TEXT ANALYSIS - Larry Gleason
TEXT ANALYSIS
WorkBook
By Larry Gleason
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TEXT ANALYSIS
An Overview
There are two methods of preparing a text for scene study or rehearsal: intuitive and analytical. The goal of this class is to help you merge the two. I want your intuitive side to be less of a gamble and more informed; rare is the actor who can wing it every time and come out smelling like a rose. Conversely, I want your technical work to help you get out of your head and better feed your emotional life; there is nothing more frustrating than watching a technical actor who doesn’t move us.
Most of this work is done before rehearsal begins and in its very early stages. Once you get into the text analysis groove you will find that you will get to the meat sooner--cold readings become easy and alive, first read-throughs make sense and your ability to get the work on its feet fast will increase. Then, as rehearsal progresses (and even in the run of the play), you will learn to go back to the text to fine-tune things once the director and other actors provide new stimuli and information.
Text analysis makes obvious how the playwright writes. Good playwrights have definitive styles. Through use of language, imagery and construction, playwrights load their plays with unique clues for you to mine and make your job easier. It is up to the actor to unearth these clues. These clues not only come from what your character says, but what other characters say to you and, often in scenes you are not even in, about you. The clues also come from what the playwright says about you (and the play) through the use of punctuation, scene descriptions and parenthetical clarifications. I want you to pay attention to all of the written text. This is a point of contention among teachers. Some ask you to cross out the playwright’s instructions leaving only that which is spoken and there is merit to that. For now, however, you must learn to take all that is given to you and use it (or not).
Text analysis also makes obvious what the playwright doesn’t write. We will learn to pay attention to that as well.
We begin from an historic point of view. Plays and playwrights have evolved since Greek times. Play construction has changed just as sure and as regular as the world of art, politics, science and society. Clues from William Shakespeare’s time are different from Anton Chekov’s. Tennessee Williams and David Mamet, though both considered 20th century contemporary playwrights, provide clues very, very differently. As we approach the present timeline, it is as if every playwright worth their salt has a complete language all their own that must be learned to get to the heart and spirit of their work.
Yet, thankfully, these clues are variations on a theme. Once we learn what basics are common to all playwrights, we can easily navigate the unique waters each playwright invites us to travel.
Suggested Books:
Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea (Why The Greeks Matter) by Thomas Cahill (Historical Theatrical Context)
Respect For Acting by Uta Hagen (Building a character using the text)
The Actor and His Text by Cecily Berry (Working with Shakespearean and Classical Text)
Shakespeare Lexicon and Quotation Dictionary Vols. I & II by Alexander Schmidt (All of Shakespeare’s words defined and given context) AND/OR:
Shakespeare’s Words by David Crystal & Ben Crystal
Pronouncing Shakespeare’s Words by Dale F. Coye (Correct pronunciation of names, places and his most difficult words.
See website, , for more Shakespearean source and references books.
What The Script And The Playwright Are Trying To Tell Us
In the aftermath of a fire the average person sees nothing but char that looks the same everywhere. He has no clue where to begin to understand what happened. But a trained person, like a fire inspector, immediately picks out all the clues as to source, method of ignition, direction of spread, speed, intensity and so on. When faced with a script the average actor sees only words and has no clue where to begin to understand what his character is about. But a superior actor with a trained eye picks clues out immediately and endlessly and therefore has more resources as to how to approach his role. As a result everything comes much faster—the source of his character, what ignites him, his direction or path in the play, his internal speed, his intensity of desire and so on.
Good playwrights are the creators of theatrical fire. They create their own textual styles and burn into their scripts clues how they want their plays and characters approached. In Shakespeare, the structure dictates where we will find the who-what-when-where-why -- it is all in the words. As we approach the modern era, more and more is delegated to stage directions and non-verbal descriptions. Still, we must ask and answer the same questions. No matter the script, no matter the playwright, we need to examine the text and compile the evidence given to us.
So let’s approach the script the way an audience encounters a brand new play. When the curtain goes up, an audience immediately starts asking questions, questions and more questions: Where are we? Who is that person up there? What is it that they want? How are they going to get it? What is in their way? Why is she wearing fuchsia? And so on. The idea of starting with a tabula rasa or a clean slate, like the average audience member, is appealing. Let’s start there.
Using our clean slate we must glean everything from what the playwright provides. Everything on the page is fair game when putting together a character and making acting choices. Below are four kinds of examinations we can do simultaneously as we analyze our scripts. They are grouped only for content and need not be asked in any particular order. However, in the end we should have answers for all our questions. Eventually we will be able to do this on the fly. But until we are very skilled in our examinations, we need to make a habit of jotting down our impressions as we read the play. Some impressions will remain constant; some will morph from scene to scene and even moment to moment. As we work, know that even the most revered actors of our time keep journals with this kind of thorough bookwork every time they approach a script of merit.
Notice that The Four Examinations ask questions from an all-encompassing point of view, before we take the side of one character or another. But if you are already cast and want to discover the play through one set of eyes these same questions can be asked simply by reframing them in the first person, i.e. Who am I? What surrounds me?
THE FOUR EXAMINATIONS
Examination One -- The Characters
Quoting or referencing the text of the play, answer the following questions:
a) Who is this person? Who are these people? (Ages, professions, persuasions.)
b) Where are they? What surrounds them? What is their environment? (Geographically, physically, emotionally)
c) What time is it? (Year, season, day, hour, minute)
d) What are their circumstances in the play? What are the events at hand? How are the characters inextricably tied to these events?
e) What are the relationships in the play? (Familial, social, etc.)
f) What does each person need in the play? What does each person need at any given point in the play?
g) What obstacles are in each of their ways? Who and/or what is in their way?
h) What do they do in each scene to get what they need? What tactics do they use?
i) What does each character say about herself or himself? What do they say about others?
j) What kind of logic do they use? What is their outlook on life? What is the lens they use that colors their thoughts?
k) What is each character’s fatal flaw (or flaws)?
And, if not now, then later as we return to the text for further impressions:
l) How does each character walk, talk, move and listen? What character traits for each character can be textually justified by fact or inference?
“Lear has charisma as well as a fatal flaw, which is that he can’t surrender his daughter to another man.”—Patsy Rodenburg
Examination Two -- The Playwright
The playwright’s style of writing needs to be examined, too. We must know what we are dealing with. Is it melodrama, naturalistic, in verse, in prose? How we glean our facts will change according to style. The rules will be different in each case -- what is natural and real changes with each generation of playwrights, how silence and pauses are built into a script change from playwright to playwright. Yet we must ask the same questions. So unique are the voices today that we have coined names for certain styles, i.e., the “Pinter Pause,” “Mametspeak,” etc. Even a cursory glance at the way the text is printed on the page tells us we cannot treat one playwright like another. To help us, the following items should be examined. Again, let’s build a list of our impressions as they hit us. Don’t worry about each individual note we make, let’s just keep building our list. It’s the sum total of impressions we are after.
Quoting or referencing the text of the play, get a sense of the how the playwright uses:
a) Imagery. Look for symbolism, repeated words and references, moods, specific descriptions, metaphor and simile. What pictures does the playwright create?
b) Qualities/Substance of the Words. Is it poetic or plain speak? Terse or verbose? Short sentences or long? Do all characters speak similarly or are there differences? Does the quality shift from time to time? How so?
c) Writing Styles. How does the text look on the page? How does the playwright use punctuation? Commas, dashes, ellipses, periods, italics, etc. are used differently by each playwright to denote thought patterns, rhythm, speed, silence, pauses, overlaps, etc.
Examination Three--Movement In The Text
The third examination is the Movement In The Text. The reason we speak is because there was a need created in the line or moment before (Reaction). We react because we find disagreement or discordance in what was said (the moment we say, “No”); we can also find agreement and concordance (the moment we say, “Yes”), but we are never truly in absolute and perfect harmony with the other person, otherwise that would be the end if it. So we decide to alter or correct the other person (Change). We initiate that change using various means (Tactic). The whole process goes back and forth (Negotiation) until some resolution or common ground is found—or not.
If we think of each moment as containing these ideas, we will always be moving forward in our thinking. Text always moves forward, it never holds still. And remember, text includes both what is spoken and what is not spoken. This examination is best done through the eyes of each character, line by line, throughout the play.
Quoting or referencing the text of the play, find:
a) What in each previous line does this character react to? What word gives them the impulse?
b) When do they begin to think “No” (or “Yes”)? When do they speak “No” (or “Yes”)? (The actual speaking of “No” (or “Yes”) is often delayed.)
c) What is the Change they need to enact?
d) What Tactic do they use to enact it?
e) Has anything changed as a result of their Negotiation?
Initially, this third examination may be best left for private homework. But as we become more and more adept, it will become second nature. Also, the refinement of “No” is constant in rehearsal. It should not be a static thing. But as you get closer to performance identifying the precise moments we say “No” (or “Yes”) will move you ever forward and bring you closer and closer to what happens in real life. The end result is a pace that will be neither too slow nor too fast. It will be life.
Examination Four--Textual Devices
This final examination goes deeper, unearthing literary devices a playwright may be using to give richness to the text that is rarely obvious, but resonates profoundly. And being aware that the devices are in use gives the actor more choices to play. Whether we realize it or not, we use these devices in our everyday Tactics so that we get what we need moment to moment in our own lives. These devices are rarely used in a consistent, structured and deliberate way in contemporary plays, so you will spend much more time on this examination with classical texts.
Quoting or referencing the text of the play, find how the playwright uses:
a) Antithesis. This device compares and contrasts two (or more) ideas of opposite meaning in close proximity in the text.
b) Rhetoric/Argument. This device is very playable as a Tactic. A character seeks to win an argument through verbal means using a logic and skill unique to him. It usually requires no answer, is possibly declamatory and is often eloquent or artful in structure and power to persuade.
c) Word games, wit, puns and patterns. Sometimes playwrights cannot help themselves. A sense of humor or ulterior sense of purpose often rides alongside a play and colors the whole and is not purely derived from the character and situation. Yet these devices must be integrated seamlessly into our work for the play to succeed.
d) Rhymes, rhythms, meter, caesura, word sounds (onomatopoeia, alliteration, assonance, etc.) and other literary devices.
Ultimately, all text work is invisible. All stage work is visible. An audience must never see what is invisible.
