3 ms·
Yes I find most people who find Shakespeare incomprehensible suddenly find it clear and simple once they read it aloud
by ipnon 2y ago
Yes I find most people who find Shakespeare incomprehensible suddenly find it clear and simple once they read it aloud
- jfengel 2y agoI think it takes some experience in getting a Shakespeare text from the page into a form that really clicks with people. It's not because the words are unfamiliar, but because Shakespeare has a fondness for long, elliptical sentences and convoluted grammar. It can be hard to figure out where the emphasis goes. It helps that the poetry gives you a lot of cues. Iambic pentameter gives you a framework. Deviations from it are cues that something is important. It's not a formula for performance, but it reveals just how much more Shakespeare was directing you than just the words to say. John Barton's "Playing Shakespeare" course has been how they teach that to RSC actors, and that has given us some of the greatest Shakespeare lights of the last 50 years. The videos of it with his students are magnificent views of a comically young Patrick Stewart, a ridiculously baby-faced Judi Dench, a positively embryonic Ian McKellen, and many others. Inexperienced readers may not be able to get that just from reading it aloud by themselves. But if they listen to somebody who has practiced it, they'll have a huge leg up on comprehension.
- ahazred8ta 2y agoWe never figured Roddy McDowall for a fairy. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Tempest_Hallmark_Hall_of_Fame_1960.jpg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Tempest_Hallmark_Ha...
- dbcurtis 2y agoAnother fun trick: Shakespeare rhymes much better if you read it aloud in your broadest "talk like a pirate" accent.
- jfengel 2y agoDouble down and do Pericles, which has actual pirates. (When I did it, we replaced all of the pirate's dialogue with "arr".)
- Suppafly 2y ago>Yes I find most people who find Shakespeare incomprehensible suddenly find it clear and simple once they read it aloud That but also, it becomes a lot easier once you stop pretending it's incomprehensible and put forth even a tiny effort into understanding it.
- recursive 2y agoYou might not believe me, but I'm not pretending. Maybe I just don't know how to apply the effort, but you're wrong, whether you believe it or not.