Hasn’t it always been like this?

It hasn’t. This experience that we call theater is still relatively new. It is only about a hundred years old. Shakespeare would cry “foul and most unnatural murder” if he were to see it. Or, at the least find this new theater a novelty unlike what he did. Sophocles, Moliere and all of the great actors of the 19^th century would have the same response. The theatre we call traditional is wildly divergent from what came before.

It could be said that theatre changed to reflect it’s time. It became a more realistic and psychologically connected experience. And yet, we lost some vital aspects of theatre in the translation. I believe for theatre to meet the requirements of expressing what it is to live in the 21^st Century and to remain vital, we need to go back and reclaim some of what made theatre theatre before the turn of the last century. [Read the post on The Rise of Realism]

Every time theatre has remade itself, it has begun by looking back at what came before. The early seed of the shift to realistic theatre began with a look back at Shakespearean production practices. The rise of the regional theatre movement in this country took a look back.

Let’s compare the production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in the newly opened Globe Theater (1600) and the recent production of Tracy Letts' Pulitzer Prize winning play August: Osage County, (2008)[i]

·         AUDIENCE LOCATION AND RELATIONSHIP TO STAGE

• In a Modern Theater: The audience tends to be seated in rows on one side of the playing area. The audience is separate from the playing area. They are observing. Even in three sided thrust and theater in the round settings, the audience has a clear understanding of the barrier between their space and the actors.
• In an Elizabethan Theater: The audience surrounded the actors horizontally and vertically. The stage was a platform in a round building. On three sides of the platform, the audience stood with heads just above the platform. As the player looked out on a horizontal plane, the audience encircled him 300 degrees. As the player looked up there were two more tiers of seating that surrounded the actor 360 degrees. Everywhere he looked there was audience.

IMPERIAL THEATRE SEATING CHART where AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY premiered on Broadway[ii]

 

GLOBE THEATRE

This a photo of the rebuilt Globe Theater in London

·         ACTOR/AUDIENCE RELATIONSHIP

• In a Modern Theater: The actors talk and relate to each other exclusively. They do not speak to or acknowledge the audience. They are in the world of the play. To address the audience would be to break the fourth wall plane, disturb the action, and no longer be in character. It would be discordant.
• In an Elizabethan Theater: Everywhere the actor looked, there was audience. He couldn’t talk to a fellow actor without seeing an audience member behind him. The theater was designed for the actor to speak with and directly to the audience. This was not just in soliloquies, but also during scenes with other actors. I imagine that the actors talked to the audience more than their fellow scene mates. [Please read my post on the Actor-Audience Relationship for more information]

·         STATUS OF AUDIENCE

• In a Modern Theater: The most expensive seats are up front near the stage. The cheap seats are those furthest away from the stage, often up in the balconies. The people with money and status get close. Those with less have an altered experience due to the distance from their seat to the stage. The youthful and under classed are often more boisterous and expressive than those who sit in the expensive seats. Everyone is seated, which causes a passive experience.
• In an Elizabethan Theater: The cheap seats were in the front. And, they were not seats. The people around the stage (called: the Groundlings) stood through the performance. It’s hard to think about standing for a three hour play until you think of standing for a rock concert or a football game. The next more expensive seats were in the tiers surrounding the stage. The expensive seats were the Lord’s Boxes, above and behind the players. This seating arrangement created a different experience than today’s audience layout.

·         PRODUCTION DESIGN

• In a Modern Theater: The scenery, costumes, lighting and sound are designed by artists and constructed by craftsman to create the environment of the play. It is designed to represent the place and time. The degree of naturalism to expressionism or abstract is carefully calculated to tell the story of the play. It is representational.
• In the Elizabethan Theater: The Theater was the scenery. It had doors, columns and inner below and a balcony. There was a roof that represented the heavens and a god or angel could ascend to heaven and the trap door known as hell mouth to go the other way. The actors conjured the setting in the imaginations of the audience with minimal additions. The costumes were of the current time, even when playing ancient Romans. There were no lights since the plays were played during the day time, except when they brought on torches or lanterns to act like it was dark. There was a lot of music, played live by musicians, usually contemporary tunes. The experience was more presentational.

Set for August: Osage County

I don’t have a good photo of Shakespeare’s production.

·         REHEARSAL AND PERFORMANCE

• In a Modern Theater: The play is written then rehearsed for several weeks by the actors. There is a director who guided the actors to play out his vision of the play. Each night the actors repeat the same lines, movements, motivations and responses as developed during the rehearsal process. They play the same show eight times a week. The actors are usually cast to play these specific roles and this group of actors is assembled to only play this play. While many have worked together before, for most this is their first time working together. Each actor often plays one role so as not to confuse the audience or if they do have to play more than one role, they try to disguise the fact they are doubling. The benefit in this type of playing is that psychological depth of playing the character can be developed. The attention to detail and careful integration of all of the parts can combine to make the play. However, spontaneity is sacrificed.
• In the Elizabethan Theater: The core company of actors played together for years. They supplemented their ranks with apprentices to play the boys and females and hired men to play the small roles. They were cast by type though often played roles outside their type. They regularly played multiple roles in a play. New plays were premiered every two weeks. On the other eleven days of playing (they took Sundays off), they played something from the repertory. A successful play would be repeated not more than twice a month. This all meant that they didn’t rehearse much, or any. To revive and play an old play every day would leave very little time to rehearse the new play. We don’t know, but it might be that they did not rehearse at all, other than figure out entrances, fights, dances, and comic business.  What the production would sacrifice in depth from rehearsal would be replaced by extreme spontaneity.