TEXT ANALYSIS PRESENTATIONS INSTRUCTIONS
Groups 1A, 1B
Beginning in Late September/Early October two teams will present assigned plays from Circle’s reading list. Each team, consisting of one half the class, will research, put together, rehearse and present a 25-minute or less event in front of the class that will help us put into perspective different plays from different eras. There will be two presentations on the day they are assigned; you must share the 50 minutes. Spread the load. Equally. Everyone on the team must participate in each presentation. Switch off who contributes what with each presentation.
Presentations must include:
1) A synopsis of the plot, a description of characters and setting and a discussion of the themes of the play;
2) A biography of the playwright including their play resume;
3) A discussion of the playwright’s contemporaries and what was going on in theater while they wrote;
4) An Historical Timeline, a visual display providing the backdrop of the play: describing what was going on in each of the other major arts (painting, music, literature), sciences, politics/government (especially as it pertains to the playwright’s own country) and society;
5) A presentation of drawings, pictures, photos and other archival material to be shared with the class. Show what the actors would have worn, what the current styles in fashion were, what music was heard and, if they exist, visuals of actual productions;
6) A handout for the class that outlines # 1-5 above. (One or two sheets, back and front, 10 copies.) Include any unusual terms/definitions from your research that will clarify things for the class;
7) A short (less than five minute), well-rehearsed, but not memorized, staged scene from the play—feel free to use costumes, well-chosen props and music. Do not mock the material. Tell us briefly how the text was structured and how it was different from theater texts from earlier eras. You may carry a script, but NOT ON AN ELECTRONIC DEVICE OF ANY KIND.
A straight-on book report will not do. Present the facts, BUT! Don’t bore us. Entertain us. Be inventive. Be theatrical. Think interactive. Use the Internet (i.e. ). Use the Library of Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. Use The Timetables of History I provide for you in Colin’s office. Cheat, plagiarize, borrow. Use your iPods, CDs, Laptops for audio and visual displays. Use the costume shop. Use display boards to help illustrate major items like timelines.
Each team will research, put together and rehearse separately. Each team must do a mock run of their presentations a day or two beforehand to be sure it will be completed in 25 minutes. Both presentations should use the first five minutes of class for setup time. You must begin by five minutes past the hour. Pare it down. Get to the point. Because classes are so tightly scheduled you can neither run over nor continue the following week.
What will be evaluated: Content, teamwork, and ability to follow instructions/directions, inventiveness, and your presence as an individual and as an actor.
3rd Week Autumn |Group 1A | | |Group 1B | | | |Classic Greek |1st team |Lysistrata
Aristophanes
| |1st team |Oedipus
Sophocles | | |Elizabethan
Renaissance |2nd team
|Mandragola
Machiavelli
| |2nd team
|Duchess of Malfi
Webster | | |5th Week
Autumn | | | | | | | |Neo-Classicism |1st team |The Learned Ladies
Moliere | |1st team |El Cid
Corneille | | |Restoration |2nd team |She Stoops To Conquer
Goldsmith
| |2nd team |The Way of The World
Congreve | | |7th Week
Autumn | | | | | | | |Early 19th Century |1st team |Woyzeck
Büchner
| |1st team |Faust
(part 1)
Goethe | | |Late 19th Century |2nd team |Riders To The Sea
Synge
| |2nd team |Dance of Death
(part 1)
Strindberg | | |TEXT ANALYSIS Autumn Presentations Schedule
TEXT ANALYSIS ROUNDTABLE Autumn
One-act plays by Tennessee Williams
We’ll sit in a circle, texts in hand, and slug our way through an assigned play. The first texts from which we will be working are found in 27 Wagons Full of Cotton and other plays by Tennessee Williams. Each section will be assigned one of the following one-act plays for in-class analysis:
1) The Long Goodbye –Group 1A
2) Talk To Me Like The Rain--Group 1B
Preparation should include purchase of the compilation 27 Wagons Full of Cotton and other plays (which contains both plays) and a detailed examination/reading of your assigned play. Use your journals as a place where you will produce your work both at home and in class. You must bring in your journals every Text Analysis class.
Although you will be assigned only one play for the roundtable discussions, you should read both plays. Upon completion of your assigned play you may be asked to write a one-page essay on how the other one-act is both similar and dissimilar, using the analysis techniques learned in the roundtable discussions.
More One-act plays
If there is time in November and December:
We will work from A Number by Caryl Churchill. You must secure your own copy. You may purchase this play from any drama book source like The Drama Book Store or online. There will also be a copy available for download by Larry at the appropriate time. If you download the play, please make physical printed copies. It is nearly impossible to score and mark up text on an iPad, tablet or laptop. This text is useless on an iPhone or similar smart phone.
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DRAMA DESK Winners in Bold
2000
Copenhagen by Michael Frayn
Contact with the Enemy by Frank D. Gilroy
Dinner with Friends by Donald Margulies
Dirty Blonde by Claudia Shear
Jitney by August Wilson
The Tale of the Allergist's Wife by Charles Busch
2001
Proof by David Auburn
Boy Gets Girl by Rebecca Gilman
Comic Potential by Alan Ayckbourn
The Invention of Love by Tom Stoppard
Lobby Hero by Kenneth Lonergan
The Unexpected Man by Yasmina Reza
2002
The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? by Edward Albee
Metamorphoses by Mary Zimmerman
Franny's Way by Richard Nelson
The Shape of Things by Neil LaBute
Thief River by Lee Blessing
Topdog/Underdog by Suzan-Lori Parks
2003
Take Me Out by Richard Greenberg
Buick by Julian Sheppard
Our Lady of 121st Street by Stephen Adly Guirgis
Peter and Vandy by Jay DiPietro
Talking Heads by Alan Bennett
Yellowman by Dael Orlandersmith
2004
I Am My Own Wife by Doug Wright
The Beard of Avon by Amy Freed
The Distance from Here by Neil LaBute
Humble Boy by Charlotte Jones
Moby-Dick by Julian Rad
The Tricky Part by Martin Moran
2005
Doubt by John Patrick Shanley
Democracy by Michael Frayn
Pentecost by David Edgar
The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh
Sailor's Song by John Patrick Shanley
Sin (A Cardinal Deposed) by Michael Murphy
2006
The History Boys by Alan Bennett
Dedication or The Stuff of Dreams by Terrence McNally
The Lieutenant of Inishmore by Martin McDonagh
No Foreigners Beyond This Point by Warren Leight
The Pavilion by Craig Wright
Stuff Happens by David Hare
2007
The Coast of Utopia by Tom Stoppard
The Accomplices by Bernard Weintraub
Blackbird by David Harrower
Frost/Nixon by Peter Morgan
Radio Golf by August Wilson
Some Men by Terrence McNally
2008
August: Osage County by Tracy Letts
Dividing the Estate by Horton Foote
From Up Here by Liz Flahive
Horizon by Rinde Eckert
Intimate Exchanges by Alan Ayckbourn
Rock 'n' Roll by Tom Stoppard
2009
Ruined by Lynn Nottage
Becky Shaw by Gina Gionfriddo
Body Awareness by Annie Baker
Fifty Words by Michael Weller
Lady by Craig Wright
reasons to be pretty by Neil LaBute
2010
Red by John Logan
Circle Mirror Transformation by Annie Baker
Clybourne Park by Bruce Norris
Happy Now? by Lucinda Coxon
My Wonderful Day by Alan Ayckbourn
Next Fall by Geoffrey Nauffts
2011
War Horse by Nick Stafford
A Bright New Boise by Samuel D. Hunter
A Small Fire by Adam Bock
Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo by Rajiv Joseph
Good People by David Lindsay-Abaire
The Motherf**ker with the Hat by Stephen Adly Guirgis
Other Desert Cities by Jon Robin Baitz
2012
Tribes by Nina Raine
The Big Meal by Dan LeFranc
By the Way, Meet Vera Stark by Lynn Nottage
Chinglish by David Henry Hwang
Completeness by Itamar Moses
The Lyons by Nicky Silver
Unnatural Acts by Members of Plastic Theatre
2013
Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike by Christopher Durang
The Assembled Parties by Richard Greenberg
Belleville by Amy Herzog
Falling by Deanna Jent
Finks by Joe Gilford
The Flick by Annie Baker
Sorry by Richard Nelson
2014
All the Way by Robert Schenkkan
Core Values by Steven Levenson
Domesticated by Bruce Norris
The Explorers Club by Nell Benjamin
The Night Alive by Conor McPherson
Outside Mullingar by John Patrick Shanley
Regular Singing by Richard Nelson
2015
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Simon Stephens
You Got Older by Clare Barron
Airline Highway by Lisa D'Amour
The City of Conversation by Anthony Giardina
Between Riverside and Crazy by Stephen Adly Guirgis
My Manãna Comes by Elizabeth Irwin
Let the Right One In by Jack Thorne
2016
The Humans by Stephen Karam
The Christians by Lucas Hnath
John by Annie Baker
King Charles III by Mike Bartlett
The Royale by Marco Ramírez
2017
Oslo by J. T. Rogers
If I Forget by Steven Levenson,
Indecent by Paula Vogel
A Life by Adam Bock
Sweat by Lynn Nottage
2018
Admissions, by Joshua Harmon
Mary Jane, by Amy Herzog
Miles for Mary, by The Mad Ones
Places & Things, by Duncan Macmillan
School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play, by Jocelyn Bioh
Sorry these are out of order. Some are not precisely since the year 2000, but I include them as they are very recent in feel. Many plays students have brought to my attention and worked on since 2015 in Workshop when I asked them to concentrate on plays from 2000 to present.
Dead Man's Cell Phone by Sarah Ruhl.
In The Next Room or the vibrator play by Sarah Ruhl.
Parallel Lives by Gaffney and Najimy.
Completeness by Itamar Moses
The Four Of Us by Itamar Moses
Killer Joe by Tracy Letts
Bug by Tracy Letts
August Osage County by Tracy Letts
Belleville by Amy Herzog
I See You Have White Horses by Peter Dee
Cockeyed by William Missouri Downs
The Coast of Utopia part one Voyage; part two Shipwreck; Part three Salvage by Tom Stoppard
Rock 'n' Roll by Tom Stoppard
Plays by Yazmina Reza including Art, The Unexpected Man, Conversations After a Burial, Life x Three, God of Carnage.
