Acting Styles in AS YOU LIKE IT and Beyond

ROSALIND: By no means, sir. Time travels in divers paces with divers persons.

(As You Like It 3.2.280-81)

            As Tom mentioned in class the other day, Shakespeare is meant to be performed, not read. The discrepancies in script as well as character theories and analyses divide rather than bring together a consensus. Rosalind makes a good point when she says times moves at different speeds depending on the person: the staging of a Shakespearean play will move differently depending on the period in which the performance is produced. Not only is the approach to the material different, but so is the approach to acting style and methods.

            Preparation for theatre in Shakespeare’s time can be assumed to be more of an individual process, as things could only be written by hand by then – or memorized. The chances actors each had a full script are pretty much next to none. So, what else would they do but only memorize their own lines? Shakespeare’s plays are pretty hefty, so any chance of actors, or players, memorizing the whole thing is, again, pretty much next to none without tons of practice, which they did not always have. The characters themselves have some large monologues and soliloquies, and throw in iambic pentameter on top of that and that’s quite a bit to memorize. People in Shakespeare’s time didn’t speak in iambic pentameter, so memorizing it during Elizabethan theatre was probably as difficult as it is now in present day.

            Acting was even more individual-focused in Shakespeare’s time than theatre today, even with the contributions of Stanislavski and others. There is little stage directions in Shakespeare's works, which is typical in theatre in general, but the severe lack of stage directions – or even, in fact, when they are missing entirely and it is up to scholarly speculation – indicates there is more to analyze in the script for acting rather than the actor looking beyond the words on the page. The blog Shakespeare Workshops explores the notion that the psychology of Shakespearean or verse acting was completely different based on 1) the actors being most fully focused on their own lines rather than the action that surrounds them onstage and 2) the lines themselves indicating exactly what the character is feeling. This differs from modern-day acting because it leaves out, as Shakespeare Workshops points out, the idea of preparation and subtext. A play today rehearses together for a certain stretch of time before their performance and must constantly go to each rehearsal or performance prepared for what will happen throughout each encounter and make sure each time they move or react is authentic to not only the character but also themselves as an actor. However, a Shakespearean play would allow the actor to fully feel more being in the moment since they are so focused on their individual journey with the lines rather than getting caught up in the subtext of a situation.

JACQUES: 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…

(2.7.139-142)

            Shakespeare’s players thrive on feeling, not thinking deeply about how their actions affect the rest of the group of actors and instead turning it in on themselves. Lines like “your experience makes you sad” (4.1.24) and “I had rather hear you chide than this man woo” (3.5.66) feel surface-level, but it is the characters contextualizing how they feel about the situation rather than putting a group of characters in a certain situation. The characters control the situation through their words, through expressing their emotions, and that in turn shows a very different acting style for the staging of a Shakespeare play like As You Like It than any other modern day play, in which the characters depend on the situation they’re placed in (and I can say that as a studying actor). More on these differences in both acting and staging another time, perhaps. Thoughts?

(My reference and for more information on Shakespearean acting: http://shakespeareworkshops.blogspot.com/p/the-modern-actor-and-performing.html)