·         LANGUAGE AND RHETORIC

• In a Modern Theater: The text is almost fully in prose. The lines are made to be like life. The idiom, style and prosaic is intended to produce the sound of real life even if it slightly elevated or funnier. The story and text is intended to be a slice of life. It is more representational. We speak of seeing a play.
• In the Elizabethan Theater: The play was designed as an argument with the characters fighting for the support of the audience. It debated points of views and was by nature more rhetorical. They spoke of hearing a play. Most of the play was in verse rather than prose. Verse carries thought and feeling more descriptively on its meter. The audience feels the heartbeat of meter and breaths with the actors. The language is heightened.

·         ART/ENTERTAINMENT

• In a Modern Theater: There is a division between high art and popular entertainment. Our Broadway musicals are popular entertainments and thereby maintain many of the aspects of classical theatre. Some theater is clearly intended to be art. One interesting comparison in between outdoor and indoor Shakespeare production today: If you see a Shakespeare play indoors, it is usually intended to be art; if you see a Shakespeare play outdoors, it is usually intended to be entertainment.
• In the Elizabethan Theater: There was no division between art and entertainment. Theatricals were required to amuse the drunk and engage the scholar. This created more balance between the two and made for a more full experience.

My description between the Modern Theatre and Elizabethan Theatre might lead you to believe that I advocate one over the other. Not so much. However, what I’m painfully aware of is what we sacrificed in the creation of Modern Theatre and I fully believe our Next theatre needs to synthesize the two traditions.

If we are to remake the theatre, we will also need to reignite theatre’s traditional strengths while employing modern performance practices in service of the story. To remake theatre, we will need to reclaim these aspects:

·         A Return to Spontaneity – The practice of recreating the same performance each night coincided with the modern era and the advent of the Director. With theater everything can change from performance to performance. What some feel is a detriment is our greatest asset.
·         Reorienting the Rehearsal – Rather than rehearsing to re-create an exact version of the play every performance, rehearsal and actor training need to realign. The goal of rehearsal will be to get good at creating the play, the thing the actors do every performance with a new audience.  
·         Developing the Actor – Audience Relationship – Our live actors can talk to and be in relationship with our live audiences. You can’t do this with film, television or video games. The same interaction that makes concerts and comedy clubs viable needs to return to the theatre.  [Read more in the Actor-Audience Relationship post]
·         Presentational rather than representational design and theater architecture – Presentational design asks more of the audience and engages them imaginatively in the play (both the production and the activity of playing).  It is cheaper to produce and we can’t compete on the same playing field with film.
·         Return of rhetoric – People used to go to hear a play rather than see a play. The emphasis was on what was being said over what was being done. The play was referred to as the argument. Plays were a discussion and argument. The characters held a point of view and the argument between the characters was a much a debate for the opinion of the audience as it was the telling of a story. The slice of life realism lacks the audience engagement of a good debate.
·         Theatre experienced aurally and visually – We need to get back to combining the full impact on the senses that theatre can be. 
·         Human – Theatre is a human experience.  It is not technological. The audience can be in relationship with a human living, feeling, saying and doing amazing human feats like being present as their world fall apart. We know what it is to be human.  We can learn from that. Theater brings together people and creates a profound sense of community, being all in this together. We have less and less of that experience in our contemporary technological age.[iii]

Theatre is meant to be an experience. It is unlike going to a movie, hearing a lecture or going to a concert. It is unlike going to see football or some other sport. It is unlike watching your television or playing a video game. It is a unique experience. It should be a seriously fun ride that makes you run to the back of the line and ride again as soon as you can. We can only get back to that experience when theatre gets back some of what it lost. When theatre stops trying to be something it isn't and gets back to being what it was, theatre.

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[i] I chose Elizabethan Theater because it was inspired by the Greek and Roman Classical Theater but was a thing very much of itself. It was also, what I would call an evolutionary dead end, like the Neanderthal. In 1642, Cromwell deposed King Charles I and created the Commonwealth. Under him and the religious puritans the public theaters, the pride of the Elizabethan Age, were closed and torn down. When theater returned with the Restoration of the monarchy, it was a very different animal based on the court’s experience exiled in France and their fear of public gatherings. You know, you get a crowd of people in a theatre, the next thing you know their talking sedition and planning a revolution.

