How to Speak Shakespearean Verse

A trained actor knows how to make his or her craft disappear into the character.

It may seem like a difficult challenge to read and grasp Shakespearean verse. It may feel even more daunting to speak. Classically trained actors and directors use several techniques to make a Shakespeare play clear to an audience. They are found in the text and make Shakespeare's images and ideas come alive. John Barton, co-founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-upon Avon, called them "hidden directions." The first step when preparing a Shakespeare verse monologue for performance or class is to find these guides within the words.

Things You'll Need

• Shakespeare play with footnotes
• Photocopy of verse monologue
• Pencil
• Dictionary
• Paper

Instructions

1. Read the entire play at least twice. Write down what you think are the play's themes and what role your character plays in the story. Read your monologue from the play with these ideas in mind.

2. Use a dictionary or the notes at the bottom of the play's page to discover the meaning of words you may not know. Check to see if a word may have more than one meaning and is being used as a pun or play on words.

3. Note the words you are drawn to. Write down what they make you think of and if there are any feelings attached to them. Pay attention to words with sharp consonants or lush vowel sounds. They may be there for the speaker to emphasize and use to express an idea or emotion.

4. Write out the monologue using your own words. Think of how a modern character would express the ideas. Read the original monologue again with the contemporary words in mind.

5. Read the monologue out loud. Note punctuation. Take a breath at a period or a short breath at a comma. Do not take a full breath at the end of every line, as that will break up the sentence flow.

6. Read the monologue out loud again. Think of who you are speaking to. Use a person from your own life to create an imaginary listener.

7. Read the monologue out loud as many times as necessary till the words flow with ease. Memorize the text to free yourself to perform it.

Tips & Warnings

• Shakespeare wrote verse in iambic pentameter. Iamb means a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable and pentameter means five pairs of iambs in a line. It is not different from the way we speak today. The line, "If music be the food of love, play on." from "Twelfth Night" stresses the first syllable in music, be, food, love and on. Finding where the stresses are in a sentence can clarify the monologue's main ideas.

• Deloss Brown, former Julliard instructor of Shakespearean verse acting, winner of the Shubert Prize for playwriting and lyricist, imparts this advice: "Once you know the dictionary meanings of the words, put your emotions in neutral and say the words out loud, while asking yourself, 'What does this make me think of? It is up to the actor to figure out what the monologue means to him or her, and then to tell his or her story to the audience, using the words that Shakespeare wrote. If you talk like a human being, honestly, a lot of the verse mechanics will take care of themselves."

References

• "Playing Shakespeare"; John Barton; 1984
• "The Actor and The Text"; Cicely Berry; 1987
• Deloss Brown; Personal Interview; May 15, 2010

Resources

• MIT: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare