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Art as experience is an act of possession. Acting as an art form carries the process of possession through every fiber of the body – through living, breathing, imagining, physicalizing
– as another character, replete with their tempos, rhythms, sonorities, and sounds. Acting literally permeates the bloodstream.1 It bears the text on a molecular level, and actors should, according to Rodenburg, “work on the experience of language in all its forms - intellectually, emotionally, physically, and poetically.”2 Actors must, then, create a physical and emotional energy that transports themselves out of a mostly-intellectual understanding into the realm of a moving imagination necessary for carrying a role. Yet:
PPT SLIDE
Don't know if I can do this again and again and again spin + repeat cheap to launder, But hard to bleach? I see thee, see thee still.
Honestly, Lady Macbeth scares me. Not as a character, but as a role. To play her suggests dabbling in the dark, uncovering parts of myself, or of her consciousness, that feel forbidden. Sir
Antony Sher called it a play “dangerous on many levels.”3 Daniel Day-Lewis has famously exemplified acting perils, immersing himself so fully into roles that the process seems life- threatening (i.e. catching pneumonia filming Gangs of New York, collapsing after seeing his dead father’s ghost while playing Hamlet).4 To possess a role, actors run the risk of a role possessing
1 Patsy Rodenburg, Speaking Shakespeare (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002) 6. 2 Rodenburg, 431. 3 Antony Sher, Beside Myself: An Autobiography. (London: Hutchinson, 2001) 334. 4 Celia Ashley, “Week 9: Task One.” Shakespeariences.wordpress.com. (2 December 2013
Shakespearience 1326590 them. Appropriation at this level is unique to acting; however, Professor Fernie has noted that, in watching Shakespeare, he “find[s himself] suddenly and absolutely not just in sympathy with but almost actually within one character, then another.”5 Yet, such an example of Coleridge’s myriadmindedness differs from enacting theatre. One involves the spontaneity of action and reaction in bodily form to multiple imaginations at play on stage; the other, the power of the inner imagination - engaging, yet physically stationary.
In the stanza above, which flits between Lady Macbeth’s thoughts in her final scene and an actress’ hesitancy to repeatedly enter “her” body, I suggest that the mixture of personal and character’s experiences, as created through an actor’s process, place the actor at a precipice: namely, how does one play life, while retaining one’s own? To safeguard oneself, maintaining the balance between creation and creator, actors regularly employ a variety of methods, such as
Laban and Stanislavski. 2:30 Yet, actors sometimes add another layer to their process, to engage their imagination with the life of the character, even further.
Antony Sher, in Beside Myself, describes how his creative preparation led to sketching, even painting characters he played6 to discover an intimate “inside” view. Personally, I don’t paint - but music, music informs my body, rhythms, voice, breathing, my inner-outer life. When thought or played, it echoes in the ineffable. In drama school, voice instructors would suggest singing Shakespearean lines, through varying styles, to internalize emotion to draw from
(SINGING: i.e. “Oh what a noble mind is here o’erthrown” as an aria or pop ballad). This paper began as a response to the question of what an actor’s possession of a role can teach literary
Trueman, “Did Daniel Day-Lewis See His Father’s Ghost as Hamlet? That’s the Question.” The Guardian.com. http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2012/oct/29/daniel-day-lewis-hamlet-ghost. 5 Ewan Fernie, “Welcome to Shakespearience: Task One.” Shakespeariences.wordpress.com. (17 September 2013
2 Shakespearience 1326590 criticism. Yet, to reach beyond that, I chose to consider, like Sher, how artistic impulses might undergird such possession, extending the experiment to what could an actor’s possession through musical awareness teach literary criticism? It is from this starting point that I begin an “essay,” a try or an attempt, in Montaigne’s truest sense. This paper agrees with
Papadopoulou and McKenzie, who, in their introduction to Shakespeare and I, articulate their impulse to “challenge the familiar stylistic decorum and professionalized idiom of literary criticism” favoring essays, that, like literature, “partake in its spirit of linguistic experimentation.”7 [This essay grapples with the issue of normative criticism, again concurring with those critics that, for criticism to be “inter-esting” or “to be within,”8 one must allow self- vulnerability, accessing parts of oneself not usually made public. In The Life of Sonnets, David
Fuller suggests that “since art is emotional knowledge, criticism that is fully engaged will include, implicitly or explicitly, individual experience. 9 So, from there – let us begin. This paper contends that, to speak of an actor’s possession one must be receptive to the impulses, rhythms and, perhaps, imagined musicality of the scene. This imposing of personal creativity within acting can only better illuminate how literary criticism would gain by using similar methods, even musically-minded methods, that unfurl further possibilities in character, theme, and the play’s tangible life on stage.