Modern Theater, especially the type that could be called Realism, began in the 1880s. It gathered steam in the early part of the 20^th century and reached a pinnacle by mid-century. However, this production of August: Osage County, which I admire and truly enjoyed when I saw it, is an example of how pervasive and persistent realism is in the American Theatre. I worked at Actors Theatre of Louisville for years. It was famous for “Kitchen Realism” plays, like Crimes of the Heart and ‘Night Mother. Also, I’m also not saying that the 20^th Century did not have many theater movements that expanded and revolted from realism. It just that the dominate form is realism. Many of the differences between Elizabethan Theatre and Modern Realism are also applicable to other modern theatre forms and experiments. If you don’t know the play, Wikipedia has a synopsis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August:_Osage_County

[ii] For more information: Imperial Theater http://www.shubertorganization.com/theatres/imperial.asp

Photo from the Playing Shakespeare website. This was terrific series on acting Shakespeare (1982) taught by John Barton, lead teacher f the Royal Shakespeare Company: http://www.athenalearning.com/programs/playing-shakespeare/interactive-globe-theatre. Shakespeare’s Globe website http://www.shakespearesglobe.com/

[iii] There’s a great book on the decline of community that I read a few years ago. It is call BOWLING ALONE: The Collapse and Revival of America Community. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone

Starting with a Lie

[This is the first in this week’s series on the difference between contemporary theatre and what came before.  These ideas lead to the larger argument I’m making, however if you are not a theatre person, it’s ok. I’ll get back to broader topics next week with the discussion on how the two sides of our brain have created culture through time.]

If you want to express truth, it’s best not to start with a lie. Most theatre today starts with a series of lies. It’s become what we now know as Theatre.

It could be said, that the function of theater is to express truth.  A big statement. You might ask: “What is truth?” Or, imagine me as Rodin’s “The Thinker” statue pondering the nature of truth.  While I want to avoid an “I’ll know it when I see it” excuse, theater, like all art and entertainment, should connect to something that is real, right and true in our bellies, a feeling in our guts.

(Please accept that statement for now. I’m a couple of months of writings away from discussing the nature of truth. This blog is on a long road of short leaps.)[i]

The problem is that most theater experienced today begins with a certain set of lies. When the actor walks on the stage and pretends the audience is not there, it is essentially a lie. When the actor denies that we’re in the theater, it is essentially a lie. The setting might be Elsinore or the streets of New York, but the actor is playing before an audience in a theater. The story might take place in 1932, but it's being played now in 2012. When the actor walks on stage and leaves her life experience and humanity back in the green room, it is essentially a lie. Any acting style that suggests the actor and the character are not entwined is a lie. While a performance of this play last night, tonight is different. All of the words may be spoken in the same order and the actors try to play the play as it was rehearsed, but this night/this audience/this actor make it a different show/a different experience.  When a theater actively avoids, ignores or pretends the goings on are not happening in that moment in a theater, the theatre is beginning with a lie.

Theatre hasn’t always been like this.  The Classical Theatre (roughly any Western Theatre prior to 1890 or 1642, you pick) constantly acknowledged that the actors and audience were in a theatre together for the re-creation of a story, for an argument, for an entertainment.  In every play Shakespeare reminds the audience that they are in a theatre, watching a play on the stage, played by players.  He also makes the comparison between the players on the stage and the audience’s lives as players in their own dramas. [This is the topic of my next post in this series: How Theatre Changed.]

(Warning: My next statement will seem contrary to my argument thus far. I’m putting together a big thought. Or I’m living in alternate universes. It’s hard to tell.) 

The actor believing in the world of the play while pretending to not be in a theatre or ignoring the audience is true to the context of theatre.  It is what theatre is.  This “suspension of disbelief” is at the center of the game that is theater.  Therefore, what I previously called lies are actually true.  More true than the truth.

Theatre is by nature a paradox. Two opposite realities are both true at the same moment.  The actor is both a living breathing actor and the character she is portraying. Something wonderfully alchemical happens. The actor and the character combine on such a level that it's not so much that they're the same but that the distinction between them dissolves.  This happens when the space between the actor and the characters reduces to the point that the question: Is it the actor or the character saying the line or performing the action? becomes unnecessary to the point the question itself ceases to make sense.[ii]

The theater actually becomes the walls of Elsinore, the plains of Dover or a kitchen in the Bronx, not really, but it does. It feels like it. The actor might say: “I am an actor. I am the character. I'm in the theater. I'm in some setting. I'm in this now. I'm in that time. There is an audience. I am alone.” It is a paradox because: This and this are in conflict with each other. They can't exist at the same time. They can’t both be true at the same time. And yet in the theater they do.

This complementarity, as it would be expressed in quantum physics, is at the heart of theater and yet it is lost and unknown to most contemporary theatre.  Complementarity is when objects have multiple properties that are seemingly contradictory.  (The classic example is that an electron can appear to act like a wave or a particle depending on the observer.  It is both at the same moment.)  It’s like being in two different universes at the same moment.  The very rules of existence are opposite.

The problem with most contemporary theatre is that it ignores and negates the world of the theater to emphasize the world of the play removing the alchemy of complementarity. 

In this case, I’m defining the “world of the play” as the characters, time, and setting of the play.  It is the reality that the play creates.  An example: The world of the play Julius Caesar would be Rome of 33 B.C. when Julius Caesar was killed in the Capital by Brutus and the conspirators.  It is the world of the play.  This is not the same as the “world of the theater,” such as when the play premiered in the Globe Theatre in London one afternoon in 1600 with the actor Richard Burbage playing Brutus before an audience of Londoners. This is the world of the theater.