And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little by Paul's Zindel
13 Hands and other plays by Carol Shields
Where Is My Money? By John Patrick Shanley
13 by Shanley by John Patrick Shanley
You Can Count On Me by Kenneth Lonergan
I Have Before Me A Remarkable Document Given To Me By A Young Lady From Rwanda by Sonja Linden
The complete plays of Theresa Rebeck volumes 1,2 and three
The complete plays of Patrick Marber
Red by John Logan
In Love and Warcraft by Madhuri Shekar
Really Really by Paul Downs Colaizzo
Mickey and Sage by Sara Farrington
Disgraced by Atad Akhtar
Constellations by Nick Payne
Gruesome Playground Injuries by Rajiv and Joseph
Jailbait by Deirdre O'Connor
The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh
The Beauty Queen if Leenane by Martin McDonagh
All plays by Neil Labute including Fat Pig, This Is How It Goes, Bash, Autobahn, The Shape of Things, Some Girls, Reasons To Be Pretty
Dog Sees God by Bert V Royal
Where We're Born by Lucy Thurber
Be a Good Little Widow by Becca Brunstetter
Venus in Fur by David Ives
Mirror Mirror by Sarah Treem
Time Stands Still by Donald Margulies
Honour by Joanna Murray-Smith
Win Lose or Draw by Ara Watson and Mary Gallagher
The Dream of the Burning Boy by David West Reed
Black playwrights contained in the book Best Black Plays edited by Chuck Smith, including Sundown Names and Night-Gone Things by Leslie Lee, Ma Noah by
Mark Clayton Southers, The Diva Daughter is Dupree by Kim Euall
Black Comedy: Nine Plays edited by Pamela Faith Jackson and Karimah
Black Theater USA from 1935-today edited by James V. Hatch and Ted Shine
Sonnet Text Work
You may need several copies of the sonnet as you work so that text makings remain readable. Definitions for terms used below can be found in “Words and Phrases For Shakespeare Class.” For a more comprehensive look at these questions go to the Text Analysis page on and watch the PowerPoint presentation called “Text-Sonnet Text Work.”
Mark quatrains.
• Are they in perfect form or against form? Note where they are against form.
Mark the sentences.
• How many main ideas? Enumerate them.
• Are there enjambments? Mark them.
How does it scan?
• Do a scan. Force it into ˘ ˉ ˘ ˉ ˘ ˉ ˘ ˉ ˘ ˉ
(short, long, short, long, etc,)
• Is the scan regular (forcing it is easy)? To help it stay regular, can any words elide?
• Where is it irregular (it can’t be forced, creating long lines, feminine endings, trochees, etc.)? Mark them.
What is the rhyme scheme?
• Are there visual rhymes as well as aural rhymes?
What words are repeated? From these repeated words can we extract our Theme or Themes? What is the Theme?
What words, phrases or images are put into Antithesis (comparison/contrasts)? Mark them, connect with lines.
Do you know all the words? If not look them up and get a definition.
Can this sonnet be broken up into a beginning, middle and end?
• What is the proposed issue?
• What is the debate?
• What is the conclusion?
Who is the speaker?
• Who is the speaker speaking to?
• What is the relationship?
• What’s right in the Relationship?
• What’s wrong in the Relationship?
• What does the speaker hope to accomplish? What does the speaker need to change?
What is the time frame? Past, present, future.
Are there ideas that contain parenthetical thoughts (momentary digressions or explanations) other than what Shakespeare spells out (actual parentheses) for you? Mark them.
• Once marked, can you drop them out and still make sense of the idea at hand?
Where is the major tonal shift in the sonnet? Mark it.
What kind of images are conjured?
• Quoting the original text, pick out each image, then describe that same image in your own words.
• Are there lists of images?
• Are they cumulative—pieces that build to a bigger, more substantive whole?
• Are they in opposition to each other creating an internal debate?
Sonnets are witty word games. Treat it like an acrostic or crossword puzzle, (etc.).
• What word games are there (punning)? Mark them.
• Are there lists such as verb lists? Noun lists? Other word lists? Mark them.
• Are there internal vowel sounds in close proximity to each other repeated (assonance)?
• Are there consonant sounds in close proximity to each other repeated (alliteration)?
• Are there words that are, through imitation of their sound, rhetorically effective? (onomatopoeia)?
Is there Old English, Elizabethan or difficult syntax? Mark it.
• How can you rearrange word order to help with the sense?
Where can we use caesuras to help us phrase things better? Mark your caesuras.
Once the sonnet has been thoroughly examined:
• What is the moment before (30 seconds or less prior to the first spoken word)?
• What happens after the sonnet is through (immediately after the last word)?
• Create an event that spurs the first line: i. e., the prison doors just slammed.
• Create an event that lingers after: i.e., I curl up in a fetal position and sleep.
• Then prepare your sonnet so that you are speaking to someone. Create a scenario where your sonnet might exist including the moment before and the moment after.
For a more in depth discussion to help you answer these questions please use the companion PowerPoint demonstration called
Text-Sonnet Text Work.
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Technical work for Text
Parentheticals
Add parentheses to the sentences below so that they surround supporting thoughts and ideas within those sentences. After deciding where they should be placed, say each sentence aloud raising/lifting/emphasizing OR lowering/throwing away/de-emphasizing that which you placed within the parentheses. This is done by changing the pitch up or down in relation to the main idea.
For example:
1) She will, needless to say, defend her innocence.
add parenthesis: She will, (needless to say,) buy out the store.
aloud, choose to throw away: "needless to say" leaving the main idea to mean clearly,
"She will defend her innocence."
See how "needless to say" is not important for understanding the idea, but its inclusion supports/modifies/clarifies/adds attitude to the situation. You are telling the audience what is important and what is somewhat less important. We employ this technique all day long in our everyday lives without even realizing it. Why, then, does it seem disappear the moment we start speaking classical text on stage?
Work through the following examples in the same away as example 1). As you progress notice how one idea may need more than one parenthesis and even need parentheses within parentheses. Notice, too, de-emphasizing happens more often than emphasizing. Finally, try the sentence without what is included in your parenthesis. It should make sense, feel utterly clean and clear. This is the test for clarity of ideas in your work on the text. Then, add the parenthetical idea back in without losing the clarity of thought.
2) His honesty, without a doubt, is suspect.
3) Your motives, I dare say, have never been clear to anyone.
4) Your magnetic personality, simply put, is attracting no one.
5) The ships set sail yesterday, milord, for France.
6) He’s smitten with her, make no mistake, from top to toe.
7) There's nothing, save heavenly intervention, to save us now.
8) His change in philosophy, learned from his time in Africa, has everyone stunned.
9) ...How I would think on him at certain hours/ Such thoughts and such, or I could make him swear/ The shes of Italy should not betray mine interest and his honour...
(a '/' denotes the end of a poetry line, which is followed by the capitalization denoting the beginning of the next line)
10) ...And stain my favours in a bloody mask/ Which, wash'd away, shall scour my shame with it:...
11) Ah, Gloucester, hide thee from their hateful looks/ And in thy closet pent up, rue my shame....
12) He said mine eyes were black and my hair black:/ And, now I am remember'd, scorned at me.
13)...or to be worse than worse/ Of those that lawless and incertain thought/ Imagine howling,....
14) Then should the warlike Harry, like himself/ Assume the port of Mars, and at his heels/ Leashed in like hounds, should famine, sword and fire/ Crouch for employment...
15) And I, of ladies most deject and wretched/ That sucked the honey of his music vows/ Now see that noble and most sovereign reason/ Like sweet bells jangled, out of time and harsh,/ That unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth/ Blasted with ecstasy.
16) She hath urged her height/ And with her personage, her tall personage/ Her height, forsooth, she hath prevailed with him...
17) If the assassination/ Could trammel up the consequence, and catch/ With his surcease success –that but this blow/Might be the be-all and the end-all!--here--/But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,/ We'd jump the life to come. But in these cases/ We still have judgment here, that we but teach/ Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return/ To plague the inventor.
ANSWERS
2) His honesty, (without a doubt,) is suspect.
3) Your motives, (I dare say,) have never been clear to anyone.
4) Your magnetic personality, (simply put,) is attracting no one.
5) The ships set sail yesterday, (milord,) for France.
6) He’s smitten with her, (make no mistake,) from top to toe.
7) There's nothing, (save heavenly intervention,) to save us now.
8) His change in philosophy, (learned from his time in Africa,) has everyone stunned.
9) ...How I would think on him (at certain hours)/ Such thoughts (and such,) or I could make him swear/ The shes of Italy should not betray mine interest and his honour...
(a '/' denotes the end of a poetry line, which is followed by the Capitalization denoting the beginning of the next line)
10) ...And stain my favours in a bloody mask/ Which, (wash'd away), shall scour my shame with it:...
11) (Ah, Gloucester,) hide thee from their hateful looks/ And in thy closet (pent up,) rue my shame....
Notice how the verb becomes stronger and more active after de-emphasis. The brief moment or hair’s breath before the verb ‘rue’ is known as a caesura.
12) He said mine eyes were black and my hair black:/ And, (now I am remember'd,) scorned at me.
To make this more in the moment try emphasizing this instead of throwing away. ’Scorned’ becomes very powerful, especially with the use of a caesura.
13)...or to be worse than worse/ (Of those that lawless and incertain thought)/ Imagine howling,....
14) Then should the warlike Harry, (like himself)/ Assume the port of Mars, and at his heels/ (Leashed in like hounds), should famine, sword and fire/ Crouch for employment...
15) And I, (of ladies most deject and wretched)/ (That sucked the honey of his music vows)/ Now see that noble and most sovereign reason/ (((Like sweet bells jangled), (out of time and harsh)),/ (That unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth)))/ Blasted with ecstasy.
Triple parenthetical idea. If everything remains equal weighted in emphasis this is an impossible idea to convey. See how the main idea is only, “And I now see that noble and sovereign reason blasted with ecstasy.” Everything else supports this idea. Notice that if parenthetical ideas are treated as if they were added in at the very moment of their existence on the page--as if it is an utterly spontaneous extra description the emotional colors of that moment--that moment will deepen and you will force yourself to say these words as if for the first time.
16) She hath urged her height/ And with her personage, (her tall personage)/ ((Her height, (forsooth,)) she hath prevailed with him...
Furthering the explanation in example 15, notice how the spontaneity of these parentheticals builds to the explosion on ‘forsooth’ which then becomes the stuff of great comedy-- simply by using words.
17) If the assassination/ Could trammel up the consequence, and catch/ (With his surcease) success –that but this blow/Might be the be-all and the end-all! --here--/ But here, (upon this bank and shoal of time,)/ We'd jump the life to come. But in these cases/ We still have judgment here, that we but teach/ Bloody instructions, which, (being taught,) return/ To plague the inventor.
