Words Into Action

by William Gaskill

  Analysis must never replace the ear as the guide to speaking. When I first worked at Stratford I was told by John Barton, one of the directors and an ex-academic, that the line in Richard III’s first soliloquy—

  In the deep bosom of the ocean buried

  —was a six-foot line with both ‘ocean’ and ‘buried’ being pronounced with three syllables. Just try it on the tongue. You know it doesn’t work; it is undramatic. I ignored his advice. In fact if you stress the line simply for sense you end up with four stresses not five. Surely most actors say:

  In the deep bosom of the ocean buried

  In fact it is possible to feel the whole opening of the speech as made up of four-stress lines:

  Now is the winter of our discontent

  Made glorious summer by this sun of York

  And all the smiles that lowered upon our house

  In the deep bosom of the ocean buried

  Even in Hamlet you can have a four-stress line:

  To be or not to be; that is the question

  That means you are looking at a line as made up of strong stresses with an irregular number of smaller stresses round them, which is neither iambic or trochaic. In fact it is more like Old English poetry. This has been argued before, and inconclusively. If it is carried through, as a general rule it starts to have an overemphatic, aggressive character, and loses some of the easy flow of the writing. I believe that the underlying pattern must be iambic and and that an actor will find the natural sense stress inside it. There is something about the iambic pentameter that keeps things moving. There are many gradations between light and strong, in which the difference between them starts to disappear. The actor must listen to his own voice.

  Before committing yourself to an interpretation of a line, feel the sense running through it and avoid stressing any one word too heavily. Let the line develop its strength, don’t drag it down or stamp it into the soil until it cannot move. Above all, avoid stressing too many words. Focus on the situation and character as far as you understand them. Don’t use the line to commit yourself to an emotional statement until you know what the character is feeling, and even then try to let the line have a life of its own. Allow each sentence to flow easily to its end, trying to feel its structure on the way. If there are a number of sentences joined by a conjunction, or a sentence with many subordinate clauses, you may have to approach these as separate units, but the principle is the same.

  As an exercise, try saying the whole speech beginning ‘To be or not to be’ without emphasis or variation of pitch and see what happens. You will find it’s not possible, without an unnatural effort, to give equal value and maintain unvaried pitch. The tongue will start to give the lightest of stresses to ‘be’ rather than ‘to’, the voice will go very slightly up and down. You will feel the natural shape of the line and its possibilities.

  This is how Olivier, who was not at home in moments of meditation, would approach the quieter parts of his text. He would relax all the facial muscles so that there was no tension anywhere; the eyes would roll up under the lids and the tongue dart in and out of his loose mouth like a lizard’s; the delivery became clipped and impersonal as he gave nearly equal value to all the syllables. You can hear the effect in the soliloquy ‘Upon the King…’ in the film of Henry V (though there the voice is on the soundtrack and the face doesn’t move). It may sound artificial but it is far preferable to injecting a heavy and false emotion by forcing the stress.

  Nowadays strong stresses are used too frequently on television by politicians and salesmen (what’s the difference?) and even academics. No one talks about anything in a civilised manner. Everyone is trying to hammer something into our thick skulls. In the process the natural alternation of light and strong gets lost, and so does the music. The weather forecasters are the worst. The autocue can only show a few words at a time so the speaker phrases without relation to sense and breathes when his breath runs out. This is often between verb and object, or between adjective and noun. The short breath is used to give a completely unnecessary stress to the word that follows. There is also an incomprehensible stressing of auxiliary words and conjunctions: speech is no longer made up of sentences in which the sense moves towards the full stop. The speaker only knows as much as he sees. This has now become a mannerism and is used by actors in drama, where there is no autocue and no need to take a breath.

  Stressing conjunctions is a common fault. It gives a tired, heavy feel to speaking. ‘There will be rain over England and Scotland,’ or even ‘England and (short breath) Scotland’, as if this was an extra burden to bear, but this is belied by the cheerful tone in which it is said. At one time ‘and’ was so understressed that it would disappear almost entirely. ‘Rock ’n’ roll’ or ‘fish ’n’ chips’ are inseparable units. Rock and roll is, after all, one thing, and fish and chips nearly so. We used to fulminate against this elision in speaking as destroying the rhythm, which it did. In regular verse ‘and’ always counts as a syllable. Now it is given equally unrhythmic importance.