To structure this experiment, this paper moves first to how musical structure may inform poetry and drama, then touches on Macbeth’s musicality, and then ventures into considering how a scene’s musicality could enhance an actor’s and critic’s interpretation of scenes. It compares scenes’ “inner lives” to musical forms, to which I’ve written “lyrics.” At times, we will listen to forms as we examine those scenes in light of an actor’s possession of a role.
7 William McKenzie and Theodora Papadopoulou, Shakespeare and I (London: Continuum, 2012) 1. 8 Ibid. 9 Fuller, The Life in the Sonnets, 2.
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Music can inform the structure and the undercurrent of a Shakespearean play.
T.S. Eliot’s discusses, with dramatic poetry, how “there emerges, when we analyze it, a kind of musical design also which reinforces and is one with the dramatic movement.”10 The underlying musicality, then, is a submersed affecting force. Comparing the mysteries of music to the failing of most literary criticism, Fuller suggests that “criticism might be whistling in the dark- displacing what was happening in secret with more prosaic things it was better able to bring into the light.”11 It sounds as though he is describing an actress’ work, who deliberately sets herself in those “dark,” unknown places to subliminally infuse the unseen into the seen, creating a pre- life, a life while off stage, a life of what comes after. Music might, from an actor’s perspective, add another layer to illuminating, even subconsciously, the life within. Simon Palfrey suggests that, “perhaps we should think of drama as most of us do music.”12 Emrys Jones, in “The Scenic
Poet,” suggests dramatic structure could be compared to musical structure, particularly in his labeling of characters’ entrances and exits as A, B, C, D,13 and describing a scene’s “tempo” and
“crescendo…14 It seems possible, then, that the secret life of an actor could tap into these rhythms, to fill in the subterranean space of possessing a character. Patsy Rodenburg, in
Speaking Shakespeare, references musicality as she discusses how active an actor must be to play a Shakespearean role:
10 T.S. Eliot, “Poetry and Drama,” in Selected Prose of T.S. Eliot (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975) 136. 11 David Fuller, “Discovering Transgression: Reading from the Passions.” Ed. William McKenzie and Theodora Papadopoulou. Shakespeare and I. (London: Continuum, 2012) 69. 12 Palfrey, xii. 13 Emrys Jones, Scenic Form in Shakespeare (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971) 18. 14 Jones, 28.
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Your existence is in the moment and on the word and thought…. As you speak you will need your emotions to change as the music does. Characters in Shakespeare never get emotionally stuck, like needles on vinyl records.15
Acting is criticism in action. Here, Rodenburg focuses on the immediacy and spontaneity of possible “choices” made by an actors that are continually now. However, she also presents the possibility that the underlying life of a scene could be musical - propelled by its own internal music. At LAMDA, Laban teacher James Kemp, noted that, “you can score any character, musically,”16 suggesting physio-psychological actions can create their own rhythm. Although I could work through Lady Macbeth using Laban techniques, I could also use musical memories, imagination, and awareness to possess her character, thus understanding Lady Macbeth’s “score” and inner motivations.
[By bringing personal, artistic experience to the realm of acting, I find the ability to unearth wider textual options, significant physiological possibilities reminiscent of when I perform or listen to music, and a deeper wellspring of reserves from which to draw during the spontaneity and rhythm of a scene: informing criticism through the moving, physicalized imagination, rather than dividing action from “fair judgement.”]
Macbeth is musically vacuous, although rife with supernatural elements, a dying female, and Middleton’s inserted 17 witches’ songs. The calcified fortress at Dunsinane leaves no room for melody; it remains rooted, earthbound. Although Lady Macbeth is no songstress, her movements, even in the shadows, link Duncan’s filthy murder to sound. In Act 2.2, Macbeth’s
“Is this a dagger” soliloquy is bookended by his wife’s movements, framed by a bell. A dead- ringer. [There’s more, but time is ticking!]
15 Rodenburg, 6-7. 16 James Kemp, “Laban” (London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. 28 March 2013) Lecture. 17 Ed. John Jowett, William Montgomery, Gary Taylor, and Stanley Wells. William Shakespeare: The Complete Works. Second ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005) 969.
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Could the sounds of the language resonate with an adaptation of musical material, superimposed, within the actor’s mind and progression, to create an undercurrent by which to possess the scene? To experiment with possibilities raised by Rodenburg, Kemp, Fuller and
Jones, I revisited Lady Macbeth, pairing close-reading with a musical imagination hopefully to demonstrate to literary criticism how accessing those parts of ourselves that are intrinsic to personal artistic expression can unearth revelations of character, play, or interpretation. This paper acknowledges this approach diverges from a close reading of verse as musical here, another study entirely, and also that this is just the beginning of using musical imagination in such an approach.