It is more than arguable that that which is within the parenthesis cannot be excluded lest meaning suffer greatly. In this example the parentheticals are only there to help the actor strengthen meaning. The similarity in sound between ‘surcease’ and ‘success’ and the fact that ‘surcease’ is rarely used today as compared to ‘success’ can be problematical. By adding a caesura after ‘surcease’, we increase that word’s comprehension and, suddenly, ‘success’ has power.
Technical Work For Text
Caesura
Find within the speech a natural sense pause or hair’s breath that falls somewhere mid-line in each line.
HERMIONE
Since what I am to say must be but that
Which contradicts my accusation and
The testimony on my part no other
But what comes from myself, it shall scarce boot me
To say 'not guilty:' mine integrity
Being counted falsehood, shall, as I express it,
Be so received. But thus: if powers divine
Behold our human actions, as they do,
I doubt not then but innocence shall make
False accusation blush and tyranny
Tremble at patience. You, my lord, best know,
Who least will seem to do so, my past life
Hath been as continent, as chaste, as true,
As I am now unhappy; which is more
Than history can pattern, though devised
And play'd to take spectators. For behold me
A fellow of the royal bed, which owe
A moiety of the throne a great king's daughter,
The mother to a hopeful prince, here standing
To prate and talk for life and honour 'fore
Who please to come and hear. For life, I prize it
As I weigh grief, which I would spare: for honour,
'Tis a derivative from me to mine,
And only that I stand for. I appeal
To your own conscience, sir, before Polixenes
Came to your court, how I was in your grace,
How merited to be so; since he came,
With what encounter so uncurrent I
Have strain'd to appear thus: if one jot beyond
The bound of honour, or in act or will
That way inclining, harden'd be the hearts
Of all that hear me, and my near'st of kin
Cry fie upon my grave!
The Winter’s Tale
Act 3, Scene 2
Notice that a caesura helps shape meaning and allows an audience to catch up with you. Caesuras are not to be confused in length with periods mid-line. Periods are the completion of an idea and demand their weight. Caesuras always fall mid-idea and can be easily found after commas and semi-colons acting as ever-so-brief moments of air. Sometimes, though, a caesura falls without these points of punctuation: falling before an important verb, before a parenthetical idea or an imposed question or rhetorical device. There is no set length for caesura, only that they be used judiciously and effectively for meaning. Caesuras should never make a speech feel slow and should never cause a speech sound like it has speed bumps. However, do think of them as reins that stop a speech from galloping away out of control. On the next page you will see where caesuras could fall in Hermione’s speech. Remember, there are no absolutes here: there is room for interpretation as each individual actor mines the text for sense and phrasing.
HERMIONE
Since what I am to say must be but that
Which contradicts my accusation and
The testimony on my part no other
But what comes from myself, it shall scarce boot me
To say 'not guilty:' mine integrity
Being counted falsehood, shall, as I express it,
Be so received. But thus: if powers divine
Behold our human actions, as they do,
I doubt not then but innocence shall make
False accusation blush and tyranny
Tremble at patience. You, my lord, best know,
Who least will seem to do so, my past life
Hath been as continent, as chaste, as true,
As I am now unhappy; which is more
Than history can pattern, though devised
And play'd to take spectators. For behold me
A fellow of the royal bed, which owe
A moiety of the throne a great king's daughter,
The mother to a hopeful prince, here standing
To prate and talk for life and honour 'fore
Who please to come and hear. For life, I prize it
As I weigh grief, which I would spare: for honour,
'Tis a derivative from me to mine,
And only that I stand for. I appeal
To your own conscience, sir, before Polixenes
Came to your court, how I was in your grace,
How merited to be so; since he came,
With what encounter so uncurrent I
Have strain'd to appear thus: if one jot beyond
The bound of honour, or in act or will
That way inclining, harden'd be the hearts
Of all that hear me, and my near'st of kin
Cry fie upon my grave!
Notice how some of these marked as caesuras may or may not be used (i.e. in the last line). Notice how some are nanoseconds in length (in the first line), some are longer (the second line). You must negotiate with yourself as to what will aid you best in conveying your ideas. So many of these fall before parenthetical ideas ( in “as I express it,” or in “as they do,”). Many are used for dramatic emphasis so that next word or phrase used explodes with power and meaning (after “inclining” which sets up “harden’d” or after “to say” which sets up “ ‘not guilty:’ ”)
Now on the next page, take a look at a more famous speech. Where do the caesuras fall? As you examine the speech see how use of caesura not only helps with phrasing, but signals acting beats and emotional changes making it impossible to do the speech on one emotional note. Justify why and where you choose to mark your caesuras. Be prepared to defend your choices. Also, be prepared to be flexible as, again, there is always room for interpretation.
JULIET Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds,
Towards Phoebus' lodging: such a wagoner
As Phaethon would whip you to the west,
And bring in cloudy night immediately.
Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night,
That runaway's eyes may wink and Romeo
Leap to these arms, untalk'd of and unseen.
Lovers can see to do their amorous rites
By their own beauties; or, if love be blind,
It best agrees with night. Come, civil night,
Thou sober-suited matron, all in black,
And learn me how to lose a winning match,
Play'd for a pair of stainless maidenhoods:
Hood my unmann'd blood, bating in my cheeks,
With thy black mantle; till strange love, grown bold,
Think true love acted simple modesty.
Come, night; come, Romeo; come, thou day in night;
For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night
Whiter than new snow on a raven's back.
Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-brow'd night,
Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.
O, I have bought the mansion of a love,
But not possess'd it, and, though I am sold,
Not yet enjoy'd: so tedious is this day
As is the night before some festival
To an impatient child that hath new robes
And may not wear them. O, here comes my nurse,
And she brings news; and every tongue that speaks
But Romeo's name speaks heavenly eloquence.
Romeo and Juliet
ACT 3, scene 2
On the next page you will see where caesuras could fall in Juliet’s speech. How does your work compare?
Even though you may have missed some or disagree in their placement, can you understand why they were suggested?
JULIET Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds,
Towards Phoebus' lodging: such a wagoner
As Phaethon would whip you to the west,
And bring in cloudy night immediately.
Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night,
That runaway's eyes may wink and Romeo
Leap to these arms, untalk'd of and unseen.
Lovers can see to do their amorous rites
By their own beauties; or, if love be blind,
It best agrees with night. Come, civil night,
Thou sober-suited matron, all in black,
And learn me how to lose a winning match,
Play'd for a pair of stainless maidenhoods:
Hood my unmann'd blood, bating in my cheeks,
With thy black mantle; till strange love, grown bold,
Think true love acted simple modesty.
Come, night; come, Romeo; come, thou day in night;
For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night
Whiter than new snow on a raven's back.
Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-brow'd night,
Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.
O, I have bought the mansion of a love,
But not possess'd it, and, though I am sold,
Not yet enjoy'd: so tedious is this day
As is the night before some festival
To an impatient child that hath new robes
And may not wear them. O, here comes my nurse,
And she brings news; and every tongue that speaks
But Romeo's name….. speaks heavenly eloquence.
Romeo and Juliet
ACT 3, scene 2
TECHNICAL WORK FOR TEXT
Run-on Sentences
There are only three sentences here and thus three main ideas. It is impossible to speak the second sentence in one breath, yet it must feel as if you do. Work on this passage to make sure each sentence hangs together. The secret to doing so is at the bottom. Don’t cheat. See if you can do it first.
To describe the rent strike and his part in it, Rosen began back in the late nineteenth century, when his father was a boy in Warsaw. He described how his father learned to read by studying anarchist literature, and became an anarchist, then a Communist, then moved to America; and how his father was kicked out of the Communist Party after starting a small garment shop here, because owners weren't allowed to become Party members; and how he was a knitter, setting up knitting machines in the garment district, working on them from underneath on his back on a skid; and how his mother grew up in the city of Kamenets-Podolski, in Ukraine, and had to hide in her house during pogroms, and how she and other family members got away to Bucharest and walked from there to Antwerp, and then took a ship to America; and how she was a radical Socialist Zionist, and went to Palestine, and fell in love with an Arab, and decided that Zionism was racism, and came back to America, and became a passementerie worker (a worker who does garment piecework, like tassels or fringe, by hand); and how she always worked with her hands moving quickly and a cigarette hanging from the side of her mouth; and how she made the tassels on the curtain at the Metropolitan Opera, and how proud the family was of that;
and how she was a Stalinist, even after 1939, as well as a member of the passementerie workers' union; and how she met his father, who was by then the president of the Knit Goods Workers' Union; and how he, Charlie (real name: Shachna), was born, and his brother, Jake; and how no language but Yiddish was spoken in the home, and how for his family about the worst thing a person could be was a Trotskyite, and how they loathed exploiter bosses and fake Socialists; and how he, Charlie, went to public schools, and then to many colleges, and how he found the classes and the other students at college mostly out of touch with the world and ridiculous, so he never got a degree; and how he became a Communist, and visited the Soviet Union, and met Khrushchev, and how he thought hippies were completely fake radicals, and fools to boot, with their ridiculous drugs, getting arrested for something so stupid when there were many real and serious things to get arrested for,
and how he became a typographer, and worked the lobster shift (twelve-thirty to seven in the morning); and how he met his wife, Lynn, in a Ukrainian folk-dancing club of which he was the only Jewish member, and how he and Lynn got married, and were living on the Upper West Side in a little place, and wanted to start a family, and how she heard about Co-op City, but he was reluctant at first because he thought of the Bronx as a place you come from, not move to, and how rudely and dismissively the Co-op City personnel treated them and other prospective buyers when he and Lynn went to see about a place, but he didn't care about that or about all the coöperative baloney in the literature, because he just wanted a cheap place to live like anybody else, and this looked like it; and how they paid the two thousand-plus for a five-room apartment with an advance on a small inheritance from Lynn's grandmother; and how they moved on December 31, 1970, into Apartment E on the seventh floor of Building Twenty-two A; and how delighted they were with all the space and light; and how Lynn became pregnant soon; and how they had one kid and another on the way when the new maintenance increases were announced; and how he was elected the chairman of his building's shareholder organization; and how, when the shareholders decided to fight the increases, he knew just who the enemy was and what the strategy should be.
Well, it was quite a strike.
