24/7 customer support
Professional writers
No plagiarism
Privacy guarantee
Affordable prices
94% of return customers
Free title page
Free bibliography
Free formatting
Free of plagiarism
Free delivery
| Home |
| Order form |
| Contact us |
| Term paper writing |
| Acting |
| That Shakespeare’s plays are suffused with images of acting and the stage should be no surprise. After all, Shakespeare was himself an actor, and we can assume that for the twenty years or so that he was a practicing playwright (averaging nearly two scripts a year), his life revolved around the other members of his company and the environment of the theater. What may take us aback, however, is the variety of meanings and denotations that the theme of “acting” invokes. In some plays, the references imply metaphoric parallels between a character onstage and a human being functioning in the “real world.” In other works, the implications of “acting” resonate more deeply, involving the very attitude with which a character proceeds through life. These figures, Shakespeare suggests, may be aware of the artificiality and fleeting nature of the “roles” they play. Such characters often conclude that they are performing a part in the drama of events that surround them, improvising lines and actions that maintain their performance. Furthermore, when we consider the aggregate of these characters and Shakespeare’s implications about them, we are forced to question the nature of our own existence. To what extent are we, too, playing roles? Ultimately we may ask, both about Shakespeare’s characters and ourselves, to what extent do such roles supersede our own personality? Or is that personality nothing more than the sum of the many parts that we assume, such as spouse, employee, friend, or sibling? Let us begin with those characters who mention theatrical imagery only briefly, but to sharp effect. In King Lear, for instance, the title character, who has been expelled from his home and stranded on the heath, and who now stands battered and nearly mad with grief, removes his crown of weeds and flowers and reflects: When we are born, we cry that we are come To this great stage of fools. (IV, vi, 182–183) This image suggests that human beings are blind to the nature of our condition, that we fail to appreciate what matters in life and to dismiss what is incidental. With these words, Lear also condemns his own actions and attitudes. In Macbeth, on the other hand, the title character, emotionally deadened after the series of murders that he has committed or ordered, as well as the death of his wife, speaks in similar imagery: Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. (V, v, 24–28) Here is a statement of utter resignation. Having sunk to the nadir of the moral scale and believing himself unredeemable, Macbeth has no concern for, nor does he believe in, anything or anyone. Both characters speak in terms of the stage with yet another implication: the brevity of each human life. In the face of such a vision, however, the two react differently. Lear seeks a reordering of priorities, for by this juncture, he has learned that before he is King, he is but a man, with the same needs and feelings of other men. Now he accepts responsibility for his errors, and as his life dwindles away, he seeks only reconciliation with his daughter Cordelia. For him, the image of the stage suggests recognition and understanding. Macbeth, however, is reduced to the belief that existence is meaningless. He sees himself as the victim of temptation by the witches and his wife, a man who under their urging committed senseless violence. First he murdered King Duncan. Then, trying to break free of the witches’ predictions and the future they seemed to set out for him, he murdered Banquo, his erstwhile comrade, and his rival Macduff’s wife and children. Now he presents himself as a pathetic actor, blankly mouthing a pointless script, bereft of all values and therefore all priorities. The brevity of life that Macbeth invokes is expressed most memorably in Shakespeare’s final play, The Tempest. Here Prospero, the Duke who is soon to leave his island of exile and regain political power, uses his magic to create a supernatural theatrical spectacle. Suddenly, however, he remembers that his enemies still flourish, and he dismisses the performers: These our actors (As I foretold you) were all spirits, and Are melted into air, into thin air, And like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp’d tow’rs, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, And like this insubstantial pageant faded Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on; and our little life Is rounded with a sleep. (IV, i, 148–158) Since The Tempest was almost certainly the final play that Shakespeare wrote alone, most audiences conclude that this speech should be understood as the playwright’s farewell to his art. Prospero dwells on the transience of all human effort, and the reference to “the globe,” the name of the theater where so many of Shakespeare’s works were performed, seems to imply that the playwright believes that his own works are themselves transitory. Like so much of human existence, they will live for only so long as the people of his time can remember. Is Shakespeare commenting upon the impermanence of theatrical art, which perishes at the end of each performance, or, indeed, of all human endeavour? Or is he perhaps suggesting that such impermanence makes the