  The famous hendiadys of Shakespeare (two words yoked together, of equal value and often of related meaning, governing a third) is built on the balance of the conjunction:

  • The very age and body of the time his form and pressure

  • This accident and flood of fortune

  • The chief good and market of his time

  If you stress ‘and’ you ruin the phrase. (No one has ever quite explained why Shakespeare was so addicted to this form. It does give a kind of detachment to what is often a passionate moment.)

  The other monstrosity is the unnecessary stressing of personal pronouns, one of my personal bêtes noires. This is a major failing in actors who should know better. John Mills at Olivier’s memorial service read the lesson:

  Charity never faileth; but whether there be prophecies they shall fail;

  whether there be tongues they shall cease;

  whether there be knowledge it shall vanish away.

  Even though ‘fail’ is repeated in the first line and it might seem sensible to stress ‘they’, the balance of the second and third line surely demands a pattern for the whole like this:

  Charity never faileth; but whether there be prophecies they shall fail;

  whether there be tongues they shall cease;

  whether there be knowledge it shall vanish away.

  —with a slightly stronger emphasis on the verbs at the ends of the lines. The phrase moves towards the verb for its fulfilment.

  As a general rule never stress personal or possessive pronouns at the beginning of a line or phrase. It gives a ludicrously self-centred impression and is always unmusical.

  Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord

  is unthinkable. It is the seeing of the glory, not who sees it. Similarly:

  I know that my Redeemer liveth

  —where the knowing of the livingness of the Redeemer is the only thing. The line is only complete when ‘liveth’ has been said. The awareness of the end of the line and the sense of moving towards it is the basis of all good speaking. Subject, verb and object are one and inseparable.

  I know that my Redeemer liveth.

  The self does not exist apart from the actions it performs. The life and meaning of the action is what matters.

  This would be unnecessary advice to a singer who knows that the flow, shape and rhythm are in the music, and that nothing must impede their progress. There is a film of Maria Callas singing a number of different arias at a concert—arias ranging from the heavy drama of Lady Macbeth to the comedy of Rosina in The Barber of Seville. Before each aria she has a moment of concentration in which her focus is on the new character and situation. Thereafter is only the music. The playwright’s indications of rhythm, pace and phrasing are rarely as exact as a composer’s (though I believe they are often more precise than an actor realises), but an actor can have something of the same sensation. He must experience an emotional impulse at the beginning which will en
ergise the whole line. It must not be shoved along, stress by stress.

  The text has a life to be released rather than something hugged to one’s chest. I believe that dramatic writing has an existence which demands space to be released not just towards the other actors but outwards to a space which includes the audience. The text does not belong to the actor. This is a risky doctrine which could lead to a cold impersonality or even the worst excesses of ham acting, but without it there is no true theatre speaking.

  The Use of Pitch

  Variation of pitch is a form of stress that can be made without weight and is often more effective. It can be just as meaningful without slowing the pace. The iambic pentameter has a natural lift from the light stress to the strong. The lines move trippingly through the sense, and importance can be given without effort. Perhaps it belongs to a different age when the wit of a line was unfolded gracefully by the rise and fall of the voice, whether on stage or off. Now everything—or nothing—is conveyed by an aggressive downward stress, usually on the first word: ‘GO (pause) AWAY’ or ‘DON’T (pause) DO THAT’. It is unmusical and inexpressive—and of course uniambic. Only in the regular and monotonous stress of rap is poetry possible. The nature of iambic verse is to lift, not to be pushed downwards.

  It is essential in speaking a classic text to use pitch to clarify or emphasise meaning. A light and even delivery, where all the words have value, keeps the line moving; the pitch clarifies the sense. ‘Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounce it to you trippingly on the tongue.’