THE NEW YORKER
JUNE 26. 2006
page 61
The first and last sentences are easily spoken in one breath. The middle sentence is not so easily done. However, the writer in no uncertain terms has written this so that his incredibly long, vast and expansive idea hangs together as one event. That totality can only be felt if you never drop the voice in a downward guide at anytime until you reach the period. Even at the visual text breaks where he gives air by not typing his text to the expected line’s end and picks it up again at an indentation, he asks you to not break your tone nor intensity, nor aurally give a downward glide that might be misunderstood as a period—he asks that it be a sideways pause or suspension of thought in mid-air.
Think of the second sentence as a very long laundry list. There is no need for speed here, just a constant mounding of incidents that will pay off as one whole when you reach the period. Coloration, emphasis and de-emphasis is added so that monotony does not set in, after all, you want your listener to take this extraordinary life journey with you and stay with you to its very end.
Technical Work For Text
Split Lines
In this exercise we want to examine how energy gets transferred from one actor to another. Classical text is often seen as an exercise in “you speak-I speak-you speak-I speak.” Quite often this is true as energy is transferred neatly from one speaker to the other. But even Shakespeare knew that sometimes energy is more highly charged and needs to be expressed differently. In contemporary text, playwrights have characters cut each other off, topping each other to propel the action at hand. Shakespeare uses split lines.
Iambic pentameter has a rhythm and flow that is different from prose. But sometimes energy between characters needs to be handed off before the completion of neatly prescribed fifth foot of the line. The use of split lines allows for text structured in iambic pentameter to flow unimpeded. In doing so we see characters that are in tighter sync with one another. Shakespeare is saying, “don’t pause, pick up your cue, have a more immediate reaction to what is being said,” among other things. An excitement, a sharpness, a keen sense of sharing energy is in the air. Heightened text is further heightened to a new level. Go against it and the scene goes flat. Give into it and electricity flies.
Let’s look at a few scenes where this is evident. In the first example from Macbeth we can see two people sharing a highly charged atmosphere. There is a sense of things almost tumbling out of control, which is unfortunate for them because control is the very thing these two people need if they are to succeed. Given here is a big chunk of a scene so you can see the many different kinds of energy Shakespeare is asking you hand back and forth to each other. Notice how mid-line he asks one actor to hand off the energy and at the same time asks the other one to intercept it and run with the same rhythm-as if spoken by one person. Notice also sometimes Shakespeare asks you not to jump right in—the iambic pentameter is finished in silence. This is known as a short line. The scene becomes a collision between a rush of words and a rush of silence: two different forms of tension exist hand in hand.
MACBETH
I have done the deed. Didst thou not hear a noise?
LADY MACBETH
I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry.
Did not you speak?
MACBETH
When?
LADY MACBETH
Now.
MACBETH
As I descended?
LADY MACBETH
Ay.
MACBETH
Hark!
Who lies i' the second chamber?
LADY MACBETH
Donalbain.
MACBETH
This is a sorry sight.
(Looking on his hands.)
LADY MACBETH
A foolish thought, to say a sorry sight.
MACBETH
There's one did laugh in's sleep, and one cried 'Murder!'
That they did wake each other: I stood and heard them:
But they did say their prayers, and address'd them
Again to sleep.
LADY MACBETH
There are two lodged together.
MACBETH
One cried 'God bless us!' and 'Amen' the other;
As they had seen me with these hangman's hands.
Listening their fear, I could not say 'Amen,'
When they did say 'God bless us!'
LADY MACBETH
Consider it not so deeply.
MACBETH
But wherefore could not I pronounce 'Amen'?
I had most need of blessing, and 'Amen'
Stuck in my throat.
LADY MACBETH
These deeds must not be thought
After these ways; so, it will make us mad.
MACBETH
Methought I heard a voice cry 'Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep', the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast,--
LADY MACBETH
What do you mean?
MACBETH
Still it cried 'Sleep no more!' to all the house:
'Glamis hath murder'd sleep, and therefore Cawdor
Shall sleep no more; Macbeth shall sleep no more.'
LADY MACBETH
Who was it that thus cried? Why, worthy thane,
You do unbend your noble strength, to think
So brainsickly of things. Go get some water,
And wash this filthy witness from your hand.
Why did you bring these daggers from the place?
They must lie there: go carry them; and smear
The sleepy grooms with blood.
MACBETH
I'll go no more:
I am afraid to think what I have done;
Look on't again I dare not.
LADY MACBETH
Infirm of purpose!
Give me the daggers: the sleeping and the dead
Are but as pictures: 'tis the eye of childhood
That fears a painted devil. If he do bleed,
I'll gild the faces of the grooms withal;
For it must seem their guilt.
( Exit. Knocking within.)
Now look at Lady Macbeth’s speech just prior to this scene and notice the extreme difference in energy and rhythm.
LADY MACBETH
That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold;
What hath quench'd them hath given me fire.
Hark! Peace!
It was the owl that shriek'd, the fatal bellman,
Which gives the stern'st good-night. He is about it:
The doors are open; and the surfeited grooms
Do mock their charge with snores: I have drugg'd their possets,
That death and nature do contend about them,
Whether they live or die.
MACBETH
[Within] Who's there? what, ho!
LADY MACBETH
Alack, I am afraid they have awaked,
And 'tis not done. The attempt and not the deed
Confounds us. Hark! I laid their daggers ready;
He could not miss 'em. Had he not resembled
My father as he slept, I had done't. –My husband!
(Enter Macbeth.)
Notice how Shakespeare anticipates, with “Hark! Peace!” and with Macbeth’s interjection from off stage, the energy soon to explode. “Hark! Peace!” is followed by four silent feet of pentameter. The rest of her speech Lady Macbeth struggles to keep her heightened text regular and on a level beam. But of course the given circumstances are far too overwhelming for that to continue--as it should be in the midst of an act of murder.
Another example of split lines can be seen in Measure For Measure between Claudio and Isabella. Here we have two people desperately seeking to be on the same page with each other. There are many different reasons why they pick up each other’s energy mid-line. In this exercise try not just to complete the line of iambic pentameter in a dutiful way, but because your intention compels you to. Notice the four feet of silent pentameter after Isabella’s first “Why,” and why there is no pause for Claudio’s response, “Is there no remedy?” The trick for the two actors is to justify why they must finish each other’s lines so that the scene tumbles forward, forward, forward as each character struggles for life and death answers that are in conflict with each other. A scene of pauses here will cause this scene to crash and burn under its own weight. Therefore the pauses are few. Shakespeare gives them to you where he wants them—where they will resonate most profoundly. Looking at the text on the page you can see the iambic pentameter falls short on some lines (short lines). Where the next line on the page is an indentation, you are asked to pick up the split line and finish it. Where the iambic pentameter is left to finish wordlessly, where no split line is given, that is the pause Shakespeare gives you.
CLAUDIO
Now, sister, what's the comfort?
ISABELLA
Why,
As all comforts are; most good, most good indeed.
Lord Angelo, having affairs to heaven,
Intends you for his swift ambassador,
Where you shall be an everlasting leiger:
Therefore your best appointment make with speed;
To-morrow you set on.
CLAUDIO
Is there no remedy?
ISABELLA
None, but such remedy as, to save a head,
To cleave a heart in twain.
CLAUDIO
But is there any?
ISABELLA
Yes, brother, you may live:
There is a devilish mercy in the judge,
If you'll implore it, that will free your life,
But fetter you till death.
CLAUDIO
Perpetual durance?
ISABELLA
Ay, just; perpetual durance, a restraint,
Though all the world's vastidity you had,
To a determined scope.
CLAUDIO
But in what nature?
ISABELLA
In such a one as, you consenting to't,
Would bark your honour from that trunk you bear,
And leave you naked.
CLAUDIO
Let me know the point.
ISABELLA
O, I do fear thee, Claudio; and I quake,
Lest thou a feverous life shouldst entertain,
And six or seven winters more respect
Than a perpetual honour. Darest thou die?
The sense of death is most in apprehension;
And the poor beetle, that we tread upon,
In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great
As when a giant dies.
CLAUDIO
Why give you me this shame?
Think you I can a resolution fetch
From flowery tenderness? If I must die,
I will encounter darkness as a bride,
And hug it in mine arms.
ISABELLA
There spake my brother; there my father's grave
Did utter forth a voice. Yes, thou must die:
Thou art too noble to conserve a life
In base appliances. This outward-sainted deputy,
Whose settled visage and deliberate word
Nips youth i' the head and follies doth emmew
As falcon doth the fowl, is yet a devil
His filth within being cast, he would appear
A pond as deep as hell.
CLAUDIO
The prenzie Angelo!
ISABELLA
O, 'tis the cunning livery of hell,
The damned'st body to invest and cover
In prenzie guards! Dost thou think, Claudio?
If I would yield him my virginity,
Thou mightst be freed.
CLAUDIO
O heavens! it cannot be.
ISABELLA
Yes, he would give't thee, from this rank offence,
So to offend him still. This night's the time
That I should do what I abhor to name,
Or else thou diest to-morrow.
CLAUDIO
Thou shalt not do't.
ISABELLA
O, were it but my life,
I'ld throw it down for your deliverance
As frankly as a pin.
CLAUDIO
Thanks, dear Isabel.
ISABELLA
Be ready, Claudio, for your death tomorrow.
CLAUDIO
Yes. Has he affections in him,
That thus can make him bite the law by the nose,
When he would force it? Sure, it is no sin,
Or of the deadly seven, it is the least.
ISABELLA
Which is the least?
CLAUDIO
If it were damnable, he being so wise,
Why would he for the momentary trick
Be perdurably fined? O Isabel!
ISABELLA
What says my brother?
CLAUDIO
Death is a fearful thing.
ISABELLA
And shamed life a hateful.
CLAUDIO
Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprison'd in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world; or to be worse than worst
Of those that lawless and incertain thought
Imagine howling: 'tis too horrible!
The weariest and most loathed worldly life
That age, ache, penury and imprisonment
Can lay on nature is a paradise
To what we fear of death.
ISABELLA
Alas, alas!
CLAUDIO
Sweet sister, let me live.
What sin you do to save a brother's life,
Nature dispenses with the deed so far
That it becomes a virtue.
ISABELLA
O you beast!
O faithless coward! O dishonest wretch!
Wilt thou be made a man out of my vice?
Is't not a kind of incest, to take life
From thine own sister's shame? What should I think?
Heaven shield my mother play'd my father fair!
For such a warped slip of wilderness
Ne'er issued from his blood. Take my defiance!
