Working on Shakespeare strengthens your acting muscles just like going to the gym tightens your glutes and abs.
The first step in approaching Shakespeare is to examine the language. Pick a monologue for yourself (or use Sonnet 29) and look up the words you don’t know. You should also look up the words you do know that are repeated or are used in ways that make you stop and wonder about their meaning. When you understand them all, paraphrase the text, meaning say it in your own words.
Then underline the verbs, which are the action words that drive a line or speech. Circle the nouns, which name the people, places, and things that are being acted on. Later, you’ll be emphasizing those words. Look for rhymes and repetitions and note them.
Look at the punctuation marks and understand that they are like the rests in music, notations that alter the tempo-rhythm while giving the words and phrases meaning. Periods, commas, colons, and semi-colons are all different and each one has it’s own usage and pause length. Also, notice places where the very language itself and the process of articulating words force you to slow down or enables you to speed up.
What you are seeing is what the writer heard in his mind’s ear. Becoming aware of these basic linguistic elements will help you to act a text whether it is one year old or 400 years old.
Sonnet 29
When in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love rememb’red such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
Eric Barr. All rights reserved