Scenes commonly-analysed include Lady Macbeth’s private, then semi-private moments: summoning spirits, berating Macbeth’s masculinity, and dashing her would-be-baby’s brains.
However, within the most public sub-scenes, such as Duncan’s entrance and her reaction to the
“news” of his murder, the “actress” of Lady Macbeth emerges.
Act 1.6 opens with the King entering “under [her] battlements;” the scene insists on Lady
Macbeth becoming a fairer actress than her fretting husband. Through an actor’s possession, we learn of hidden patterns, gestures, and affect. Speaking the lines, the soon-to-be queen’s language demands robust muscularity,18 but in this instance, it is combined with and countered by soothing vowel-laden sounds of rich praise (“in every point twice done, and then done double” vs. “All our service” or “those honours deep and broad wherewith” lines 15, 14, and
16). The first requires articulation that quickly grabs - or jabs - at the consonants, to break them up, conquer them with division and clarity; the second, full of air, connected to the abdominals,
18 Giles Block, Speaking the Speech: An Actor's Guide to Shakespeare (London: Nick Hern Books, 2013), 270, he refers to Macbeth’s verse as possessing “knotty complexity.”
6 Shakespearience 1326590 with a spread out vocal space to exhale lauds. Lady Macbeth here matches her language; she is
“done double,” an actress on the stage of her own making. When enacted and spoken, “hidden” near-duplications emerge, hinted at through alliteration. We might call them shadow doublings, felt only when “on the word,” suggesting the entangling of what’s done being done doubly throughout the play (i.e. murders of Duncan and Banquo equaling the deaths of Lady Macbeth and Macbeth; the bloodied hands “returning” in their respective final scenes).
If I were to envision music to undergird my internal intentions, I would choose a waltz.
Simply put, it is a dance tune in ¾ time, sometimes remembered as “oomp –pah, pah, oomp, pah- pah. PPT SLIDE and BEGIN SINGING.
Act 1.6: “A Little Night Music” A Slow Waltz
In a moment After Duncan Sees me light up darkest regions He will rightly come to shelter, list’ning ever to my chatter. In a waltz sense cover darkness smile and side-step all his graces. “Servants” ever Hosting never. Duncan’s supped tonight!
A waltz begs for schmoozing, while retaining its own simple dignity and agility. As my creative piece suggests, a waltz would allow an actress to tease out Lady’s pastiche-worthy artificiality.
Although Prokofiev-like in effect, the beats would not literally layer beneath the verse; rather, the gentle and steady affectation of 3/4 time would keep me at once grounded and yet moving gracefully; as Lady Macbeth, I would need to stay “on my toes.” As a dance memory, it
Shakespearience 1326590 incorporates a physical-psychological element, where my body recalls swaying, as well as the atmosphere of propriety and polish, in a trippingly cheerful tune. The 1-2-3 internal rhythm causes tri-syllable words and phrases to leap off the page: “majesty,” (18) “dignities” (19) and
“loads our house,” (18) “deep and broad” (17). By using diction, breath, movement, and internal rhythm, the possession of the role becomes forward thinking; she must get to the end of this greeting without slipping up, but with panache. Also, the ease with which she “schmultzes,”
(found through this musical form placed in an actor’s body) demonstrates that she has played a similar role before, perhaps for her husband. It is this pushing the imagination beyond
“understanding” - to “experience” with “each word,” as Rodenburg instructs, that allows one to serve “the humanity within” the plays.19 In the case of musically-related acting, it merges that
“humanity within,” with humanity of my own.
The next form I would like to examine is a fugue. One might say is the most mathematical of musical forms. It is essentially a round, where one voice begins a melody, then another joins in later in repetition. Yet, the two voices are aligned in such a way that they function both independently and dependently, at once melody and harmony. [PLAY A
LITTLE] In their “shared lines,” Lady Macbeth and Macbeth’s dialogue, at times, reminds me of this form. Most striking about her scenes with her “dearest partner of greatness”20 is her attempt to control, through completing the iambic pentameter21 of his lines, the actions and reactions of Macbeth. Act 1.7 features how, in their most intimate moments, the shared lines verify their interconnectedness of mind, will and emotion. Although they do not - literally -
19 Rodenburg, 430. 20 1.5.11 21 Barton and Rodenburg both begin their actor texts emphasizing iambic analysis. My essay assumes this as fundamental.
8 Shakespearience 1326590 finish each others’ sentences, they do finish the rhythm of each others’ lines, nearly without fail.22 Lady Macbeth thrives on this; in fact, she rides on it. When she confronts Macbeth for his absence, she meets every shared line with perfect iambic pentameter, almost jumping into his thoughts. I envision that antiphonal and contrapuntal form of a fugue here, as it demands crispness, clarity, speed; Lady Macbeth’s dominating melody drives, and undermines, his own.