Die, perish! Might but my bending down
Reprieve thee from thy fate, it should proceed:
I'll pray a thousand prayers for thy death,
No word to save thee.
CLAUDIO
Nay, hear me, Isabel.
ISABELLA
O, fie, fie, fie!
Thy sin's not accidental, but a trade.
Mercy to thee would prove itself a bawd:
'Tis best thou diest quickly.
(Going.)
CLAUDIO
O hear me, Isabella!
Technical Work For Text
Structures—Antithesis or Compare/Contrasts
If you can grasp the use of Antithesis in Shakespeare’s work you will break through to a new level of understanding and appreciation of his elevated texts. This basic tool allowed Shakespeare to create such vivid, profound and poetic imagery. By simply comparing or contrasting ideas within close proximity in the text, he conveyed powerfully his characters sense of the moment. If his characters could express a complex idea by simply putting it into opposition with another idea, then meaning, emotion and import was clarified not only for the characters speaking, but also for other characters and, by extension, the audience.
Sometimes these compare/contrasts are hard to find, mostly because they are mixed within syntax that we are not used to seeing and hearing. But they are there--time after time, line after line, scene after scene, play after play. And once you get it I dare say you will always get Shakespeare. It is true the Compare/Contrasts being made are often classical references going back to the Greeks and in Shakespeare’s time these references needed no further explanation, but today’s society has lost this classical knowledge. So it is up to the actor to suss out Antithesis, and if it is unfamiliar, to find out what the point of reference is. Once this is done you will have a feel for what is being conveyed. And even if the audience doesn’t know the exact reference, your conveyance of point of view will allow them to get it by emotional context.
Let’s suss out Antithesis in Queen Margaret’s speech from Act 4, scene 4 of Richard III. Notice how lines 82-91 set up a rhythm and pattern through powerful imagery that segues into powerful rhetoric of the where section lines 92-96. In line 86 a hint of where Margaret is going emotionally makes a brief appearance: she Compare/Contrasts heaved a-high to hurl’d down below.
QUEEN MARGARET
I call'd thee then vain flourish of my fortune;
I call'd thee then poor shadow, painted queen;
The presentation of but what I was;
The flattering index of a direful pageant; 85
One heaved a-high, to be hurl'd down below;
A mother only mock'd with two sweet babes;
A dream of what thou wast, a garish flag,
To be the aim of every dangerous shot,
A sign of dignity a breath, a bubble 90
A queen in jest, only to fill the scene.
Where is thy husband now? where be thy brothers?
Where are thy children? wherein dost thou, joy?
Who sues to thee and cries 'God save the queen'?
Where be the bending peers that flatter'd thee? 95
Where be the thronging troops that follow'd thee?
But Margaret’s argument doesn’t stop here. Her emotional state deepens as she immediately clarifies and simplifies her meaning with a series of quick painted images (that she began back on line 86) put into opposition in lines 98-104.
Decline all this, and see what now thou art:
For happy wife, a most distressed widow;
For joyful mother, one that wails the name;
For one being sued to, one that humbly sues; 100
For queen, a very caitiff crown'd with care;
For one that scorn'd at me, now scorn'd of me;
For one being fear'd of all, now fearing one;
For one commanding all, obey'd of none.
Thus hath the course of justice wheel'd about, 105
And left thee but a very prey to time;
Having no more but thought of what thou wert,
To torture thee the more, being what thou art.
Thou didst usurp my place, and dost thou not
Usurp the just proportion of my sorrow? 110
Now thy proud neck bears half my burthen'd yoke;
From which even here I slip my weary neck,
And leave the burthen of it all on thee.
Farewell, York's wife, and queen of sad mischance:
These English woes will make me smile in France. 115
Did you get them?
happy wife/distressed widow
joyful mother/a mother that wails
crowned queen/caitiff crowned
scorn from both points of view
fear from both points of view
commander/uncommanding
You can almost put a question mark at the half-line and see the rest as its answer:
For happy wife? a most distressed widow;
For joyful mother? one that wails the name;
For one being sued to? one that humbly sues; 100
For queen? a very caitiff crown'd with care;
For one that scorn'd at me? now scorn'd of me;
For one being fear'd of all? now fearing one;
For one commanding all? obey'd of none.
And it is the sum of all these images that contains more power than one all by itself. That is how Shakespeare used Antithesis. That is why Shakespeare used Antithesis. It becomes an actable thing. Through the use of Antithesis you can affect other characters and you will affect an audience. It is palpable. It is real. Even today.
Choose any speech of length or even a sonnet and find structures that use Antithesis. Once you find them, embrace them, make them your friends. You’re going to be seeing a lot of each other.
Technical Work For Text
Structures—If/Then
The If/Then construction is immediately recognizable on the page. When you see it you must make it all hang together so to make sense. Break it up and your audience will lose the thrust of your argument and so will the other actors playing opposite you.
There is a basic logic to If/Then. It is clean. It is precise. You move your argument forward. You propose an open idea and provide its consequence. And when the If is separated by a clause or several phrases from the Then, it is all the more important you help your listeners make the connection.
Example 1
Examine this speech for two If/Then constructions. Notice how you make more sense of this complicated speech beginning-- with all its commas, dashes and punctuation—when you pay attention to the structure.
MACBETH
If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well
It were done quickly: if the assassination
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch
With his surcease success; that but this blow
Might be the be-all and the end-all-- here, 5
But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,
We'ld jump the life to come.—But in these cases
We still have judgment here; that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague the inventor: this even-handed Justice 10
Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice
To our own lips.
Macbeth
Act 1, scene 7
Notice how the 1st If/Then is readily apparent. The 2nd If/Then is less obvious. In fact at first glance there is only an If in line 2 and no Then to follow—or so it seems. In this case the Then is unstated, it is unspoken. Then can easily put in parenthesis at the start of the last line completing the construction. Keeping that in mind forces lines 2-6 to hang together as one. Not kept in mind, lines 2-6 are a jumble and seem to meander. Macbeth’s mind is not meandering. In fact it is bursting trying to corral the enormity of the task at hand. And it is the If/Then structure that does the corralling. Not only that, it clearly puts these two scenarios in direct opposition to But in these cases, where Macbeth weighs the other side of the question—do I go through with the murder or not?
Example 2
Examine this speech for a variation on the If/Then construction. How many Ifs can you find?
CASSIUS
Therefore, good Brutus, be prepared to hear: 65
And since you know you cannot see yourself
So well as by reflection, I, your glass,
Will modestly discover to yourself
That of yourself which you yet know not of.
And be not jealous on me, gentle Brutus: 70
Were I a common laughter, or did use
To stale with ordinary oaths my love
To every new protester; if you know
That I do fawn on men and hug them hard
And after scandal them, or if you know 75
That I profess myself in banqueting
To all the rout, then hold me dangerous.
Julius Caesar
Act 1, Scene 2
Again, it is easy to find the first If, if you look carefully. Think about it. Lines 70-71 are all one sentence and therefore one idea that is composed of several smaller parts or clauses. So, the 1st If is in line 71, disguised as Were I, as in If I were. Making sure you start the If/Then construction there pulls lines 71-77 together. The 2nd If is unstated, unspoken—it resides between or and did, as in or if I did use, in Line 71. The other two are obvious in lines 73 and 75. To get through all that you will need to resist letting your voice accidentally put a period in there anywhere. Technically, this is done by always keeping your voice in an upglide at the commas, colons and semi-colons until the period arrives. Emotionally, Cassius knows that he has several Ifs to present if he is to successfully convince Brutus of his point of view.
Whenever you see an If/Then construction, don’t run away from it; give into it, if only for the sake of clarity.
George Bernard Shaw Monologues
Instructions
Text Analysis-First Year
All three sections
Choose a monologue from among selections drawn from several George Bernard Shaw plays (see Shaw Monologues—Men, Shaw Monologues--Women.) Using the skills you have learned in Text Analysis, memorize one for presentation. If you have a facility with accents, consider presenting the monologues with proper diction and accent, suiting your character’s class and position. In any case, part of your homework is to find out how every word and every character name is pronounced. Pertaining to the dialect/diction work for your monologues, RP (Received Pronunciation) or BBC, are suggestions, not absolutes. What I do not want is American regionalisms. I have discussed this with Elizabeth Loughran in years past and we have agreed that it will be sufficient to use the standard classical speech you are in the process of working on in her class for your monologues. So not to fret. Above all, I want your focus on the text work.
In your preparation examine the way Shaw constructs his work. The majority of the pieces are exercises in rhetorical argument and you should work with that in mind. Therefore, no paraphrasing. Text memorization needs to be precise.
As we have discussed this year individual playwrights create their own textual style as clues as to how they want their plays approached. Uncover Shaw’s clues textually before you work on them emotionally. Shaw’s sentences can be long, extended by complex use of punctuation. Figure out why Shaw does this and how it affects your arguments. Discover how to sustain his complex ideas and make logical sense technically and emotionally.
Two examples of Shaw’s textual peculiarities on the page are the expanded word, (which acts as italics, denoting emphasis or clarification) and the use of ‘shew’ for ‘show’ which should be pronounced as the latter (in dialect, of course). Those are the easy ones. There are many others.
You must read the play from which you choose your monologue. You must know the moment before.
Hand in prior to presenting your monologue:
1) A copy of the monologue showing all your text work. Delineate beginnings, middles and ends. Mark your rhetorical arguments. Mark tactic changes. Point out any literary devices like alliteration, onomatopoeia, assonance, rhythms, imagery, etc. Note how this text work might affect your emotional exploration of the work.
2) Quoting or referencing the text of the play, using a separate page or pages, answer the following questions:
Examination One -- The Character
a) Who am I? Who is in the scene with me? (Ages, professions, persuasions.)
b) Where are we? What surrounds us? What is our environment? (Geographically, physically, emotionally)
c) What time is it? (Year, season, day, hour, minute)
d) What are my circumstances in the play? What are the events at hand? How am I and the other characters inextricably tied to these events?
e) What are the relationships in the scene? (Familial, social, etc.)
f) What is my overall need in the scene? What is my overall need in the speech? What are my moment to moment needs in the scene?
g) What obstacles are in my way?* Who and/or what is in my way?
h) What do I do in the scene to get what I need? What tactics do I use?
i) What do I say about myself in the scene? What might other characters in the scene say about me? (What do I think they are thinking?) What do they actually say (in their own words) about me?
j) What kind of logic do I use? What is my outlook on life? What is the lens that colors my thoughts?
k) What is my fatal flaw (or flaws)?
