I think we all know that ‘villains’ are more interesting if they seem like good people to begin with, but how far can actors go with making them seem decent – even honorable – characters? In this play EDMUND, REGAN and GONERIL may seem to be villains from their first lines, but could they seem the opposite? Can actors find a good excuse for the way the characters first talk – as Shakespeare may have intended ?
Shakespeare is too clever to want his characters to be ‘obvious’ villains. And – if they are obviously evil – it makes everyone around them look stupid for not noticing!
But if we study Shakespeare’s lines – like a detective searching for evidence, we find hidden depths, and, if the part ‘suits’ us, we may discover characteristics which are also inside ourselves. We are, as in all parts, the character.
And actors don’t need an acting coach to help them work out what Shakespeare’s lines mean, they just have to search for these secrets – knowing that some are hidden in nearly every single line of Shakespeare. The serial-killer Ted Bundy did not believe he was evil at all, and it is possible to feel that everything EDMUND says is quite reasonable. His childhood may have been a nightmare – with his father openly preferring his other son. And Lear’s two older daughters are despised by their father in public! So surely we can sympathize with their early bad moods.
Monologue coaching is different from directing, because there are only about twelve lines to work on, and the work may concentrate on helping the actor make just one point clear, (but completely clear).
I have been in this business for so long, and worked with theatre actors who have been knighted, and film stars who have had Oscars, as well as dozens of actors with less experience who struggle with Shakespeare monologues without enjoying them, when they’ve not read the rest of the play! So – if invited – I push actors to find truths in their own lives to help them understand what is behind a Shakespeare monologue, and to care.
There is a small number of American and British actors who prepare weeks or months for any Shakespeare role, but who never let on how much studying they have done, wanting to make their clever understanding of lines to seem relaxed and easy! Everybody has to study these plays hard!
Actors must find friends who know them personally to help, or directors who personally know the Shakespeare’s play, because these lines are simply often not what they seem.
I have sometimes encouraged actors wrongly, having them try humor and laughter in scenes about jealousy and murder, when those actors needed to play the same parts with incredible calm, only one or two lines showing their deeper feelings.
Shakespeare gives actors the chance – in our best performances – which may only happen four or five evenings in our whole lives, to find that the roles he has written are ‘GREAT’. The mixture of goodness and evil in Shakespeare can be terrifying, the comedy in the midst of being unkind can be shocking, the fear in the middle of a love-scene can be deeply troubling. And the often perfect language is not found anywhere else in the world.
There may be moments of genuine laughter between Macbeth and his wife when they discuss killing Duncan, astonished that they trust each other so much. Juliet may be crying her heart out, during and after her scenes with the murdering Romeo. Finding depth is the aim. The language is harder to understand than even Chekhov’s (who was mad, and forces us to try all his lines in different ways), and wiser than Tennessee Williams’s or Arthur Miller (whose plays are always about obvious issues, a word which cannot be applied to Shakespeare at all).
