Hello All! I realized it has been a while since I posted a blog. And since I'm in the midst of deciding which Shakespeare books I want to pack for my East Coast adventure, I thought I would procrastinate by sharing the Shakespeare books I can not live without! The following list is in no particular order.
1. Performing Shakespeare Unrehearsed: A Practical Guide to Acting and Producing Spontaneous Shakespeare (By Bill Kincaid)
I was first introduced to the “Unrehearsed Method” when I was at ACTF in college. The second time I encountered it was when I became a company member with the Elgin Shakespeare Project.
Synopsis:
This book outlines how Shakespeare’s plays can be performed effectively without rehearsal, if all the actors understand a set of performance guidelines and put them into practice.
Each chapter is devoted to a specific guideline, demonstrating through examples how it can be applied to pieces of text from Shakespeare’s First Folio, how it creates blocking and stage business, and how it enhances story clarity. Once the guidelines have been established, practical means of production are discussed, providing the reader with sufficient step-by-step instruction to prepare for Unrehearsed performances.
Source: Publisher
Why I like the book: Firstly, the book is well laid out. Secondly, Mr. Kincaid does a wonderful job explaining the “Unrehearsed Rules” and providing examples to further illustrate his point. Though I am not always participating in an unrehearsed production, when I first get a Shakespeare script, I apply the unrehearsed techniques. This helps me to get out of my head, in regard to blocking. Then the blocking I like, I keep and what doesn't fit (either due to the production or because it doesn't feel natural) I leave behind.
2. The Oxford Dictionary of Original Shakespearean Pronunciation
3. Shakespeare's Words: A Glossary & Language Companion
I've lumped books two and three together because David Crystal is involved in both of them, with Shakespeare's words also including his son Ben Crystal. I consider David and Ben to be the dynamic duo of Shakespeare’s language. Their work focuses on original pronunciation, which is performing works from earlier periods of English in an accent that would have been in use at the time. Both books are kinds of dictionaries.
Synopsis: (The Oxford Dictionary of Original Shakespearean Pronunciation)
This dictionary is the first comprehensive description of Shakespearean original pronunciation (OP), enabling practitioners to deal with any queries about the pronunciation of individual words it includes all of the words. It includes all the words in the first folio transcribed using IPA, and the accompanying website hosts sound files as a further aid to pronunciation. It also includes the main sources of evidence in the texts, notably all spelling variants (along with the frequent count for each variant) and all rhymes (including those occurring elsewhere in the canon, such as the Sonnets and long poems). An extensive introduction provides a full account of the aims, evidence, history, and current use of OP in relation to Shakespearean productions…It will be an invaluable resource for producers, directors, actors, and others wishing to mount a Shakespeare production or present Shakespeare's poetry in original pronunciation, as well as for students and academics in the fields of literary criticism and Shakespeare studies more generally.
Source: Publisher
Shakespeare's Words provides a useful definition for words we come across in Shakespeare's plays. Either words that we know presently but had a different definition back in the day or words we are unfamiliar with.
Synopsis: (Shakespeare’s Words)
A vital resource for scholars, students and actors, this book contains glosses and quotes for over 14,000 words that could be misunderstood by or are unknown to a modern audience. Displayed panels look at such areas of Shakespeare's language as greetings, swear-words and terms of address. Plot summaries are included for all Shakespeare's plays and on the facing page is a unique diagramatic representation of the relationships within each play.
Source: Publisher
Why I like the book: I find both of these books extremely helpful when looking at a script. Whenever I don't know the word Shakespeare's Words is the first book I go to. When looking at rhyme schemes or iambic pentameter I always find it extremely helpful to look at the OP Dictionary because it shows how the word would have been pronounced back in the day. OP pronunciation helps me adjust how I say a word if it needs to fit a rhyme or rhythm.
Here is Ben Crystal Performing "To be, or not to be" in OP
4. Power and Passion in Shakespeare's Pronouns: Interrogating ‘you’ and ‘thou’ (By Penelope Freedman)
This book is a new favorite of mine. It was one I was introduced to while getting my master’s.
Synopsis:
In revealing patterns of you/thou use in Shakespeare's plays, this study highlights striking and significant shifts from one to the other. Penelope Freedman demonstrates that understanding of the implications of you/thou use in early modern English has been bedevilled by overconcern with issues of power and status, and her careful research, analysing all the plays, reveals how a fuller understanding of Shakespeare's usage can provide a key to unlock puzzles of motive and character, and a glass to clarify relationships and emotions. The work focuses particularly on dialogue between men and women, and sheds new light on male and female language use. The scholarship presented in this volume is augmented with tables and a glossary of linguistic terms.