If I were to produce the play today in Los Angeles, the world of the theater would be this time in this place with these actors and this audience of Angelinos.  The situation of our now is vastly different from the Elizabethan world.  By acknowledging the now of the world of our theater, the play and production are brought into this now and become relevant to us.[iii] 

Beginning over a hundred years ago, there was a move to make the theatre more realistic.  Acting techniques such as Stanislavsky’s Method, production design and the advent of the “fourth wall” were developed to make the world of the play more real for the audience.  The audience was relegated to being observers rather than participants.  The emphasis shifted from the world of the theatre to the world of the play. [For more on this, please read my post on the shift to realism in the theatre, coming with this series] 

With this change theatre lost the actor-audience relationship and the experience of the moment.  We lost what essentially makes theatre theatre.  We became more like film and abdicated the experience of the moment to sports, rock concerts and comedy clubs. [Please read the third post in this series: The Actor-Audience Relationship.]

We also lost our ability to express deeper truth because we denied the most essential truth of theatre, that it is happening in the moment, in the relationship between the actors and the audience.  The audience knows intuitively that we are asking them to embrace a lie.  To participate they must become complicit in our lie.  Whether we are telling a simple truth of a man’s journey to the grocery to buy bread and milk or a collective truth that our country was founded by religious extremist or the complex truth of how to live in our time, essential truth cannot be expressed and received.

If we are to understand and embrace our new and changing time, if theater is to become viable and necessary again, we need the theatre to begin with the truth that we are all, the actors and the audience, in a theatre to experience the creation of a story about life. 

By doing so, we will return to the alchemy of the being in the world of the play and the world of the theatre simultaneously.  This is vital because that experience of duality most closely represents the truth of our new world.  How can we understand and embrace the dualities of time (time is linear vs. time is simultaneous and relative), matter (things, including ourselves, are solid and finite vs. the physical world is construct that we accept when matter is truly only moving energy) or community (we are isolated individuals separate from others vs. we integrated and deeply connected to every other person and thing) unless the theatre teaches us how to navigate this experience.

We go to the theatre to be in a theatrical relationship with theatre artists. By acknowledging the truth that we are in a theater, we will begin to express one of the real challenges of our time: how two opposite experiences can both be true at the same time.  To understand the very nature of the complementarity of our world, we need to experience it in the venue that teaches us best how to live because it is a re-creation of life: Theatre.

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[i] Shakespeare employs parenthetical comments in his text.  When I teach the structure of the verse, we walk the punctuation to understand how it makes the argument.  The only way I can explain a parenthetical comment is by walking it.  Let’s say you’re walking along making an argument.  It has twists and turns (commas, periods, colons and semicolons).  Then you come upon a parenthetical statement: one that has an open parenthesis mark “(“ to begin and a closed parenthesis mark “)” at the end.  You must stop, step to the side of your argument, make the comment about your argument to the audience, and then step back into the path of your argument to continue.  A parenthetical comment is a remark on your argument.  I seem to comment on my argument all of the time when I talk, so I have to do it when I write.

[ii] When I was teaching this in Acting I, the dialogue would go like this:

                Carey:                    What are you feeling?

                The Actor:             Do you mean me or the character?

                Carey:                    Yes. (I would answer annoyingly)

                The Actor:             Yes, but, which one?

                Carey:                    Both.  What you’re feeling is what the character is feeling.  And what the character is feeling is what you’re feeling. They are the same thing.  You can’t act and divorce yourself from the character.

                The Actor:             harrumph. (Or, some sound like that.)

At Shakespeare and Company where I trained, they would call this relationship between the actor and the character: Basic.  It is the first thing that is taught in the training program.  Dennis Krausnick, Director of Training and one of my mentors, would describe it as this: The goal is the space between you (he would put up his left hand) and the text (he would put up the right hand), becomes so close that the space between the two would dissolve (he would bring his two hands together).

[iii] The current trend to set Shakespeare plays and others in setting/times disassociated from either the setting/times of the play or the now of the production adds in third layer.  It can increase the complexity and experience of multiple times, though it usually further distances the relationship to now and/or distorts the connection to the real of the play.  I’ll write more about this soon.

The Readiness is All

This essay is the fourth part of my look at Hamlet and the "To be or Not to be" speech.  Why not start with the first one: To Be OR Not To Be: How Shakespeare Charted the Path to the Modern, then chase after the  next two: Ay, there's the point: The Bad Quarto of Hamlet and The Last Medieval Man: Richard the Third.

Hamlet (and Shakespeare) realized he had a choice: to be or not to be.  At its simplest, the question was to kill his uncle, the king, to avenge his father death or not.  Coming from the Medieval Era, this idea of choice was new to Hamlet (and those of the Elizabethan world).  It paralyzed him. As soon as he realized he had a choice, he knew he would be responsible for the consequences. 

