Hamlet Oral Reading

Your task: Read aloud approximately one page of text from Shakespeare’s Hamlet with appropriate and effective volume, pacing and expression, such that your understanding of the text’s meaning is evident and that meaning is enhanced by your reading.

Guidelines and Procedures:  You may work alone, with a partner or in a group of three.  Each actor must have approximately the same number of lines in the scene you select, to total approximately 30 lines apiece (one page, or so, EACH).  Select a scene that moves you in some way, a scene that “speaks to you.”  Read “How to Use Punctuation to Read Shakespeare.”  Read the entire scene silently several times to figure out as much of the meaning on your own as you can. (Do not forget to use your margin notes.)  If you have a partner or partners, discuss your interpretations of the scene. If not, proceed with:  Complete the “Workshop: Verse Speaking Exercises for Shakespearean Plays” with your group (or alone, if you have chosen a soliloquy). You do not need to copy all parts of the scene, just your own. To be able to pick up on your cues, though, you need to put all the names of all characters in the order in which they speak and the last two or three words of each speech.  Complete the “Hamlet Reading Planning Sheet.” You only need one per group, but each member should fill out all parts pertaining to his or her character. Use the back of the sheet if you need to; if you do, make certain to label all continuations clearly.  Rehearse the scene, committing as much of it to memory as you are able. How to Use Punctuation to Read Shakespeare

Clues in the punctuation

Shakespeare's use of punctuation is sometimes quite different from the way we use punctuation today. He used it to signal how each line should be delivered. Punctuation forces the reader to pause and slows down the pace of the text. Lines without punctuation naturally seem to gather momentum and emotional energy.

 Full stop (.) Full stops naturally bring the sense and energy of the line to a close.

 Infrequent commas (,) A comma forces a slight pause in delivery to reflect a tiny development or shift in the character’s thought process.

For example, read aloud Malvolio’s line from Twelfth Night: “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.” Did you notice how the commas forced you to pause and split this sentence into three parts?

 Repetition of commas (,) Commas can also cause a line to gather in emotional intensity. If you see lots of commas together, evenly spaced and splitting the lines into small snappy chunks, then this is Shakespeare’s way of asking you to emotionally invest in the dialogue and build up its rhythmic intensity, as in this example from King Lear:

... No, no, no life! Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life, And thou no breath at all? Thou’it come no more; Never, never, never, never, never.

 Colon (:) A colon signals that the next line should sound as if it is responding to the previous line, as in Hamlet’s “To be, or not to be: that is the question.”

Do Not Add Punctuation

If you’re reading aloud a speech written in verse, you may feel the need to pause at the end of each line. Do not do this unless the punctuation specifically requires you to do so. Try to carry the sense of what you’re saying into the next line, and you’ll soon discover the correct rhythm of the speech.

You should think of a Shakespearean play as a blueprint for performance. All the clues are there in the text if you know what you’re looking for, and with a little practice, you’ll soon discover that there’s nothing hard about reading Shakespeare’s dialogue aloud.

http://shakespeare.about.com/od/shakespeareinperformance/a/Read_Aloud.htm Workshop: Verse Speaking Exercises for Shakespearean Plays

Choose a lengthy speech by any character in a Shakespearean play, copy it over as if it were plain prose, and read it aloud while walking around. Physically change direction every time you reach a comma, colon or full stop. This will force you to see that each clause in a sentence suggests a new thought or idea for your character.

1. Repeat this exercise, but instead of changing direction, say the words “comma” and “full stop” out loud when you get to the punctuation. This exercise helps heighten your awareness of where there is punctuation in your speech and what its purpose is. 2. Using the same text, take a pen and underline what you think are the natural stress words. If you spot an often repeated word, underline that as well. Then practice speaking the text with an emphasis on these key stress words. 3. Using the same speech, speak it aloud, forcing yourself to make a physical gesture on every underlined word. This gesture can be clearly connected to the word (for example a finger point on “him”) or can be more abstract. This exercise helps you to value every word in the text, but again it will make you prioritize the correct stresses because you will naturally gesture more when saying key words.

Finally and above all, keep speaking the words aloud and enjoying the physical act of speech. This enjoyment is the key to all good verse speaking.

Performance Tips

A common mistake is to always pause for breath at the end of a line. As Shakespeare often writes sentences that go across lines, this tendency to breathe at the end of the line will distort the meaning and create an unnatural intonation.

Be aware of the natural stress rhythms in the verse but don’t allow them to dominate your delivery of the line. Instead look at the line in its entirety and decide where your stress should go.

Listen to the beautiful imagery and poetic elements of the verse and close your eyes when saying the words. Allow the imagery to form pictures in your mind. This will help you find meaning and substance in your lines. If you connect imaginatively with the language, you will naturally speak the words more effectively.

Listen carefully to the colliding rhythms and sounds in Shakespeare’s verse. Often repeated words, harmonic sounds and clashing sounds help you to understand Shakespeare’s intentions and the motivations of your character.

Obviously, use a dictionary if the context doesn’t present you with the meaning of a word you say. Not knowing the meaning of one of your words can be a problem. If you don’t know what it means, the chances are the audience won’t either!

Always use the punctuation in order to discover the natural places to pause or breathe when speaking verse. Hamlet Reading Planning Sheet

Name(s)

Act, scene and lines chosen

Characters in scene

Scene summary

Primary emotions displayed by each character in scene

Motivation/intention of each character in scene

Significant actions/movements as evidenced in text (use line numbers)

Questions/issues