Source: Publisher
Why I like the book: What I love most about this book and what I find extremely beneficial the way that Penelope breaks the book down, sorting through Shakespeare's comedies, romances, tragedies, and histories. Each section is then further broken down by play. So if you are working on a play you can easily find it and look at scenic examples from the script. The examples of ‘you’ and ‘thou’ really do help you track the relationships you have with other characters, as well as the emotional shifts within those relationships. For me, the emotional shifts become extremely helpful when I'm in a scene with just one other person. I can determine where we start and end. Based on the shifts or lack of shifts you can really understand the specific mood of that scene.
Here is an excerpt from her book
5. Speaking Shakespeare by Patsy Rodenburg
This is the book I have probably had the longest. I remember finding it when I was in one of my professor’s offices in college. I was looking at all the books he had on his shelf, and this is one that piqued my interest. I looked it up the next day and bought it.
Synopsis:
Patsy Rodenburg tackles one of the most difficult acting jobs: speaking Shakespeare's words both as they were meant to be spoken and in an understandable and dramatic way that projects the reality of the character. Patsy calls this "a simple manual to start the journey into the heart of Shakespeare," This is just what she gives readers in a book that was developed as she worked with her students at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama. As she worked with the people in her classes, she encouraged them to consider the way in which Shakespeare's text is written and how it is spoken to inform every aspect of the creation of a character onstage. She begins with the “givens” of speaking verse. She then moves on to the rehearsal of leading Shakespeare roles from Hamlet, King Lear, Richard
III, Macbeth, and others. With the same sensitivity to an actor's development that she displayed in The Actor Speaks, Patsy uses ideas of dramatic resonance, breathing, placement, and the actor’s preparation to show how one can bring these characters fully to life.
Source: Publisher
Why I like the book: On top of the many examples and explanations that Patsy uses to break down speaking Shakespeare, she also provides a plethora of exercises. I use many of her exercises when I'm stuck on a monologue or a long Shakespearean soliloquy. I'll take an exercise that she's provided in her book and apply it to the text that I have. This usually helps me find some new spark of inspiration or helps me understand the portion of the text I was stuck on.
Why Shakespeare?
Excited to Read Next
This section includes books that I haven't read yet, but then I'm very excited to read.
Blueprints for a Shakespeare cult
(By Sammuel McClure Taylor)
I was introduced to Blueprints for a Shakespeare Cult by Shakespeare From the Ground, a Shakespeare company out of La Crosse, WI. Blueprints for a Shakespeare Cult is two volumes.
Synopsis:
Volume 1, Part One: Elements of the Style is advice from the players. Their hard-won knowledge will be useful to you whether you work in a Playhouse style, or in any other: how to prepare, how to approach the text, how to rehearse, and how to stand naked in front of an audience with Shakespeare’s words in one hand, nothing in the other, lighting yourself on fire.
Volume 1, Part Two: Loveletters is a series of loveletters from the trenches: interviews with the actors who have kept the fires bright for eight years. They are loose and rangy, giving different portraits of different people who care about the same things in different ways. They contradict one another, like people do.
Volume 2: Field Guide is a field guide for building your own Shakespeare cult. It will help you structure and run an Oldschool process that will work for Shakespeare. It’s adapted from the field guide the Project hands to all of our Captains. I hope the field guide is complete enough to be useful, and also incomplete enough to be useful: because a good tool can be used for many things.
Here is an interview with Chuck Charbeneau, Artistic Director/Founder
of
Shakespeare From the Ground
Shakespeare and Meisner: A Practical guide for actors, directors, students and teachers
(By Aileen Gonsalves and Tracy Irish)
I am a huge fan of the Meisner technique. I was introduced to Meisner at Black Box Acting in Chicago. I credit the Meisner technique for helping me figure out how to build the characters I've created, as well as for determining the best method for me to use as an actor. However, I have always struggled to implement the Meisner technique with Shakespeare, and since Shakespeare is another aspect of my life I truly love, I'm very much looking forward to this book.
Synopsis:
This practical handbook is invaluable for anyone performing, teaching, studying or simply wanting a new way to enjoy Shakespeare. It provides an outline of Meisner's work and legacy, a discussion of that legacy in the light of the enduring global popularity of Shakespeare, and a wealth of practical exercises drawn from Meisner's techniques. Shakespeare writes about the truth in human relationships and human hearts. Sanford Meisner's work unlocks truthful acting. They would seem a perfect match. Yet, following Meisner's note to his actors that 'text is your greatest enemy', Shakespeare and Meisner are often considered 'strange bedfellows'. The rhetorical complexity of Shakespeare's text can often be perceived as rules an actor must learn in order to perform Shakespeare 'properly'. Meisner's main rule is that 'you can't say ouch until you've been pinched': in other words, an actor must genuinely feel something in order to react in a performance which is alive to the moment. This book explores how actors can use Meisner's tools of 'acting is reacting' to discover the infinite freedom within the apparent constraints of Shakespeare's text.
Well that concludes by bard book review. I hope you've enjoyed my ramblings, and if nothing else perhaps you've found your next book to read!