entire human experience that much more precious? Prospero’s tone is wistful. Another equally famous, yet far grimmer statement about the theatrical quality of human life is uttered in As You Like It by the forest philosopher, Jaques. He begins: All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. (II, vii, 139–143) The opening tone is gentle, but what follows is a bitter catalogue that presents human life from an increasingly gloomy perspective. Humanity proceeds from infancy, “Mewling and puking” (II, vii, 144), to unhappy schoolboy, to pining lover, to brutal soldier, to severe judge, to aging lothario, to helpless victim of age: “Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing” (II, vii, 166). Jaques presents life as a compilation of miseries, one unhappy posture after the other. At every moment, he implies, we should be conscious that we are forever aging and dying. The title character of Shakespeare’s late tragedy Coriolanus also expe riences a revelation about the quality of his life. After the Roman general Martius conquers the city of Corioles and earns the title “Coriolanus,” he is urged by his supporters to campaign, as it were, for consul of Rome by standing before its citizens and revealing his wounds. Martius replies: It is a part That I shall blush in acting, and might well Be taken from the people. (II, ii, 144–146) He understands that performance is a necessary aspect of politics, but believes himself unable to carry it out properly. After he fails, though, he is urged by his ambitious mother, Volumnia, to try again, and once more he invokes the image of acting, this time with different implications: Why did you wish me milder? Would you have me False to my nature? Rather say, I play The man I am. (III, ii, 14–16) Coriolanus suggests that he has always behaved violently, but only because his mother encouraged him to act according to this aspect of his personality. The audience understands, however, that Coriolanus’s personality has been shaped totally by his mother, that this violent predilection is the product of her indoctrination. We never see the young Martius, but we are led to believe that even had he been born with different inclinations, his mother’s instruction would have destroyed them. In other words, she set out a role in life for him to play, and he has carried it off brilliantly, if unhappily. Only now is he beginning to realize as much: You have put me now to such a part which never I shall discharge to th’ life. (III, ii, 105–106) He understands that the role of politician is one for which he is entirely unsuited. By the end of the play, however, he articulates that his entire life has been the performance of a part that he has always despised: Like a dull actor now I have forgot my part, and I am out, Even to a full disgrace. (V, iii, 40–42) Whatever other instincts and talents young Martius might have had were crushed under the authority of Volumnia’s discipline. The role as a soldier usurped his personality completely. The title character of Richard II is likewise an actor, although, unlike Martius, he is less conscious of the theatrical nature of his performance, yet ironically far more successful when he indulges it. For instance, when he surrenders the crown to Bullingbrook, the future Henry IV, Richard “performs” his abdication with more brilliance than he ever “performed” his duties as King: With mine own tears I wash away my balm, With mine own hands I give away my crown, With mine own tongue deny my sacred state, With mine own breath release all duteous oaths… (IV, i, 207–210) Clearly, a master showman is at work. The Duke of York, however, Richard’s uncle and a fervent supporter of the crown, pierces to the core of Richard’s kingship. Earlier he commented: Yet looks he like a king! Behold, his eye, As bright as is the eagle’s, lightens forth Controlling majesty. Alack, alack, for woe, That any harm should stain so fair a show! (III, iii, 68–71) Once Richard has abdicated, York completes the image: As in a theatre the eyes of men, After a well-graced actor leaves the stage, Are idly bent on him that enters next, Thinking his prattle to be tedious, Even so, or with much more contempt, men’s eyes Did scowl on gentle Richard. (V, ii, 23–27) In his final soliloquy, the King at last sees the truth: Thus play I in one person many people, And none contented. Sometimes am I king; Then treasons make me wish myself a beggar, And so I am. Then crushing penury Persuades me I was better when a king… (V, v, 31–35) That Richard has always been at heart an actor and poet who is hopelessly ill-suited to the throne makes him, like Coriolanus, a sympathetic figure. All the characters discussed thus far have been analyzed as actors on what we might call “the stage of life.” In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare dramatizes an even closer connection between life and theater by creating an actual play-within-a-play. When Bottom and his fellow mechanicals of the acting company prepare their version of “Pyramus and Thisbe,” they struggle with the concept of how their audience will distinguish the action onstage from reality. For instance, Bottom suggests that someone must take on the role of “Wall”; otherwise the spectators will have to imagine the chink through which the lovers whisper (III, i, 67–71). Similarly, he worries that any enactment of a lion will frighten the audience (III, i, 29–34) and that the death of Pyramus, as played