  The first actors’ voices I knew well were those of John Gielgud (b. 1904) and Edith Evans (b. 1888). I include their dates because their approach seems to be moulded by their time. Both were born before the First World War but only Evans was acting before it started. I used to have scratchy old records of them reading an anthology called The Voice of Poetry, which consisted mainly of Shakespeare and the Romantics, and those poets we used to call Georgian from the period 1910 to 1935. Gielgud had been taught at RADA; Evans never went to a drama school but received her early training as an amateur, working with William Poel, the first director to explore a return to the stage of Shakespeare’s time.

  The dominant voice teacher of the time was Elsie Fogerty, the founder of the Central School of Speech and Drama, and, later, her pupil Gwynneth Thurburn. She taught Laurence Olivier and Peggy Ashcroft. One of the main principles of the time was a belief that the pitch should be lifted gradually over the length of a line and never dropped, except to complete the cadence of a final thought. Sometimes this became a mannerism. When Olivier finishes his ‘Once more unto the breach’ speech in his film of Henry V—

  And upon this charge

  Cry God for Harry, England and Saint Ge-e-e-orge

  —he builds his climax by raising his pitch at such large intervals that the voice almost cracks on the last word and is only saved by the crash of sound from William Walton’s score.

  When Evans was playing Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest, she would say (the dashes are mine to indicate the actor’s phrasing):

  You can hardly imagine—that I and Lord Bracknell—would dream of allowing our only daughter—a girl brought up with the utmost care—to marry into a cloak room, and form an alliance with a parcel. Good morning, Mr Worthing.

  She inexorably lifted the pitch by stages, through the line, to ‘parcel’ before she came down. In the same scene her much imitated and derided ‘handbag’ is built on an extreme interval between the two syllables, but it is also created by the intensity of ‘ha-a-a-nd’ before the release of ‘bag’. The relation of power, intensity, richness of vowel with mobility of pitch was one of her great skills. Her use of an overall upward lift in speaking conveyed, amongst other things, a relentless optimism and a generous and all-embracing view of the world. There is an announcer on Radio 3 who constantly lifts her squeaky pitch on every third or fourth word but drops it again immediately on the next. She conveys a naturally depressive personality desperately trying to cheer herself up, without success. Evans was a Christian Scientist, determined to show that the world was good and healthy, which meant keeping her intonation up; just as, it is said, she would gaze at the reflection of her lopsided face in the mirror and say, ‘I am beautiful.’ Her vocal technique was part of her spiritual armoury.

  Her use of pitch was quite conscious (‘I have perfect pitch, you know’). In my production of Richard III at Stratford in 1961, Christopher Plummer as Richard would say to Evans playing Margaret:

  but I was born so high,

  Our eyrie buildeth in the cedar’s top,

  And dallies with the wind and scorns the sun—

  which she interrupts with:

  And turns the sun to shade. Alas, alas!

  Witness my son, now in the shade of death,

  Whose bright outshining beams thy cloudy wrath

  Hath in eternal darkness folded up.

  Plummer would give her an upward inflection on ‘scorns the sun’ and she would say, ‘No, Chris. You see I have to come over the top of your last word and if you pitch it up it’s very hard for me.’ But Plummer always went up and she always pitched above him. The effect was stunning. It was purely technical but in no way detracted from the emotion of the scene. In fact it helped to create it. This would not be true for American English where intensity, rather than pitch, is used to create emotion. British English has, or rather had, a natural rise and fall which, to the American ear, sounds affected, if not downright camp.

  One old-fashioned trick, which can still work, was the sudden dropping of pitch to create an unexpected seriousness or sentimental depth. Gielgud tells us that Fred Terry as the Scarlet Pimpernel would drop his voice a whole octave when he said to his wife: ‘I could never bear to see a pretty woman cry.’ Edith Evans in Daphne Laureola by James Bridie realises her old husband is about to die and the voice leaves its soaring arabesques and drops right down as she says, ‘Oh, Joe, don’t go. I need you.’ In my production of The Way of the World, Maggie Smith, in the famous scene between Millamant and Mirabell where they state their conditions for a good marriage, would drop her voice on the word ‘lastly’ as she made the proviso: ‘And lastly, wherever I am, you shall always knock at the door before you come in.’ On a line on which she could have easily got a laugh she chose to say to the audience ‘Take this bit seriously’, and so gave the scene an unexpected depth.

