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prof_pangaeaDAVID WARNER IN HAMLET
by Mary Z. Maher and William Shakespeare
Depending on whom you're listening to, David Warner may have been the best Hamlet of this century... or the worst.
When David Warner was performing Hamlet at the RSC one evening, a member of the audience actually entered the play. It was near the end of the second act, just after Hamlet dismisses Rosencrantz and Guilderstern. With a sigh of relief, Warner breathed,
Now I am alone.
He raked the stalls with his eyes, scooping in the
balcony with a wide look, and then began the soliloquy:
O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is it not monstruous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his whole conceit
That from her working, all his visage wanned,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in 's aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing.
For Hecuba!
The audience followed him closely. He gave the natural builds in the speech, moving through:
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? What would he do
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears,
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
Make mad the guilty and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculty of eyes and ears. Yet I,
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can't say nothing - no, not for a king
Upon whose property and most dear life
A damned defeat was made.
At the series of short questions begining with:
Am I a coward?
Warner paused, just to think about what he'd said. Surprisingly, one of the spectators shouted, "Yes!"
Warner responded:
Who calls me villain, breaks my pate across,
Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face,
Tweaks me by the nose, gives me the lie i'th' throat
As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this?
And now a name was shouted from the audience! Warner was excited and responded with some vehemence:
Hah, 'swounds, I should take it; for it cannot be
That I am pigeon-liver'd...
Warner remembered this as one of the most exhilarating nights of his acting career. He was stunned with the rightness of feeling and the naturalness of speaking these soliloquy lines to the theatre audience. The text supported him absolutly. No adjusments in timing, motivation or thought needed the be made. He was still making discoveries inside the act of performance, and it filled him with a sense of awe about Shakespeare dramaturgy.
http://www.geocities.com/baddi_101/map.html
by Mary Z. Maher and William Shakespeare
Depending on whom you're listening to, David Warner may have been the best Hamlet of this century... or the worst.
When David Warner was performing Hamlet at the RSC one evening, a member of the audience actually entered the play. It was near the end of the second act, just after Hamlet dismisses Rosencrantz and Guilderstern. With a sigh of relief, Warner breathed,
Now I am alone.
He raked the stalls with his eyes, scooping in the
balcony with a wide look, and then began the soliloquy:
O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is it not monstruous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his whole conceit
That from her working, all his visage wanned,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in 's aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing.
For Hecuba!
The audience followed him closely. He gave the natural builds in the speech, moving through:
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? What would he do
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears,
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
Make mad the guilty and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculty of eyes and ears. Yet I,
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can't say nothing - no, not for a king
Upon whose property and most dear life
A damned defeat was made.
At the series of short questions begining with:
Am I a coward?
Warner paused, just to think about what he'd said. Surprisingly, one of the spectators shouted, "Yes!"
Warner responded:
Who calls me villain, breaks my pate across,
Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face,
Tweaks me by the nose, gives me the lie i'th' throat
As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this?
And now a name was shouted from the audience! Warner was excited and responded with some vehemence:
Hah, 'swounds, I should take it; for it cannot be
That I am pigeon-liver'd...
Warner remembered this as one of the most exhilarating nights of his acting career. He was stunned with the rightness of feeling and the naturalness of speaking these soliloquy lines to the theatre audience. The text supported him absolutly. No adjusments in timing, motivation or thought needed the be made. He was still making discoveries inside the act of performance, and it filled him with a sense of awe about Shakespeare dramaturgy.
http://www.geocities.com/baddi_101/map.html