Hamlet wanders through the play not making a decision.  The play happens to him as much as he causes the play to happen.  He cannot decide the best course of action. 

By the end of the Good Quarto’s “To be or not to be” speech, Hamlet comes to the conclusion:

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,

And thus the native hiew of resolution

Is sickled ore with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pitch and moment,

With this regard theyr currents turne awry,

And lose the name of action.

I love the back part of this speech.  Just when he seems to make a choice his conscience (thinking) challenges his resolve. He is made sick with thought. And so, he does not choose.[i] 

The players play the play within the play.  It is The Murder of Gonzago, which just happens to portray the exact method by which Claudius killed his brother.  Claudius goes berserk.  This confirms his guilt.  When Hamlet comes across Claudius praying in his closet, there is no reason to wait.  Except, he's praying.  Damn.  Hamlet decides to wait just in case killing him while he's praying would send him to heaven instead of hell. Of course, the audience knows that Claudius is unable to ask for forgiveness. Double Damn.

So, Hamlet kills Polonius instead. He thought that Uncle Claudius was hiding behind the arras, or so he said.  Rather than execution, he gets sent to England. On the way, Hamlet witnesses the army of Fortinbras marching into battle with Poland for a piece of disputed land.  Fortinbras, unlike Hamlet, is a good Medieval prince.  He’s very much into battle and revenge.  He’s been busy settling every slight against Norway.  When his uncle, the king, lets him he will revenge his father, Fortinbras’ death at the hands of Hamlet, Hamlet’s father.  Fortinbras is in many ways Hamlet’s twin or doppelganger or opposite. 

Seeing the two armies massing in battle, Hamlet speaks the soliloquy:

How all occasions inform against me,

And spur my dull revenge. …[ii]

During this speech, Hamlet beats himself up for not acting.  His brain has been getting in his way.  He compares himself with the armies and Fortinbras below him who are going to war and their death over “an eggshell”. He decides “O, from this time forth, My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth.” 

Starting with Hamlet, we became confronted with the consequences of our choices.  Hamlet really got this. He is paralyzed with the consequences of his choice. This is the source of modern angst, depression and schizophrenia.

Much of our Modern life is about either predicting the outcome of our choices or shielding us from making them.  All of the major fields of study originate with the attempt to predict the future. (even History, “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” George Santayana)

Before the final duel Hamlet throws up his hands not knowing what to do.

Not a whit, we defy augury, there is special providence, in

the fall of a Sparrow, if it be, tis not to come, if it be not to come,

it will be now, if it be not now, yet it well come, the readines is all,

since no man of ought he leaves, knows what ist to leave betimes, let be. [V.2.219-224]

He gives up and says: OK, let God, Fate or chance sort it out.  To quote another of Shakespeare’s characters:

O time, thou must untangle this, not I,

It is too hard a knot for me t’untie. [iii]

Hamlet does end up killing Claudius and revenging his father’s murder.  Along the way he contributes to the deaths of Laertes (his girl friend’s brother), Gertrude (his mother) and himself.  Oh, and let’s not forget Ophelia, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (along with some pirates). Also, he left the kingdom in the hands of Fortinbras of Norway.  So much to leaving it up to fate.

As we enter a new era, I can't recommend decisive action over taking a wait and see approach.  Our question seems to be the same as Hamlet's: Is life fated or is our existence random?  Shakespeare in the back end of this play asked the question that continues to be the twenty-first century’s biggest question.

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[i] In the original text the spelling of “sickled” is usually translated into “sicklied” taking the root “sick” could also be read with the root “sickle”, a farm implement for harvesting wheat or grain, also used by Death.   Thereby, one’s resolve is cut down as with a sickle by thought.

[ii] The complete text of the speech from the Second Quarto in the original spelling and punctuation: 

How all occasions doe informe against me,

And spur my dull revenge. What is a man

If his chiefe good and market of his time

Be but to sleepe and feede, a beast, no more:

Sure he that made us with such large discourse

Looking before and after, gave us not

That capabilitie and god-like reason

To fust in us unusd, now whether it be

Bestiall oblivion, or some crauen scruple

Of thinking too precisely on th'event,

A thought which quarterd hath but one part wisedom,

And ever three parts coward, I doe not know

Why yet I live to say this thing's to doe,

Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and meanes

To doo't; examples grosse as earth exhort me,

Witnes this Army of such masse and charge,

Led by a delicate and tender Prince,

Whose spirit with divine ambition puft,

Makes mouthes at the invisible event,

Exposing what is mortall, and unsure,

To all that fortune, death, and danger dare,

Even for an Egge-shell. Rightly to be great,

Is not to stirre without great argument,

But greatly to find quarrell in a straw

When honour's at the stake, how stand I then

That have a father kild, a mother staind,

Excytements of my reason, and my blood,

And let all sleepe, while to my shame I see

The iminent death of twenty thousand men,

That for a fantasie and tricke of fame

Goe to their graves like beds, fight for a plot

Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,

Which is not tombe enough and continent

To hide thevslaine, ô from this time forth,

My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth.

