Monologues from Shakespeare’s First Folio for Any Gender: The Histories

PREFACE AND BRIEF BACKGROUND TO THE FIRST FOLIO

WHY ANOTHER SERIES OF SOLILOQUY BOOKS?

There has been an enormous change in theatre organisation recent in the last twenty years. While the major large-scale companies have continued to flourish, many small theatre companies have come into being, leading to

much doubling

cross gender casting, with many one time male roles now being played legitimately by/as women in updated time-period productions

young actors being asked to play leading roles at far earlier points in their careers

All this has meant actors should be able to demonstrate enormous flexibility rather than one limited range/style. In turn, this has meant

a change in audition expectations

actors are often expected to show more range than ever before

often several shorter audition speeches are asked for instead of one or two longer ones

sometimes the initial auditions are conducted in a shorter amount of time

Thus, to stay at the top of the game, the actor needs more knowledge of what makes the play tick, especially since

early plays demand a different style from the later ones

the four genres (comedy, history, tragedy, and the peculiar romances) all have different acting/textual requirements

parts originally written for the older, more experienced actors again require a different approach from those written for the younger ones, as the young roles, especially the female ones, were played by young actors extraordinarily skilled in the arts of rhetoric

There’s now much more knowledge of how the original quarto and folio texts can add to the rehearsal exploration/acting and directing process as well as to the final performance.

Each speech is made up of four parts

a background to the speech, placing it in the context of the play, and offering line length and an approximate timing to help you choose what might be right for any auditioning occasion

a modern text version of the speech, with the sentence structure clearly delineated side by side with

a folio version of the speech, where modern texts changes to the capitalization, spelling and sentence structure can be plainly seen

a commentary explaining the differences between the two texts, and in what way the original setting can offer you more information to explore

Thus if they wish, beginners can explore just the background and the modern text version of the speech.

An actor experienced in exploring the Folio can make use of the background and the Folio version of the speech

And those wanting to know as many details as possible and how they could help define the deft stepping stones of the arc of the speech can use all four elements on the page.

The First Folio

(FOR LIST OF CURRENT REPRODUCTIONS SEE BIBLIOGRAPHY

The end of 1623 saw the publication of the justifiably famed First Folio (F1). The single volume, published in a run of approximately 1,000 copies at the princely sum of one pound (a tremendous risk, considering that a single play would sell at no more than six pence, one fortieth of F1’s price, and that the annual salary of a schoolmaster was only ten pounds), contained thirty-six plays.

The manuscripts from which each F1 play would be printed came from a variety of sources. Some had already been printed. Some came from the playhouse complete with production details. Some had no theatrical input at all, but were handsomely copied out and easy to read. Some were supposedly very messy, complete with first draft scribbles and crossings out. Yet, as Charlton Hinman, the revered dean of First Folio studies describes F1 in the Introduction to the Norton Facsimile:

It is of inestimable value for what it is, for what it contains. For here are preserved the masterworks of the man universally recognized as our greatest writer; and preserved, as Ben Jonson realized at the time of the original publication, not for an age but for all time.

WHAT DOES F1 REPRESENT?

texts prepared for actors who rehearsed three days for a new play and one day for one already in the repertoire

written in a style (rhetoric incorporating debate) so different from ours (grammatical) that many modern alterations based on grammar (or poetry) have done remarkable harm to the rhetorical/debate quality of the original text and thus to interpretations of characters at key moments of stress.

written for an acting company the core of which steadily grew older, and whose skills and interests changed markedly over twenty years as well as for an audience whose make-up and interests likewise changed as the company grew more experienced

The whole is based upon supposedly the best documents available at the time, collected by men closest to Shakespeare throughout his career, and brought to a single printing house whose errors are now widely understood - far more than those of some of the printing houses that produced the original quartos.

TEXTUAL SOURCES FOR THE AUDITION SPEECHES

Individual modern editions consulted in the preparation of the Modern Text version of the speeches are listed in the Bibliography under the separate headings ‘The Complete Works in Compendium Format’ and ‘The Complete Works in Separate Individual Volumes.’ Most of the modern versions of the speeches are a compilation of several of these texts. However, all modern act, scene and/or line numbers refer the reader to The Riverside Shakespeare, in my opinion still the best of the complete works despite the excellent compendiums that have been published since.

