THE OPEN ROAD

peace, love & happiness newsletter

April 23, 2020

William Shakespeare Issue

 

William Shakespeare’s birthday is celebrated on April 23rd. He turns 456 today. Alexandre Dumas said: “After God, Shakespeare has created most.” It’s the general consensus that he is the greatest poet in the English language and the greatest playwright in any language. 

Actors have the great good fortune to enjoy Shakespeare in ways that readers, teachers, directors and scholars do not. We get to play the parts, to live the life of the characters he created. But when it comes time to talk about what the plays mean, we are dumb.

I don’t know what the plays Hamlet or King Lear mean, but I know what it feels like to be Hamlet, to be Lear. Hamlet is in the dark about who he is, and why he says and does the things he says and does, just as you and I are ignorant of who we are and why we say and do the things we say and do. Hamlet says: “I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth.” The English professor will tell you why Hamlet has lost all his mirth, but Hamlet doesn’t know. He feels that it is gone.

An actor doesn’t pretend to be other people, he becomes them. When a play ends, it’s like waking from a dream.

Will Shakespeare breathed his own life into the characters he created, and now when I breathe, he breathes through me. Is this to consider too curiously? 

When I, as Lear, speak the words… 

“None does offend. None, I say. None.”

…I’m not standing outside or apart, thinking, “Well, he’s mad, you know.” I’m speaking the Truth. And because I’ve said it and meant it and felt it and believed it, the Johnny Stallings character I pretend to be in “real life” is changed irrevocably.

 

We are such stuff 

As dreams are made of, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.

 

There’s not enough room in our little newsletter to include The Complete Works, so I’ll just share a few of my favorite passages:

 

Jaques.

All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances,

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,

Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.

Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel

And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,

Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad

Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,

Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,

Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lined,

With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances;

And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;

His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide

For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion,

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

 

—As You Like It, Act 2, scene 7

*

Bottom.

And most dear actors, eat no onions 

nor garlic, for we are to utter sweet breath.

 

—A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 4, scene 2

*

Hamlet. 

 I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, foregone all custom of exercises, and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame the earth seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire—why it appears nothing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors. What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god, the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me. No, nor woman, neither.

 

—Hamlet, Act 2, scene 2

*

Duke Senior.  

And this our life, exempt from public haunt,

Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,

Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

 

—As You Like It, Act 2, scene 1

*

Hamlet.

Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth to dust, the dust is earth, of earth we make loam—and why of that loam, whereto he was converted, might they not stop a beer barrel?

 

—Hamlet, Act 2, scene 2

*

Prospero.

Our revels now are ended. These our actors, 

As I foretold you, were all spirits and

Are melted into air, into thin air: 

And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, 

The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces, 

The solemn temples, the great globe itself, 

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, 

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

 As dreams are made on, and our little life 

Is rounded with a sleep.

 

—The Tempest, Act 4, scene 1

*

Portia.  

The quality of mercy is not strained.

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

Upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed:

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.

‘Tis mightiest in the mightiest. It becomes

The thronèd monarch better than his crown.

His scepter shows the force of temporal power,

The attribute to awe and majesty

Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings,

But mercy is above this sceptered sway.

It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings.

It is an attribute to God himself.

And earthly power doth then show likest God’s

When mercy seasons justice. Therefore,

Though justice be thy plea, consider this-

That in the course of justice none of us

Should see salvation. We do pray for mercy,

And that same prayer doth teach us all to render

The deeds of mercy.

 

—The Merchant of Venice, Act 4, scene 1

*

Juliet.

My bounty is as boundless as the sea,

My love as deep. The more I give to thee

The more I have, for both are infinite.

 

—Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, scene 2

*

From the sublime, to the ridiculous:

 

Oswald.

Where may we set our horses?

Kent.

I’ the mire.

Oswald.

Prithee, if thou lovest me, tell me.

Kent.

I love thee not.

Oswald.

Why dost thou use me thus? I know thee not.

Kent.

Fellow, I know thee.

Oswald.

What dost thou know me for?

Kent.

A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking knave, a whoreson, glass-gazing, super-serviceable finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd, in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch: one whom I will beat into clamorous whining, if thou deniest the least syllable of thy addition.

 

—King Lear, Act 2, scene 2

*

And back to the sublime:

 

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wand’ring bark,

Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.

Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle’s compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me prov’d,

I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.

 

—Sonnet 116

*

Happy Birthday, Will. Thanks for everything! I’ve spent a lot of my life pretending to be the people you imagined into being.

 

—Johnny Stallings