[Internet Shakepeare Edition: http://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Annex/Texts/Ham/Q2/scene/4.4]

Interestingly, this speech is not in the First Folio.  I have no idea why it was omitted. It could have been that Richard Burbage, the lead actor who originated the role and was principal Sharer in the company, stopped playing the role. The speech was then omitted to shorten the script. Or if Burbage was still playing the role late in his life, he needed a break.  From 1599 on, all of the big roles like Lear, Macbeth or Othello take off a sizable chunk of the fourth act.  Most people feel as if Burbage, who was growing older and rounder, did the Elizabethan equivalent of putting it in his contract: "I will have the fourth act of every tragedy off."  In London during the first part of the last century, many lead actors playing Shakespeare title roles were known to step out to the pub during the fourth act with the actor who got killed in the third act.  The lead actor would return refreshed for the final fifth act sprint to the finish. Or properly soused.

[iii] Viola, the Ring speech from TWELTH NIGHT, II.1.40-41.

Richard III: The Last Medieval Man

This essay is part of my look at Hamlet and the "To be or Not to be" speech.  Why not start with the first one: To Be OR Not To Be: How Shakespeare Charted the Path to the Modern.

Before HAMLET, Shakespeare’s first big hit was Richard the Third: Richard, Earl of Gloucester, the Hunchback, the Crook-backed toad, Tricky Dick. Richard marched through the Henry VI plays killing everyone in his way to get the crown for his father, York, and then his older brother, Edward the fat and horny. At the end of Henry VI part III, Richard assassinated King Henry, the Sixth, the pious, the boy who should have been a Saint rather than a King. King Henry tells Richard what a horrible devil he is, how he infects the world and how the world would have been better if he had never been born. Richard gets fed up with listening to this and murders him in the Tower saying: “Die, prophet, in thy speech. For this, amongst the rest, was I ordain’d.”

In the opening soliloquy of the play, The Life and Death of King Richard the Third, “Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of York“, Richard has a dilemma. Edward is now King Edward IV. Peace has returned. What’s a villain like Richard to do during this summer of peace? Dance with the ladies? Right, the hunchback will become a courtier. Well, if he is to be true to his nature and honor God, being a good Medieval Man, he must continue to become the best villain ever.

In the Medieval era, there was a belief that a man had his place in the wheel. He had his place, function and duties. They were pre-ordained by God. A man stayed in his track. If he thought he had a choice or stepped out of his path, he would be damned. He might have a little glory and power for a while, but fate would finally catch up with him. He would be sentenced to eternal damnation. Richard realizes that he has no other option than to be what God made him to be. “For this, amongst the rest, was I ordain’d.”

Hmm, let’s see what would be the height of Villainy? To become King. How audacious would that be for the younger brother, the hunchback toad to become a king? He kills a brother, marries the wife of the previous prince whom he killed, he kills his nephews. He is a great villain, a pious villain.

A great example of this is Act III, Scene 7. Edward has died. Richard and Buckingham put out a rumor that Edward's sons were bastards and illegitimate. The Lord Mayor and the Citizens come to plead for Richard to assume the throne. They demand to see Richard. The mob is told that Richard is at prayer. After many summons while Buckingham riles up the crowd, Richard appears with prayer book in his hand and a Bishop on either side. In some ways this is a farce and a sacrilege that the audience is in on. In another way it is absolutely correct. Richard is doing what God ordained him to do: be a Super Villain. After much begging, Richard finally capitulates. He becomes King Richard the Third of that name. This is a triumph. He is gaming the system while he is abiding by the system. It’s quite brilliant.

Attaining the crown is one thing. Keeping it is the next challenge. He continues to kill everyone in his way, including his friends. Buckingham who helped him to the throne is executed. A villain has to keep up his skills. In time (three plus hours in the theater), an army amasses against Richard at Bosworth Field.

Prior to the penultimate battle, Richard has a dream where all of the people he killed or had killed return to curse him: “despair and die”, you shithead. In that moment, he asks if he is a murderer? He realizes that he might have had a choice. Maybe he didn’t have to be a murderer. But, he’s a Medieval Man. He can’t change his stripes. 

The next day, “A Horse, A Horse, my kingdom for a Horse”, is the end of Richard.

Hamlet, of the "to be or not to be" fame realized that to his downfall he had a choice, but that's another play.

Ay, there's the point: The Bad Quarto of Hamlet

This essay is the second part of my look at Hamlet and the "To be or Not to be" speech.  Why not start with the first one: To Be OR Not To Be: How Shakespeare Charted the Path to the Modern? Or you can read this one by itself.

To be, or not to be,

Ay there's the point,

What were you expecting? “that’s the question?”  It comes later.  This is the first line of an early version of Shakespeare’s famous soliloquy. It’s from a rendering of Hamlet scholars call the “bad quarto”. Did you know there was an early version of Hamlet, a “bad quarto”?

“Ay, there’s the point!” It’s a eureka moment.  Hamlet has made an amazing discovery.

This version is called the “bad quarto” because it lacks the amazing language and complexity of the later version, called the “good quarto” which is universally accepted as being the BEST PLAY IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. The “bad quarto” not so much. It’s a simple revenge tragedy. Hamlet would have been forgotten if all we had was the “bad quarto”.