* Human beings rarely think they are in their own way. Only in hindsight or in reflection does one say they are their own worst enemy, but in action, in executing one’s tactics, it is rarely, rarely a thought that the obstacle is yourself. So keep focused on that which is in front of you as your obstacle or obstacles. ‘They’ or ‘that person’ or an inanimate object like an ocean or a log, or a natural condition are better obstacles because they are external forces that need persuasion, moving, alteration or change.
You will notice this is basically a rephrasing of Examination 1 from one character’s (yours) point of view. You should also go through Examinations 2, 3 and 4 that we worked on in class, though I do not require you show me those answers written out at this time. I only require that you hand in at the time of your presentation your written answers for Examination 1.
Shaw Monologues/ MEN
JOHNNY.
If Kipling wants to remember, let him remember. If he had to run Tarleton's Underwear, he'd be jolly glad to forget. As he has a much softer job, and wants to keep himself before the public, his cry is, "Dont you forget the sort of things I'm rather clever at writing about." Well, I dont blame him: it's his business: I should do the same in his place. But what he wants and what I want are two different things. I want to forget; and I pay another man to make me forget. If I buy a book or go to the theatre, I want to forget the shop and forget myself from the moment I go in to the moment I come out. Thats what I pay my money for. And if I find that the author's simply getting at me the whole time, I consider that hes obtained my money under false pretences. I'm not a morbid crank: I'm a natural man; and, as such, I dont like being got at. If a man in my employment did it, I should sack him. If a member of my club did it, I should cut him. If he went too far with it, I should bring his conduct before the committee. I might even punch his head, if it came to that. Well, who and what is an author that he should be privileged to take liberties that are not allowed to other men?
Misalliance
LORD SUMMERHAYS.
Smash it. Dont hesitate: it's an ugly thing. Smash it: hard. [Johnny, with a stifled yell, dashes it in pieces, and then sits down and mops his brow]. Feel better now? [Johnny nods]. I know only one person alive who could drive me to the point of having either to break china or commit murder; and that person is my son Bentley. Was it he? [Johnny nods again, not yet able to speak]. As the car stopped I heard a yell which is only too familiar to me. It generally means that some infuriated person is trying to thrash Bentley. Nobody has ever succeeded, though almost everybody has tried. [He seats himself comfortably close to the writing table, and sets to work to collect the fragments of the punchbowl in the wastepaper basket whilst Johnny, with diminishing difficulty, collects himself]. Bentley is a problem which I confess I have never been able to solve. He was born to be a great success at the age of fifty. Most Englishmen of his class seem to be born to be great successes at the age of twenty-four at most. The domestic problem for me is how to endure Bentley until he is fifty. The problem for the nation is how to get itself governed by men whose growth is arrested when they are little more than college lads. Bentley doesnt really mean to be offensive. You can always make him cry by telling him you dont like him. Only, he cries so loud that the experiment should be made in the open air: in the middle of Salisbury Plain if possible. He has a hard and penetrating intellect and a remarkable power of looking facts in the face; but unfortunately, being very young, he has no idea of how very little of that sort of thing most of us can stand. On the other hand, he is frightfully sensitive and even affectionate; so that he probably gets as much as he gives in the way of hurt feelings. Youll excuse me rambling on like this about my son.
Misalliance
THE MAN.
No. Thats just it: Ive no business to do. Do you know what my life is? I spend my days from nine to six--nine hours of daylight and fresh air--in a stuffy little den counting another man's money. Ive an intellect: a mind and a brain and a soul; and the use he makes of them is to fix them on his tuppences and his eighteenpences and his two pound seventeen and tenpences and see how much they come to at the end of the day and take care that no one steals them. I enter and enter, and add and add, and take money and give change, and fill cheques and stamp receipts; and not a penny of that money is my own: not one of those transactions has the smallest interest for me or anyone else in the world but him; and even he couldnt stand it if he had to do it all himself. And I'm envied: aye, envied for the variety and liveliness of my job, by the poor devil of a bookkeeper that has to copy all my entries over again. Fifty thousand entries a year that poor wretch makes; and not ten out of the fifty thousand ever has to be referred to again; and when all the figures are counted up and the balance sheet made out, the boss isnt a penny the richer than he'd be if bookkeeping had never been invented. Of all the damnable waste of human life that ever was invented, clerking is the very worst.
Misalliance
GUNNER.
[reassuring her gravely] Dont you be alarmed, maam. I know what is due to you as a lady and to myself as a gentleman. I regard you with respect and affection. If you had been my mother, as you ought to have been, I should have had more chance. But you shall have no cause to be ashamed of me. The strength of a chain is no greater than its weakest link; but the greatness of a poet is the greatness of his greatest moment. Shakespear used to get drunk. Frederick the Great ran away from a battle. But it was what the could rise to, not what they could sink to, that made them great. They werent good always; but they were good on their day. Well, on my day--on my day, mind you--I'm good for something too. I know that Ive made a silly exhibition of myself here. I know I didnt rise to the occasion. I know that if youd been my mother, youd have been ashamed of me. I lost my presence of mind: I was a contemptible coward. But [slapping himself on the chest] I'm not the man I was then. This is my day. Ive seen the tenth possessor of a foolish face carried out kicking and screaming by a woman. [To Percival] You crowed pretty big over me. You hypnotized me. But when you were put through the fire yourself, you were found wanting. I tell you straight I don’t give a damn for you.
Misalliance
PERCIVAL.
Well, but does that matter, do you think? Patsy fascinates me, no doubt. I apparently fascinate Patsy. But, believe me, all that is not worth considering. One of my three fathers (the priest) has married hundreds of couples: couples selected by one another, couples selected by the parents, couples forced to marry one another by circumstances of one kind or another; and he assures me that if marriages were made by putting all the men's names into one sack and the women's names into another, and having them taken out by a blindfolded child like lottery numbers, there would be just as high a percentage of happy marriages as we have here in England. He said Cupid was nothing but the blindfolded child: pretty idea that, I think! I shall have as good a chance with Patsy as with anyone else. Mind: I'm not bigoted about it. I'm not a doctrinaire: not the slave of a theory. You and Lord Summerhays are experienced married men. If you can tell me of any trustworthy method of selecting a wife, I shall be happy to make use of it. I await your suggestions. [He looks with polite attention to Lord Summerhays, who, having nothing to say, avoids his eye. He looks to Tarleton, who purses his lips glumly and rattles his money in his pockets without a word]. Apparently neither of you has anything to suggest. Then Patsy will do as well as another, provided the money is forthcoming.
Misalliance
ROBERT.
[genially] It isnt service, Polly. A friendly talk. Sit down. [He hooks the stool from under the table with his instep]. Poulengey, relaxing, comes into the room: places the stool between the table and the window: and sits down ruminatively. Robert, half sitting on the end of the table, begins the friendly talk.
ROBERT. Now listen to me, Polly. I must talk to you like a father.
Poulengey looks up at him gravely for a moment, but says nothing.
ROBERT. It's about this girl you are interested in. Now, I have seen her. I have talked to her. First, she's mad. That doesn’t matter. Second, she's not a farm wench. She's a bourgeoise. That matters a good deal. I know her class exactly. Her father came here last year to represent his village in a lawsuit: he is one of their notables. A farmer. Not a gentleman farmer: he makes money by it, and lives by it. Still, not a laborer. Not a mechanic. He might have a cousin a lawyer, or in the Church. People of this sort may be of no account socially; but they can give a lot of bother to the authorities. That is to say, to me. Now no doubt it seems to you a very simple thing to take this girl away, humbugging her into the belief that you are taking her to the Dauphin. But if you get her into trouble, you may get me into no end of a mess, as I am her father's lord, and responsible for her protection. So friends or no friends, Polly, hands off her.
Saint Joan
CAUCHON.
You mistake me, my lord. I have no sympathy with her political presumptions. But as a priest I have gained a knowledge of the minds of the common people; and there you will find yet another most dangerous idea. I can express it only by such phrases as France for the French, England for the English, Italy for the Italians, Spain for the Spanish, and so forth. It is sometimes so narrow and bitter in country folk that it surprises me that this country girl can rise above the idea of her village for its villagers. But she can. She does. When she threatens to drive the English from the soil of France she is undoubtedly thinking of the whole extent of country in which French is spoken. To her the French-speaking people are what the Holy Scriptures describe as a nation. Call this side of her heresy Nationalism if you will: I can find you no better name for it. I can only tell you that it is essentially anti-Catholic and anti-Christian; for the Catholic Church knows only one realm, and that is the realm of Christ's
kingdom. Divide that kingdom into nations, and you dethrone
Christ. Dethrone Christ, and who will stand between our throats
and the sword? The world will perish in a welter of war.
Saint Joan
DUNOIS.
I think that God was on your side; for I have not forgotten how the wind changed, and how our hearts changed when you came; and by my faith I shall never deny that it was in your sign that we conquered. But I tell you as a soldier that God is no man's daily drudge, and no maid's either. If you are worthy of it He will sometimes snatch you out of the jaws of death and set you on your feet again; but that is all: once on your feet you must fight with all your might and all your craft. For He has to be fair to your enemy too dont forget that. Well, He set us on our feet through you at Orleans; and the glory of it has carried us through a few good battles here to the coronation. But if we presume on it further, and trust to God to do the work we should do ourselves, we shall be defeated; and serve us right!
(JOAN. But--)
Sh! I have not finished. Do not think, any of you, that these victories of ours were won without generalship. King Charles: you have said no word in your proclamations of my part in this campaign; and I make no complaint of that; for the people will run after The Maid and her miracles and not after the Bastard's hard work finding troops for her and feeding them. But I know exactly how much God did for us through The Maid, and how much He left me to do by my own wits; and I tell you that your little hour of miracles is over, and that from this time on he who plays the war game best will win--if the luck is on his side.
Saint Joan
THE INQUISITOR.
I submit to you, with great respect, that if we persist in trying The Maid on trumpery issues on which we may have to declare her innocent, she may escape us on the great main issue of heresy, on which she seems so far to insist on her own guilt. I will ask you, therefore, to say nothing, when The Maid is brought before us, of these stealings of horses, and dancings round fairy trees with the village children, and prayings at haunted wells, and a dozen other things which you were diligently inquiring into until my arrival. There is not a village girl in France against whom you could not prove such things: they all dance round haunted trees, and pray at magic wells. Some of them would steal the Pope's horse if they got the chance. Heresy, gentlemen, heresy is the charge we have to try. The detection and suppression of heresy is my peculiar business: I am here as an inquisitor, not as an ordinary magistrate. Stick to the heresy, gentlemen; and leave the other matters alone.