by Bottom himself, will prove so realistic as to disturb the ladies. We laugh at his inability to grasp that those who watch a dramatic presentation understand that what they see onstage is fiction. Yet Bottom does in fact intuit a more important truth: that all audiences have the capacity to suspend disbelief, that part of the magic of theater is our eagerness to believe what we know to be patently false. Thus when the hilariously bizarre version of “Pyramus and Thisbe” is performed before the royal couple, Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons who is betrothed to Theseus, says of the tormented Pyramus, “Beshrew my heart, but I pity the man” (V, i, 290). Her words move us, because we who have been watching the antics of the four lovers, Hermia, Helena, Lysander, and Demetrius, have been inspired to laughter and emotion by their plight. Through the burlesque of Bottom and his cohorts, therefore, Shakespeare reminds us of the power of drama to arouse passions possibly stronger than those inspired by life itself. Hence the attraction and fascination of the stage and, indeed, of all art. The apotheosis of many of Shakespeare’s implications about the relationship of acting and theater to life may be found in the mind of one character: Hamlet. From virtually his opening lines, we realize that he is preoccupied with acting and the need to distinguish a person’s genuine personality from any role that he or she assumes. For instance, speaking to Queen Gertrude, his mother, about the grief which she claims he is affecting, Hamlet says of his behavior: These indeed seem, For they are actions that a man might play, But I have that within which passes show, These but the trappings and the suits of woe. (I, ii, 83–86) He is obsessed with honesty, tormented by the hypocrisy that Gertrude, King Claudius, and others in the court exude. Thus to Hamlet, acting is a vehicle for dishonesty. Yet after he greets the company of Players, Hamlet’s soliloquy shows that he also believes that theater is a vehicle for revelation: Hum—I have heard That guilty creatures sitting at a play Have by the very cunning of the scene Been strook so to the soul, that presently They have proclaim’d their malefactions… (II, ii, 588–592) Hamlet suggests that a work of art can bring from an audience responses that might otherwise remain submerged. We are more honest in our reactions to art than to life. At this juncture, Hamlet also resolves to use an imaginary stage to fulfill the mission that has frustrated him: he plans to carry out his role of revenger in a theater of his own creation. Thus far, he has been unable to follow the directive of his father, the Ghost, and unable to take action against Claudius. Now Hamlet resolves to escape his own self, in a sense, and become an actor playing the part of revenger on the stage of the court of Elsinore. Playing such a part will give Hamlet the freedom he spoke of earlier in this speech, when he envied the Player’s capacity to mourn in character more effectively than Hamlet as himself (II, ii, 551–567). Thus for Hamlet, the stage, the mode of acting, provides the freedom to carry out his deepest desires, to reveal himself more completely than he dares to do in the “real world.” In Act III, scene ii, Hamlet confronts the Players with specific directions about how they should perform the script that he has composed for them. We may take this counsel on several levels. The first is literal: Hamlet genuinely seeks to have his text performed properly. The second may be insinuation by Shakespeare himself, advising his own actors how they should perform: by speaking clearly, refraining from excessive gesture, and controlling passion (III, ii, 1–14). On a third level, however, we may interpret Hamlet’s advice as self-instruction: Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o’erstep not the modesty of nature: for any thing so o’erdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold as ’twere the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. (III, ii, 16–24) Yet as much as he advocates moderation, Hamlet in his own personal performance will be unable to maintain control. During the production of “The Murder of Gonzago,” when Hamlet hopes to trap Claudius by presenting before the King the reenactment of a murder carried out in much the same manner as Claudius’s murder of Hamlet’s father, the Prince is so outlandish with his interruptions and asides that he obliterates his earlier dictum: “… the play’s the thing/ Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King” (II, ii, 604–605). Instead, Hamlet overplays his part, disrupts the performance, and destroys his own standing in the court. Finally, one last level of meaning in the passage quoted above may remind us of Shakespeare’s own faith in the power of all art: the capacity to reveal humanity to itself. After all, what may a playwright and a company of actors be said to do but take our daily experiences, crystallize them into compositions built of action and language, and thereby reveal the glories, defeats, absurdities, and sorrows of the human experience? That is the cause to which Shakespeare devoted his life, and the result is a single volume of plays that represents one of the wondrous achievements in the history of the human spirit. |
| < Prev |
|---|
24/7 customer support
Written from scratch papers only
Any citation style
Fully referenced
Never resold papers
275 words per page Courier New font