Disclaimer: I received an
advance reader's copy (ARC - Uncorrected Manuscript Proof) of this book from
NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. All opinions expressed are my own,
and no monetary compensation was received for this review.
(The book is due to be
published on June 23, 2015; review written 06/05/2015)
I’ve always
wanted to read a book like the one I’ve just read. Why? Shakespeare, great
Actors and the English Language. This is the preferred triumvirate of my liking.
Stanley
Well’s aim is an attempt to define what great Shakespearean roles there are,
thus inviting greatness of performance. What distinguishes a great performance
from a merely competent one?
I’ve written elsewhere, that in my book a
great actor should be defined by the way she/he can stand still in the presence
of an audience. (Great) Shakespeare acting needs stillness, i.e., the ability
of the Actor to listen and to react in silence. This epitomizes what great
acting is (e.g., Hermione’s motionless silence in “The Winter’s Tale” is a good example of this). The other
characteristic an Actor needs is to be in full control of her/his acting voice/language.
Why is this so? The western human behaves (I’m thinking Bloom here), thinks and
speaks quite differently now from the days four hundred years ago when
Shakespeare’s plays were contemporary. What’s the difference when I say the
words "Take me for a sponge my lord?"
now (Incidentally I use this line when someone is trying to sell me some
bullshit…) and when someone, maybe Shakespeare, uttered it 400 years ago?
Such
events are still the stuff of Shakespearean theatre as they’re still the stuff
of everyday life, but the difference between contemporary theatre and
Shakespeare’s theatre lies in the language that it’s used. The crux of the
matter is that we’re moving further away from eons of years of oral
civilization. The voice in Shakespeare’s time might have been visceral (I’m
hypothesizing here) than it’s today. Today’s voice may be deprived of real
emotion. Society does not allow us to express ourselves freely. The actor of
nowadays, when playing Shakespeare, can only “voice” truthful feelings through
our cultural and present Weltanschauung.
I’ve always thought what distinguishes
great Actors from just plain ones is their ability to play the subtext and not
the text, i.e., the Actor should embody the action and not just the words.
That’s where “Shakespeare” is (“silence” is just one of the artifacts of this
acting framework). On the face of this, the prime responsibility of Shakespearean
theatre is to show us its own face so that we may reflect upon it. But art also
has a responsibility to preserve the past, so that a culture may reflect upon
itself in the light of its history. Great art and great performances last, and
when the theatre want to re-produce its past, Actors are confronted by artistic
demands very different from those posed by contemporary fare.
Well’s book
was able to fully demonstrate that no matter what Actor we have in mind when
thinking about what a great Shakespearean performance is, what matters is
her/his ability to embody the full integration of words, emotions, intentions
and actions (e.g., onomatopoeias are used a lot in plays because in
Shakespeare's time there was no electricity to produce sounds artificially),
because Elizabethan society spoke in a language which had a different “texture”
than the one we (almost) all speak today. Hamlet, of course, tells us something
about what Shakespeare wanted from his Actors:
“Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on
the tongue. But if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the
town-crier spoke my lines.”
What great
Actors did Wells “select”? On to the numbers. 39 Anglo-saxon and one Italian:
Richard
Burbage, Will Kemp, Robert Armin, Thomas Betterton, Charles Macklin, David
Garrick, Sarah Siddons, George Frederick Cooke, John Philip Kemble, Dora Jordan
(trivia fact: David Cameron is her descendant), Edmund Kean, William Charles
Macready, Ira Aldridge, Helen Faucit, Charlotte Cushman, Edwin Booth, Henry
Irving, Ellen Terry, Tommaso Salvini, Edith Evans, Sybil Thorndike, Charles
Laughton, Donald Wolfit, Ralph Richardson, John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier,
Peggy Ashcroft, Michael Redgrave, Paul Scofield, Donald Sinden, Richard Pasco,
Ian Richardson, Judi Dench, Derek Jacobi, Ian McKellen, Janet Suzman, Antony
Sher, Kenneth Branagh, Simon Russell Beale.
It’s through
the use of theatre critics that Wells chose to illuminate our understanding of
who should be the greatest Shakespeare Actors of all time. It was an advisable
decision due to the fact that the first actors did not have the “help” of sound
recording and film. Using this transversal approach Wells was able to (almost)
put all of his choices on the same footing. This was the only reasonable
approach. Nevertheless we can discern, through the cracks, Wells’ preferences
(as it should; it’s his book after all), but sometimes a little more restrain
would have been advisable (e.g., regarding “The Taming of the Shrew” it’s referred en passant that feminism made the play seem unstylish or something
to that effect).
As a side
note, Patrick Stewart, Maggie Smith, Mark Rylance (e.g., Richard III), Zoe
Caldwell, James Earl Jones, Michael Gambon, Emma Thompson and Christopher
Plummer (his Macbeth was superb) didn’t make the cut. I imagine Wells had to
draw the line somewhere…Tom Hiddleston and David Tennant are also still too
young to be real contenders.
On another
side note, I’d include our own Ruy de Carvalho. His King Lear which I saw on
stage in 1998 at Teatro Nacional D. Maria II was superb.
On yet another
side note, I’m also eagerly anticipating Fassbender’s Macbeth at the end of the
year…Next weekend I’m watching Branagh’s Macbeth. It’s time…