Shakespeare worked on Hamlet for years, probably between 1591 and 1601. It was an old story. He ripped it off from a play that is lost to us, scholars call it the Ur- Hamlet. It was performed by the Queen’s Men in the 1580s. Shakespeare borrowed constantly from other writers.  He wouldn’t win any Original Screenplay Awards today, he was more of an Adapted Screenplay guy.[i] 

Shakespeare’s company had played either the bad quarto or some version of Hamlet while on tour prior to premiering the new version in the newly built Globe Theater in 1601.

Just as Shakespeare was completing his new version of Hamlet, the one we know, his early version of the play was stolen and published. Shakespeare was midway through revising the script when it was stolen.  He had reworked sections of the first two acts, but not the rest of the play. People have blamed the actor who played Marcellus for stealing the manuscript. His lines and scenes are most like the good version. Another theory of the theft of Hamlet is that scribblers (who could write really quickly) or person with a hyperthymestic memory (who could memorize the play in one hearing) were employed to go to the playhouse to steal the play.  They theorize the bad quarto is an Elizabethan version of a bootleg tape.  However, we got it the stolen version has become known as the “bad quarto”. Having no copyright laws sucked for the playwright and the players.[ii]

By the way, a quarto is a printing of a single play script, a small book, cut to the size of a quarter page, thus a quarto. The First Folio was published after Shakespeare’s death. It contained 36 of his plays, more of a Complete Works of Shakespeare. A quarto is to a single play script as the Folio is to a Complete Works. Got it?

To be, or not to be, Ay there's the point,

To Die, to sleep, is that all? Ay all:

This “to be or not to be” speech is spoken in the second act. In the first act, Hamlet encounters the Ghost of his father who tells him that he was murdered by his uncle. Hamlet, being a good son, promises to revenge his father. To give him time to plot his revenge, Hamlet will “put on his antic disposition” which means act crazy. The next time we see him he speaks this speech. As he enters, the stage directions let us know that he sees Uncle Claudius and Corambis (an early name for Polonius, the King’s counselor and his girlfriend’s father) hiding behind the arras (a curtain). He also sees Ophelia, his girlfriend, sitting to the side, set as a trap so his uncle can overhear their conversation. This “to be or not to be” is a crazy speech clearly about suicide with a few somewhat veiled homicidal threats for Claudius who Hamlet knows is hiding behind the arras. It is a coarse speech:

To be, or not to be, Ay there's the point,

To Die, to sleep, is that all? Ay all:

No, to sleep, to dream, Ay marry there it goes,

For in that dream of death, when we awake,

And borne before an everlasting Judge,

From whence no passenger ever retur'nd,

The undiscovered country, at whose sight

The happy smile, and the accursed damn'd.

And on…[iii]

After this speech, Ophelia clearly betrays her boyfriend when she lies about where her father is when they both know he is behind the arras. Hamlet abuses her and acts crazy for a bit until he comes up with a test to confirm his Uncle’s guilt. Hamlet will have the Players play a play like the murder of his father, he calls it the The Mousetrap. When Claudius sees the murder enacted, he flips out. Hamlet is now sure of his guilt. The course is set. In the closet scene, Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude swears to support him in killing Claudius. Though there are still dramatic complications and Hamlet still ends up dead, he revenges his father. He gets the job done. A good revenge tragedy!

After the “bad quarto” was stolen and published, Shakespeare’s company published the Second Quarto, the good one, within the year as the:

Newly imprinted and enlarged to almost as much againe as it was,

according to the true and perfect Coppie.

This is the Hamlet we know. This is the great play. It contains all of the great language, the intrigues, the complications and Hamlet’s infernal indecision. There is a huge difference between these two plays.

Shakespeare changed the play. He added complexity. The play got longer. The text got sharper. The poetry, more poetic. Hamlet’s path is less clear. He waters down Ophelia and makes her weaker by changing the very sound of her words. She lost her hard consonants, her "t"s, "b"s and "d"s for soft consonants "m"s, "n"s and "l"s. Gertrude doesn’t commit to help him even after Hamlet tells her of Claudius’ guilt as she does in the Bad Quarto. Every place where he could, he made the play more ambivalent.  He made Hamlet less decisive and more concerned, well, about everything.  He doesn’t know what to do.  He can’t make up his mind.

The biggest change is that the “to be or not to be” speech is moved from the second act to the third act after he has made the plan with the players to play The Mousetrap. He has a great soliloquy: “Oh What a Rogue and Peasant Slave am I?” (Which is a much better line than the Bad Quarto’s: “Why what a dunghill Idiot slave am I?”) He makes this plan with the players, he stops acting crazy, then he does the speech. For a revenge tragedy, it makes no sense. Also, the stage directions do not inform us that he sees Claudius and Polonius hide behind the arras or that he sees Ophelia waiting for him. He speaks the speech directly to the audience.

