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MATT TORONTO: Hi, my name's Matt Toronto, and I teach
acting and directing at Penn State.
And one of the courses I teach is Acting for Shakespeare.
And so we're going to talk a little bit about dealing with
Shakespeare's language.
And I think a lot of people get nervous about talking
about Shakespeare and his language because it seems
foreign, it seems weird, it's kind of inverse, and all of
these things.
And hopefully we're going to demystify that a little bit
with some concrete ways of approaching the language.
And I think, hopefully what you'll realize, is that you
already understand Shakespeare.
He's writing about human beings just like you and me.
We just have to figure out in the course of his language the
clues that help us understand who these people are, and what
they want, and what they're doing.
So what we're going to do is I'll take you through the five
keys to unlocking the bard.
But before we do that, I want to show a little clip from a
production of Romeo and Juliet that I directed.
That will give us sort of a start.
And you'll probably recognize this passage, but we'll be
dealing with it as we unravel the language and find the
clues that will help us understand it.
So here's Romeo and Juliet.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
-But, soft!
What light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon, who is already
sick and pale with grief that thou, her maid, art far more
fair than she.
Be not her maid, since she is envious.
Her vestal livery is but sick and green, and none but fools
do wear it.
Cast it off.
It is my lady, O, it is my love!
[END VIDEO PLAYBACK]
MATT TORONTO: So that's a great clip from a production I
directed at Penn State.
And the actor in that is Gilbert Bailey.
And the woman playing Juliet is Leah Miller.
And they were both terrific actors.
So I wanted you to be able to see somebody do a really great
job with that particular speech, which is very familiar
to many of us.
What I want to do is, because that's a little bit familiar,
sometimes we think we understand what that speech
is, but there's much more to it.
And we can kind of unravel what it's saying in it, and
really get a lot more from the language, from the speech, and
from what's happening there.
So we're going to go through the five keys to unlocking the
bard's language.
And the first key, the first step that we want to take, is
called follow the thought.
And it just means what it sounds like it means, follow
the thought.
What is the character saying?
What is the character thinking?
You take the words and try to figure out
what they're saying.
It's simple enough, but sometimes it takes a little
detective work, OK.
So we're going to look at it, and the first thing we should
do is look up any words that we don't understand, OK.
So if there's a word that looks like it's a key word to
understanding what's going on, you can look it up.
Try an old fashioned dictionary.
Try an online dictionary.
You can also find online lots of Shakespeare glossaries,
Shakespeare dictionaries.
Or an old fashioned book, the way they used to make them.
This one is one of my favorites.
It's called A Shakespeare Glossary by C. T. Onions.
OK.
And you can just look up the words.
So say in the first line we're looking at it, "But, soft!
What light through yonder window breaks?" Maybe you
don't know what the word yonder means.
Maybe you do.
Maybe you don't.
If you don't, you look it up in the glossary.
And then you realize it means, over there.
Simple.
Over there.
Yonder means over there.
That thing over there.
OK.
So we're going to look at this first line and try to
translate it into modern day English, OK.
So "But, soft!" Who says, but soft?
Nobody says but soft, unless a butt is very soft.
We don't say that anymore.
So we've got to find, what is he really saying?
What's going on?
Well, he's looking up at a window and he says, "But,
soft!" I think he's saying check it out, what's that,
holy moley, holy cow.
But soft, check it out.
"What light through yonder window breaks?" What's that
light over there?
Over yonder.
What is that light?
OK.
And then he goes on to the second line and he defines
what that light is.
And he says, it's the east. And Juliet is like the sun
rising in the east, OK.
And I think that's clear enough.
And then it gets a little more complicated.
"Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon." So he says,
rise up Juliet, and kill the moon, who's jealous because
the moon is not as beautiful as you are, as fair, as
beautiful as you are, all right.
And the moon is already sick and pale, sick and white and
sickly and ugly with sadness, because you, her maid--
and you can look thou her maid, what is her maid?--
thou her servant.
You, her servant, are more beautiful then she, OK.
And then he says, "Be not her maid, since she
is envious," OK.
So don't be her servant, since she is jealous.
"Her vestal livery." OK, there's a word
we should look up.
What is a vestal livery?
We'll find out that that is what devotees of the Goddess
Diana would wear.
It's a vestal livery, a very chaste, virginal sort of
uniform that a devotee of the Goddess Diana would wear. "Her
vestal livery is but sick and green and none but fools do
wear it," OK.
Only fools wear that chaste sort of garment.
Cast it off.
And what I love in this little clip that I show you is when
he says cast it off, there she does, she takes off her robe.
And he gets to see a little action.
What does Juliet look like when she's getting undressed
and getting ready for bed?
And then the last line, "It is my lady, O, it is my love!"
He's just saying, that's my girl.
That's the girl I'm in love with, OK.
And it's kind of simple when you break it down.
And I hope that it wasn't too obvious.
But if you just kind of translate it into your own
words, it just helps you understand, what is this kid
going through?
He's still a kid.
He's a teenager.
What is he thinking?
He's just looking at the girl, he's in love, and trying to
process that.
The other thing I wanted to mention, just as we go, as you
follow the thought a lot of time Shakespeare constructs
his language in the form of an argument.
To be or not to be is an argument with Hamlet sort of
weighing the choices.
Should I kill myself, should I not kill myself?
And that's a lot of time what he does.
So he's uses a lot of rhetorical devices and things
that help construct an argument.
So you might think as you follow the thought, is
Shakespeare constructing an argument, trying to persuade
someone, or trying to weigh the options?
And you can kind of see that in a lot of the language.
And we'll kind of see some of that later on today.
But that's the first step, follow the thought.
And if you do that and translate it into your own
words, you're already miles ahead of the person who didn't
take the time to do that.