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Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth (1889 painting)
- jfengel 5y agoI wish I could have seen the performance. There's a recording of Terry's performance as Juliet, which I heard (a fragment) at the Globe in London. It's wildly different from anything you'd expect to hear today. She was in her mid-30s at the time, far older than Juliet, and making no effort to sound like a teenage girl. We'd call it badly overacted and overwrought. That's not criticism. It's a completely different expectation. Audiences loved what she delivered -- among other things, vocal control on par with an opera singer's. Even within my lifetime, expectations of acting have changed, both in Shakespeare and conventionally. Go watch films from the 70s and everything will feel off. Shakespeare on film changed radically in the early 90s, and continue to evolve. I love getting a glimpse of the roots of it. I know there's no chance of getting to see the Elizabethans, but the oldest recordings are much more than a century past. It's like hearing a foreign language -- even to one intimately familiar with the text.