To be, or not to be, that is the question,

Whether tis nobler in the minde to suffer

The slings and arrowes of outragious fortune,

Or to take Armes against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing, end them, to die to sleep

No more, and by a sleep, to say we end

The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to; tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wished to die to sleep,

In this speech, Hamlet has a decision, a choice. The Ghost of his father or some fiend claiming to be his father (Elizabethans believed demons appeared as dead people to trap the living; this type of thing was rumored to happen) tells him that his uncle murdered him to get his throne and his queen. Hold On! Let’s pause a moment. An apparition of his father comes back from the dead and has a long conversation with him??? It’s easy to take this for granted, but it is not an everyday occurrence. This was out there stuff.

Hamlet and his dad were very different. Hamlet Senior was a warrior and a King, more of a “Not to be” kind of guy. Hamlet Junior tends to be a thinker and feeler, more of a “to be” kind of guy. A son’s responsibility is to avenge his father and to protect the virtue of his mother. But, murder especially regi- and uncle-cide are bad things to do, against God’s law. Who do you believe? What should a Prince do? One would need to be sure, right? Maybe it would be better to take a wait and see attitude. Wait for it to sort itself out?

Hamlet had been at school in Wittenberg, you know the place where Martin Luther hung his Ninety-Five Thesis on the door of the church and started the religious reformation. He learned there that men had choice. To be or not to be. This or That. When Shakespeare revived the play he gave Hamlet a choice. Not a clear choice, a very complicated and messy choice. Such, is life.

With choice came consequences. Hamlet really got this. He is paralyzed with the consequences of his choice. It is the source of modern angst, depression and schizophrenia. Hamlet says so much at the end of the “to be or not to be” speech.

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,

And thus the native hiew of resolution

Is sickled ore with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pitch and moment,

With this regard theyr currents turne awry,

And lose the name of action.

For Hamlet, as with Modern Man, knowing you have a choice messed him up. Choice comes with unknown consequences, causality. Whether the “to be or not to be” was to suffer what life gave you or to or commit suicide, murder or become numb, you were stuck with the consequences of your choice. Hamlet was paralyzed by choice. He decided that suicide was not the answer. Homicide on the other hand was very much the answer.

By the end he had murdered or caused the murder of his girlfriend, her father, her brother, his two best friends, his mother and his uncle, the King. Oh, and his own death. Had he just made a choice, the play might have ended better.  Or at least would have had a smaller body count.  But, that’s the problem with being the Master of your Fate.  YOU become responsible for the consequences of your choices even when you fail to actually make one.

Before the final duel Hamlet throws up his hands not knowing what to do.

Not a whit, we defy augury, there is special providence, in

the fall of a Sparrow, if it be, tis not to come, if it be not to come,

it will be now, if it be not now, yet it well come, the readines is all,

since no man of ought he leaves, knows what ist to leave betimes, let be. [V.2.219-224]

Perhaps that is where modern choice leaves us.  All we can do is throw our hands up and accept what comes because we cannot predict the outcome of our choices.  Is this what Shakespeare learned?  All you can really do is be ready?

The Bad and Good Quartos show us two different approaches on how to live.  They were invented over a decade of vast and significant change.  Shakespeare’s later version of the play gave us the model for choice and the responsibility of the consequences.  This play plotted the path to the Modern Era.  The new question or challenge is how do we handle the choices going forward?

---

[i] Shakespeare regularly borrowed and adapted scripts by others.  Only Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest seem to be original stories, and with both of these he gained inspiration from other writings.  For more on this read my entry into the authorship debate: Shakespeare’s Mentor (to be posted soon).

[ii] Yes, Shakespeare regularly rewrote and revised his plays like any good writer. When his fellow actors wrote in the forward to the First Folio, the complete works of Shakespeare:

His mind and hand went together: And what he thought, he uttered with that easiness,

that we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers.

I’m sure “the lady doth protest too much”. They were trying to sell a few books. They wanted everyone to know that they had the right versions of the plays. Not “bad” versions. I’m also sure it was an inside joke coming from actors who suffered through twenty years of constant rewrites. Shakespeare was a serial reviser.

[iii] Full text of Quarto 1 “To be, or not to be” speech:

To be, or not to be, I there's the point,

To Die, to sleepe, is that all? I all:

No, to sleepe, to dreame, I mary there it goes,

For in that dreame of death, when wee awake,

And borne before an everlasting Judge,

From whence no passenger ever retur'nd,

The undiscovered country, at whose sight

The happy smile, and the accursed damn'd.

But for this, the joyfull hope of this,

Whol'd beare the scornes and flattery of the world,

Scorned by the right rich, the rich curssed of the poore?

The widow being oppressed, the orphan wrong'd,

The taste of hunger, or a tirants raigne,

And thousand more calamities besides,

To grunt and sweate under this weary life,

When that he may his full Quietus make,

With a bare bodkin, who would this indure,

But for a hope of something after death?

Which pusles the braine, and doth confound the sence,

Which makes us rather beare those evilles we have,

Than flie to others that we know not of.

I that, O this conscience makes cowardes of us all,

Lady in thy orizons, be all my sinnes remembred.

[Adapted from Internet Shakespeare Edition: http://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Annex/Texts/Ham/Q1/default/]