The First Folio versions of the speeches are taken from a variety of already published sources, including not only all the texts listed in the ‘Photostatted Reproductions in Compendium Format’ section of the Bibliography, but also earlier, individually printed volumes, such as the twentieth century editions published under the collective title The Facsimiles of Plays from The First Folio of Shakespeare by Faber & Gwyer, and the nineteenth century editions published on behalf of The New Shakespeare Society.

INTRODUCTION

So, congratulations, you’ve got an audition, and for a Shakespeare play no less.

You’ve done all your homework, including, hopefully, reading the whole play to see the full range and development of the character.

You’ve got an idea of the character, the situation in which you/it finds it self (the given circumstances); what your/its needs are (objectives / intentions); and what you intend to do about them (action / tactics).

You’ve looked up all the unusual words in a good dictionary or glossary; you’ve turned to a well edited modern edition to find out what some of the more obscure references mean.

And those of you who understand metre and rhythm have worked on the poetic values of the speech, and you are word perfect…

… and yet it’s still not working properly and/or you feel there’s more to be gleaned from the text, but you’re not sure what that something is or how to go about getting at it; in other words, all is not quite right, yet.

THE KEY QUESTION

What text have you been working with - a good modern text or an ‘original’ text, that is a copy of one of the first printings of the play?

If it’s a modern text, no matter how well edited (and there are some splendid single copy editions available, see the Bibliography for further details), despite all the learned information offered, it’s not surprising you feel somewhat at a loss, for there is a huge difference between the original printings (the First Folio, and the individual quartos, see Appendix 1 for further details) and any text prepared after 1700 right up to the most modern of editions. All the post 1700 texts have been tidied-up for the modern reader to ingest silently, revamped according to the rules of correct grammar, syntax and poetry. However the ‘originals’ were prepared for actors speaking aloud playing characters often in a great deal of emotional and/or intellectual stress, and were set down on paper according to the very flexible rules of rhetoric and a seemingly very cavalier attitude towards the rules of grammar, and syntax, and spelling, and capitalisation, and even poetry.

Unfortunately, because of the grammatical and syntactical standardisation in place by the early 1700’s, many of the quirks and oddities of the origin al so have been dismissed as ‘accidental’ - usually as compositor error either in deciphering the original manuscript, falling prey to their own particular idosyncracies, or not having calculated correctly the amount of space needed to set the text. Modern texts dismiss the possibility that these very quirks and oddities may be by Shakespeare, hearing his characters in as much difficulty as poor Peter Quince is in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (when he, as the Prologue, terrified and struck down by stage fright, makes a huge grammatical hash in introducing his play ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’ before the aristocracy, whose acceptance or otherwise, can make or break him)

If we offend, it is with our good will.

That you should think, we come not to offend,

But with good will.

To show our simple skill,

That is the true beginning of our end.

Consider then, we come but in despite.

We do not come, as minding to content you,

Our true intent is.

All for your delight

We are not here.

That you should here repent you,

The Actors are at hand; and by their show,

You shall know all, that you are like to know.

(AMidsummerNight’sDream)

In many other cases in the complete works what was originally printed is equally ‘peculiar,’ but, unlike Peter Quince, these peculiarities are usually regularised by most modern texts.

However, this series of volumes is based on the belief - as the following will show - that most of these ‘peculiarities’ resulted from Shakespeare setting down for his actors the stresses, trials, and tribulations the characters are experiencing as they think and speak, and thus are theatrical gold-dust for the actor, director, scholar, teacher, and general reader alike.

THE FIRST ESSENTIAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TWO TEXTS

THINKING

A modern text can show

the story line

your character’s conflict with the world at large

your character’s conflict with certain individuals within that world

but because of the very way an ‘original’ text was set, it can show you all this plus one key extra, the very thing that makes big speeches what they are

the conflict within the character

WHY?

Any good playwright writes about characters in stressful situations who are often in a state of conflict not only with