If Act 1.7 is neat, tidy, and contained within the steady rhythmic undercurrent of a fugue, Act 2.2 might be a “Confused Fugue.” Rodenburg similarly suggests that, during this murder scene, “they are playing fast and discordant music.”23 The lines are jagged, incomplete.
Perhaps it a Strauss-like fugue, rather than Bach, with a steady ticking of uncertainty. A discordant fugue that keeps running away from itself. [PPT SLIDE – it’s virtually impossible to sing this, as I imagine a muddled form, and it requires two voices. But I’ll attempt to speak the musical effect – what I imagine underneath the surface of this scene]
Act 2.2. The Confused Fugue The chamber’s messy. Where? Here? Now. How? Perfection comes at a price. Only in the little matter Suspicion minded, hopeless hatters All adrift in scripted catalogues. “Whence is that knocking?” Red engrafted Counterfeit enacted. Doubly, doubly done.
22 lines 35, 45, 59, 72. 23 Rodenburg, 371.
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Within this scene, they cannot settle within the usual shared iambic state; their continual attempts
(and failures) reinforce the gradual splitting of their relationship. Sometimes, the iambic falls into itself, such as the “Did you not speak?” passage.24 If, as a musical actor, I sense this push and pull of an attempted fugue continually going awry, the conflict of pushing and pulling away from one another - while trying to communicate - magnifies the language and lovers’ shiftiness.
Temporarily, Lady Macbeth cannot do what she did in 1.7; her control is already unraveling.
[Yet, again an actress in Act 2.3, she is able to pull together purposeful iambic pentameter in reply to other’s questions and exclamations.]
Yet, by the sleepwalking scene, where her language returns to prose (as when reading
Macbeth’s letter on our first introduction to her), she has lost her fugal partner, her impetus for attempted confinement. Now servant to time’s malfeasance, she rattles between its various folds.
Rather than shifting to melodic interplay of sound and breath, like Ophelia or Desdemona, Lady
Macbeth turns to the dirtiest, rawest of prose, often interrupting herself, imperiled by the possibility of living death. Here, imagination plays a devilish role, a flickering film roll recounting the “cuts” most consequential and deadly, full of blood. Musically, I would practice this scene as an atonal aria - as it remembers the recurring themes from previous scenes, yet jumps through them rapidly, in an abnormal - yet oddly chronological - chromaticism.
[Atonalism characterizes music that is non-Western and does not “center” around a single note – i.e. a piece in C major or G minor. Every note, every interval is acceptable, causing shifty unease and dissonance, while embracing dissonance and the unresolved.] I won’t attempt to sing, get the idea, I’ll play a tiny clip: PLAY A LITTLE.
Here are the lyrics I would imagine -
Act 5.1 - Schoenberg’s Aria
24 lines 16-19.
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A role of contradiction heavenly music descends faster than the weight of thunder Stealing into ever-night. Back to there and here again. Eternity - past and present. Turning choirs into clamours. Captivated ever - imprisoned and released. One, two - Blood still. O, little hand - what’s done cannot be undone.
By recalling that this insanity retains true visions of the past (reminiscent of Ophelia’s “he is dead and gone”), an actor feels the truth of the lines within their initial context while
“resuscitated” in this jagged, anachronistic form.
This paper has ventured into territories – and methods - that may be questionable, perhaps experimenting with acting techniques as much as their effect on literary criticism. It asks how much of oneself - from imagination, values, and even physical body – one may allow to filter into analysis. By encouraging literary criticism to escape its own boundaries and preconditioned agendas, this paper explores how stepping outside the limits of discourse lets one find alternative shadows within the scenes, characters, and physical manifestations of the story.
More broadly, I am interested in how vulnerable we will allow ourselves to be, and for what purpose. Remember, Sir Antony Sher called Macbeth “dangerous.” Yet, what “dangers” do we dare risk, for the sake of creating from internal regions oft-deemed “off limits”? By pairing my artistic imagination and musical awareness with vibrations of the character through my body, this essay experimented with how much the imagination can create when not confined to the mind.
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(For instance, in multiple accounts, actors such as Antony Sher25 and Harriet Walter,26
Judi Dench and Ian McKellen,27 Sian Thomas28 and Greg Hicks shared how their collaboration as Lady Macbeth and Macbeth began by agreeing upon the characters’ history.)
25 Sher, 343. 26 Harriet Walter, Actors on Shakespeare: Macbeth (London: Faber and Faber, 2002) 32. 27 Bernice W. Kliman. Macbeth. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004) 141. 28 Sian Thomas, Performing Shakespeare’s Tragedies Today: An Actor’s Perspective, Ed. Michael Dobson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) 99.
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