  18

  Magic and Metaphor—The Tempest and Henry VIII

  You have just been to a new play and have to describe it to friends. They say, ‘What’s it about?’ They partly mean, ‘What happens in the play? What’s the story? Who are the characters?’ And partly ‘What does the play add up to? What is the significance of the narrative? What does it mean?’ The first questions can be answered clearly; the second are more difficult, and the two get intertwined. With an old play the ‘What’s it about?’ is superseded by ‘How do they do it?’—meaning ‘What interpretative stress do they put on the narrative?’ Plays mean different things at different times, and the narrative can yield possibilities undreamt of by the author. Our attitude to characters may change but the narrative is the constant to which any interpretation must be related. For instance, it is now a commonplace to think that The Tempest is a play ‘about’ colonialism. Let’s remind ourselves of the narrative.

  Prospero, the Duke of Milan, has become involved in his studies and neglected his dukedom. Antonio, his brother, ousts him in a coup, helped by the King of Naples. Prospero and his baby daughter are cast away in a boat and land on a desert island. When the play starts they have been living on the island for twelve years. Prospero, who has magical powers, has two servants: Ariel, ‘an airy spirit’ whom he has freed from imprisonment by a witch, and the witch’s son, Caliban, ‘a monster’. By chance Antonio and the King of Naples are sailing home from a wedding in Tunis. Prospero creates a storm by magic and his enemies are shipwrecked on the island. By the end of the play he has forgiven them, and his daug
hter and the son of the King of Naples are united. He renounces his magic powers and returns to Milan as its Duke.

  That misses out the comic subplot and the stages by which Prospero arrives at the realisation of his plan, but it contains the essence. The stated themes of the plays are the major decisions that Prospero makes: the forgiveness of his enemies and the renunciation of his magic. The ‘colonial’ interpretation, as far as it can be justified, lies in Prospero’s relationship to Ariel and Caliban. Ariel keeps demanding his freedom, while Caliban claims the island has been taken from him, but the island and the characters are part of a fairy story. They may have a metaphorical life but the play is not about a society.

  When I was an undergraduate I appeared in a production of the play by the Oxford don Nevill Coghill. It took place by the lake in Worcester College garden. I was one of the lords. At the end we sailed away with Prospero across the lake in a boat. Ariel ran on the water (on carefully concealed duckboards) blowing kisses to his departing master, while Caliban waved cheerfully from the bank. This was a grossly sentimental interpretation, which would be unthinkable now. In a more recent RSC production, Ariel spat at Prospero after he has been given his freedom. This is equally crass. Ariel, like Mr Spock in Star Trek, has no feeling, though like Spock he is aware of it in others (‘Mine would, sir, were I human’). His only desire is for his freedom, whatever that may represent. Caliban too wants freedom to repossess the island but sensually not socially.

  In our time opinion has swung against all authority figures, some of whom the Victorians would have seen as essentially benevolent. Lear, the Duke in Measure for Measure, and Prospero are all suspect nowadays and it is true that they are all more complex than the benevolent paternalists of some earlier productions (‘The old fantastical duke of dark corners’). It’s also true that Prospero enjoys exercising his magic power, that he wants to run everyone’s lives, but that does not make him a colonial exploiter. The island is uninhabited by humans: Ariel is a spirit and Caliban is a monster. There are no natives to be exploited. Jonathan Miller, who was one of the first to promote the colonial interpretation, cast two very earthbound black actors as Caliban and Ariel to justify it. He had his natives but he had lost two of the meaningful symbols of the play—the being who is all air and the one who is all earth. They may represent many things—Ariel the superego and Caliban the id, for exam-ple—but they have to retain their identity in the fairy story for the interpretation to work. The moment you make them human the play becomes ordinary and unmagical. You can transfer the metaphor to another period and still keep the basic elements. This was wonderfully done in the film Forbidden Planet, loosely based on The Tempest. Ariel was a robot and Caliban was an unknown monster attacking the space station. (In the end the monster is revealed as the scientist’s unconscious desires. We have symbol and meaning together.)