The Actor in History: A Study in Shakespearean Stage PoetryIn this book an eminent scholar considers the relation which Shakespeare establishes between the values of the supreme world of Elizabethan and Jacobean reality, that of the kings and soldiers at the top of the tree, and his own domain, the poetry of the theater. Ostensibly, that poetry emphasizes straightforwardly the values of the plot of the play --by his poetry, the king or soldier becomes more visible to us. The rhythms of his voice, the verbal images and innuendos, reinforce the man's kingship or soldiership. But at other times, what takes place is different. Starting from a shadowy identification of the character with his position in the play, the poetry begins to substitute its independent or nearly independent values--its power to charm and to threaten and expand the "meaning" of the actor vis-à-vis his role. The character we watch on the stage escapes into an area where the sensations with which his acting affects us come also directly from his histrionic relation to us. He becomes an actor as such and less an actor of Brutus or Antony or Coriolanus. We are all the more moved because we know that the histrionic is a representation of the reality of emotion, as definite and valid as impressionism is of the visual truth of the external world. In certain plays Shakespeare puts at variance our sense of the histrionic against the more usual values which we set upon political and military achievement. The fantasy of Richard II, for example, is his escape from the harshness of the historical circumstances that belittle his capacity; clothed in poetry and growing into the actual presentation of the actor who rendered the part, it dominates us to the devaluing of the winner in the plot's competition. |
From inside the book
Results 1-3 of 24
... course , it is the careless nobility of Hotspur , the comic vitality of Falstaff , which overwhelm us , and not simply the two scenes I have men- tioned . But it is in those scenes that the two dangerous ene- mies of the Prince's future ...
... courses of action in order to demonstrate the truth of what they stand for . These prove their undoing in politics . Coriolanus of course fails to execute the part his mother assumes is so easy . Brutus mismanages the speech in the ...
... course made immensely more subtle . ) But the tragedy is Rome's because , on his participation , indeed on his leader- ship , depend the assassination and the revolution , and the course it took to its own destruction . The usual ...
Contents
The Triumph of Fantasy | 13 |
The Actor in History | 37 |
Competitive Worlds | 61 |
Copyright | |
5 other sections not shown
Common terms and phrases
References to this book
Greek and Roman Actors: Aspects of an Ancient Profession P. E. Easterling,Edith Hall Limited preview - 2002 |
Shakespeare’s Imagined Persons: The Psychology of Role-Playing and Acting P. Murray No preview available - 1996 |