Read Online Shakespeare on Toast: Getting a Taste for the Bard by Ben Crystal - Free Book Online
Authors: Ben Crystal
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into words a moment or a sentiment from life and then discover that Shakespeare got there first and expressed the same thought more succinctly and articulately. His writing spoke to queens and it spoke to commoners, and, staggeringly, it still speaks to us some 400 years later.
But then some things don’t change. Every day, people find themselves questioning their own mortality, their place in the world in relation to everyone else, finding themselves in situations where in that moment they would give up everything they own for something they don’t have.
To be, or not to be … All the world’s a stage … A horse, a horse
…
Shakespeare endures. I’ve seen a Brazilian production of
Romeo and Juliet
that made me sob, a Slovakian production of
The Merry Wives of Windsor
that had me rolling in the aisles, and a Japanese
Pericles
that was one of the most heartbreaking pieces of theatre I’ve ever seen, despite knowing no Portuguese, Slovakian or Japanese.
The American actor Orson Welles once said: ‘Shakespeare speaks to everyone.’ His plays are set all over the world, and yet most could be set anywhere, in any country. He doesn’t just write about what it is to be English, he writes about what it is to be human, and that opens his writing up to the world.
There are parts of Shakespeare that we’re beginning tolose touch with, that we have to work at: certain aspects of the language (which we’ll look at in Act 3) and some of the cultural references – the context – need a little getting to grips with.
Looking at these things, and taking ourselves out of the mindset of the 21st century, will help us understand (perhaps even, dare I say it, laugh at) some of those 400-yearold jokes …
Scene 7
Walford, home of the God of Love
S hakespeare’s inventiveness (remember the 1,700 new words he coined), his ability to play with language and his poetic skill are some of the greatest innovations the English language has ever seen. But that doesn’t get round the fact that many people struggle with his writing.
So here’s the thing: if Shakespeare found himself practically forced to write to earn a living, and the stage, the setting – everything – helped him create such a vividly dramatic world, why did he write in what many people now think of as an ‘awkward and incomprehensible’ way?
O for a muse of fire
and whatnot?
Many people think they talked like that in Elizabethan England on a day-to-day basis, and to be honest, for a while I thought they did too. I was really rather surprised (and a little disappointed) to find that although the way people talk in Shakespeare’s plays was
similar
to how Elizabethans spoke, it would have been rare for your average Elizabethan to speak in such a flowery way.
So if we find Shakespeare’s language a bit unusual, andthe audience that went to see his plays would have found it a bit unfamiliar too, why on earth
did
he write like that?
The answer is surprisingly straightforward: by heightening his language he made it more dramatic. It’s too easy to forget that his language is not of the book, but of the theatre and of the stage …
Back on the stage in the Elizabethan theatre, watching Elizabethan actors acting out situations we’d never live in, looking wonderful, speaking in this slightly unusual way – and everything so different from ‘us’. Would they ever speak like us?
Well maybe, because sometimes in all the madness we need to hear something reassuringly familiar, to let us know Everything Is Okay. And, it must be remembered, this is supposed to be entertaining, a story is being told, so common speech will help everyone pick up the plot if they get lost.
But should a king speak like us? Or the God of Love? Or an Italian? Surely it wouldn’t sound right. Now we’re on the subject, how do you make kings, dukes and princes sound different from ‘us’, while using regular 17th-century London speech?
Putting on another accent wasn’t an option:
But then some things don’t change. Every day, people find themselves questioning their own mortality, their place in the world in relation to everyone else, finding themselves in situations where in that moment they would give up everything they own for something they don’t have.
To be, or not to be … All the world’s a stage … A horse, a horse
…
Shakespeare endures. I’ve seen a Brazilian production of
Romeo and Juliet
that made me sob, a Slovakian production of
The Merry Wives of Windsor
that had me rolling in the aisles, and a Japanese
Pericles
that was one of the most heartbreaking pieces of theatre I’ve ever seen, despite knowing no Portuguese, Slovakian or Japanese.
The American actor Orson Welles once said: ‘Shakespeare speaks to everyone.’ His plays are set all over the world, and yet most could be set anywhere, in any country. He doesn’t just write about what it is to be English, he writes about what it is to be human, and that opens his writing up to the world.
There are parts of Shakespeare that we’re beginning tolose touch with, that we have to work at: certain aspects of the language (which we’ll look at in Act 3) and some of the cultural references – the context – need a little getting to grips with.
Looking at these things, and taking ourselves out of the mindset of the 21st century, will help us understand (perhaps even, dare I say it, laugh at) some of those 400-yearold jokes …
Scene 7
Walford, home of the God of Love
S hakespeare’s inventiveness (remember the 1,700 new words he coined), his ability to play with language and his poetic skill are some of the greatest innovations the English language has ever seen. But that doesn’t get round the fact that many people struggle with his writing.
So here’s the thing: if Shakespeare found himself practically forced to write to earn a living, and the stage, the setting – everything – helped him create such a vividly dramatic world, why did he write in what many people now think of as an ‘awkward and incomprehensible’ way?
O for a muse of fire
and whatnot?
Many people think they talked like that in Elizabethan England on a day-to-day basis, and to be honest, for a while I thought they did too. I was really rather surprised (and a little disappointed) to find that although the way people talk in Shakespeare’s plays was
similar
to how Elizabethans spoke, it would have been rare for your average Elizabethan to speak in such a flowery way.
So if we find Shakespeare’s language a bit unusual, andthe audience that went to see his plays would have found it a bit unfamiliar too, why on earth
did
he write like that?
The answer is surprisingly straightforward: by heightening his language he made it more dramatic. It’s too easy to forget that his language is not of the book, but of the theatre and of the stage …
Back on the stage in the Elizabethan theatre, watching Elizabethan actors acting out situations we’d never live in, looking wonderful, speaking in this slightly unusual way – and everything so different from ‘us’. Would they ever speak like us?
Well maybe, because sometimes in all the madness we need to hear something reassuringly familiar, to let us know Everything Is Okay. And, it must be remembered, this is supposed to be entertaining, a story is being told, so common speech will help everyone pick up the plot if they get lost.
But should a king speak like us? Or the God of Love? Or an Italian? Surely it wouldn’t sound right. Now we’re on the subject, how do you make kings, dukes and princes sound different from ‘us’, while using regular 17th-century London speech?
Putting on another accent wasn’t an option:
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