Acting Shakespeare

By Bertram Leon Joseph

Book Overview

Starting with how theatrical speech was understood in Renaissance England, this book looks at figures of speech, the powers of persuasion, and the passion and rhythm inherent in the language.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• ISBN: B00CCMK28O
• Release Date: January 1
• Publisher: Theatre Arts Books

Customer Reviews

Unlocking the Language

This book provides the reader/actor with a combination that unlocks the Bard's English. It focuses on how the Elizabethan schoolboy was trained in the subject of "loudspeaking," and thus, how theatrical speech was understood in Renaissance England. By revealing the underlying rhetorical structure to Shakespeare's schoolboy training, it leads the actor down the corridors of figures of speech, the powers of persuasion, and the passion and rhythm inherant in the language. It draws clear connections between Shakepeare's lines and rhetoric primers of the 1560's. ACTING SHAKEPEARE provides chapters on specific forms of figures of speech, tropes and figures of sentence, speaking the "score" of the poetry, and bringing it into the body. The book is a clever tool to help the American actor pass from the unknown to the familiar simply, easily and logically. It is not the only such tool, but it is perhaps one of the very best. I have found it especially useful for actors just beginning their work on verse plays. Because it teaches skills learned by Elizabethan primary-school-aged youth, I have felt comfortable using it for actors as young as 7th grade, and no less effectively with experienced adult actors. The process has been remarkably rewarding and successful.