Saint Joan
MANGAN.
Of course you don't understand: what do you know about business? You just listen and learn. Your father's business was a new business; and I don't start new businesses: I let other fellows start them. They put all their money and their friends' money into starting them. They wear out their souls and bodies trying to make a success of them. They're what you call enthusiasts. But the first dead lift of the thing is too much for them; and they haven't enough financial experience. In a year or so they have either to let the whole show go bust, or sell out to a new lot of fellows for a few deferred ordinary shares: that is, if they're lucky enough to get anything at all. As likely as not the very same thing happens to the new lot. They put in more money and a couple of years' more work; and then perhaps they have to sell out to a third lot. If it's really a big thing the third lot will have to sell out too, and leave their work and their money behind them. And that's where the real business man comes in: where I come in. But I'm cleverer than some: I don't mind dropping a little money to start the process. I took your father's measure. I saw that he had a sound idea, and that he would work himself silly for it if he got the chance. I saw that he was a child in business, and was dead certain to outrun his expenses and be in too great a hurry to wait for his market. I knew that the surest way to ruin a man who doesn't know how to handle money is to give him some. I explained my idea to some friends in the city, and they found the money; for I take no risks in ideas, even when they're my own. Your father and the friends that ventured their money with him were no more to me than a heap of squeezed lemons. You've been wasting your gratitude: my kind heart is all rot. I'm sick of it. When I see your father beaming at me with his moist, grateful eyes, regularly wallowing in gratitude, I sometimes feel I must tell him the truth or burst. What stops me is that I know he wouldn't believe me. He'd think it was my modesty, as you did just now. He'd think anything rather than the truth, which is that he's a blamed fool, and I am a man that knows how to take care of himself. [He throws himself back into the big chair with largeself approval]. Now what do you think of me, Miss Ellie?
Heartbreak House
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER.
A man's interest in the world is only the overflow from his interest in himself. When you are a child your vessel is not yet full; so you care for nothing but your own affairs. When you grow up, your vessel overflows; and you are a politician, a philosopher, or an explorer and adventurer. In old age the vessel dries up: there is no overflow: you are a child again. I can give you the memories of my ancient wisdom: mere scraps and leavings; but I no longer really care for anything but my own little wants and hobbies. I sit here working out my old ideas as a means of destroying my fellow-creatures. I see my daughters and their men living foolish lives of romance and sentiment and snobbery. I see you, the younger generation, turning from their romance and sentiment and snobbery to money and comfort and hard common sense. I was ten times happier on the bridge in the typhoon, or frozen into Arctic ice for months in darkness, than you or they have ever been. You are looking for a rich husband. At your age I looked for hardship, danger, horror, and death, that I might feel the life in me more intensely. I did not let the fear of death govern my life; and my reward was, I had my life. You are going to let the fear of poverty govern your life; and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.
Heartbreak House
The following three Cusins speeches are to be done as a scene. You will need a scene partner.
CUSINS. I think all power is spiritual: these cannons will not go off by themselves. I have tried to make spiritual power by teaching Greek. But the world can never be really touched by a dead language and a dead civilization. The people must have power; and the people cannot have Greek. Now the power that is made here can be wielded by all men.
BARBARA. Power to burn women's houses down and kill their sons and tear their husbands to pieces.
CUSINS. You cannot have power for good without having power for evil too. Even mother's milk nourishes murderers as well as heroes. This power which only tears men's bodies to pieces has never been so horribly abused as the intellectual power, the imaginative power, the poetic, religious power that can enslave men's souls. As a teacher of Greek I gave the intellectual man weapons against the common man. I now want to give the common man weapons against the intellectual man. I love the common people. I want to arm them against the lawyer, the doctor, the priest, the literary man, the professor, the artist, and the politician, who, once in authority, are the most dangerous, disastrous, and tyrannical of all the fools, rascals, and impostors. I want a democratic power strong enough to force the intellectual oligarchy to use its genius for the general good or else perish.
BARBARA. Is there no higher power than that [pointing to the shell]?
CUSINS. Yes: but that power can destroy the higher powers just as a tiger can destroy a man: therefore man must master that power first. I admitted this when the Turks and Greeks were last at war. My best pupil went out to fight for Hellas. My parting gift to him was not a copy of Plato's Republic, but a revolver and a hundred Undershaft cartridges. The blood of every Turk he shot-- if he shot any--is on my head as well as on Undershaft's. That act committed me to this place for ever. Your father's challenge has beaten me. Dare I make war on war? I dare. I must. I will. And now, is it all over between us?
Major Barbara
This first sentence is rewritten to help start the monologue.
UNDERSHAFT.
Poverty is the worst of crimes. All the other crimes are virtues beside it: all the other dishonors are chivalry itself by comparison. Poverty blights whole cities; spreads horrible pestilences; strikes dead the very souls of all who come within sight, sound or smell of it. What you call crime is nothing: murder here and a theft there, a blow now and a curse then: what do they matter? they are only the accidents and illnesses of life: there are not fifty genuine professional criminals in London. But there are millions of poor people, abject people, dirty people, ill fed, ill clothed people. They poison us morally and physically: they kill the happiness of society: they force us to do away with our own liberties and to organize unnatural cruelties for fear they should rise against us and drag us down into their abyss. Only fools fear crime: we all fear poverty. Pah! (turning on Barbara) you talk of your half-saved ruffian in West Ham: you accuse me of dragging his soul back to perdition. Well, bring him to me here; and I will drag his soul back again to salvation for you. Not by words and dreams; but by thirty-eight shillings a week, a sound house in a handsome street, and a permanent job. In three weeks he will have a fancy waistcoat; in three months a tall hat and a chapel sitting; before the end of the year he will shake hands with a duchess at a Primrose League meeting, and join the Conservative Party.
Major Barbara
The following three Nicola speeches are to be done as a scene. You will need a scene partner.
NICOLA (turning, still on his knees, and squatting down rather forlornly, on his calves, daunted by her implacable disdain). You have a great ambition in you, Louka. Remember: if any luck comes to you, it was I that made a woman of you.
LOUKA. You!
NICOLA (with dogged self-assertion). Yes, me. Who was it made you give up wearing a couple of pounds of false black hair on your head and reddening your lips and cheeks like any other Bulgarian girl? I did. Who taught you to trim your nails, and keep your hands clean, and be dainty about yourself, like a fine Russian lady? Me! do you hear that? me! (She tosses her head defiantly; and he rises, ill-humoredly, adding more coolly) I've often thought that if Raina were out of the way, and you just a little less of a fool and Sergius just a little more of one, you might come to be one of my grandest customers, instead of only being my wife and costing me money.
LOUKA. I believe you would rather be my servant than my husband. You would make more out of me. Oh, I know that soul of yours.
NICOLA (going up close to her for greater emphasis). Never you mind my soul; but just listen to my advice. If you want to be a lady, your present behaviour to me won't do at all, unless when we're alone. It's too sharp and imprudent; and impudence is a sort of familiarity: it shews affection for me. And don't you try being high and mighty with me either. You're like all country girls: you think it's genteel to treat a servant the way I treat a stable-boy. That's only your ignorance; and don't you forge it. And don't be so ready to defy everybody. Act as if you expected to have your own way, not as if you expected to be ordered about. The way to get on as a lady is the same as the way to get on as a servant: you've got to know your place; that's the secret of it. And you may depend on me to know my place if you get promoted. Think over it, my girl. I'll stand by you: one servant should always stand by another.
Arms and The Man
The following two Morell speeches are to be done as a scene. You will need a scene partner.
MORELL (with noble tenderness). Eugene: listen to me. Some day, I hope and trust, you will be a happy man like me. (Eugene chafes intolerantly, repudiating the worth of his happiness. Morell, deeply insulted, controls himself with fine forbearance, and continues steadily, with great artistic beauty of delivery) You will be married; and you will be working with all your might and valor to make every spot on earth as happy as your own home. You will be one of the makers of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth; and--who knows?--you may be a pioneer and master builder where I am only a humble journeyman; for don't think, my boy, that I cannot see in you, young as you are, promise of higher powers than I can ever pretend to. I well know that it is in the poet that the holy spirit of man--the god within him--is most godlike. It should make you tremble to think of that--to think that the heavy burthen and great gift of a poet may be laid upon you.
MARCHBANKS (unimpressed and remorseless, his boyish crudity of assertion telling sharply against Morell's oratory). It does not make me tremble. It is the want of it in others that makes me tremble.
MORELL (redoubling his force of style under the stimulus of his genuine feelinq and Eugene's obduracy). Then help to kindle it in them--in me---not to extinguish it. In the future--when you are as happy as I am--I will be your true brother in the faith. I will help you to believe that God has given us a world that nothing but our own folly keeps from being a paradise. I will help you to believe that every stroke of your work is sowing happiness for the great harvest that all--even the humblest--shall one day reap. And last, but trust me, not least, I will help you to believe that your wife loves you and is happy in her home. We need such help, Marchbanks: we need it greatly andalways. There are so many things to make us doubt, if once we let our understanding be troubled. Even at home, we sit as if in camp, encompassed by a hostile army of doubts. Will you play the traitor and let them in on me?
Candida
The following three Marchbanks speeches are to be done as a scene. You will need a scene partner.
MARCHBANKS (with petulant vehemence). Yes, it does. (Morell turns away contemptuously. Eugene scrambles to his feet and follows him.) You think because I shrink from being brutally handled-- because (with tears in his voice) I can do nothing but cry with rage when I am met with violence--because I can't lift a heavy trunk down from the top of a cab like you--because I can't fight you for your wife as a navvy would: all that makes you think that I'm afraid of you. But you're wrong. If I haven't got what you call British pluck, I haven't British cowardice either: I'm not afraid of a clergyman's ideas. I'll fight your ideas. I'll rescue her from her slavery to them: I'll pit my own ideas against them. You are driving me out of the house because you daren't let her choose between your ideas and mine. You are afraid to let me see her again. (Morell, angered, turns suddenly on him. He flies to the door in involuntary dread.) Let me alone, I say. I'm going.
MORELL (with cold scorn). Wait a moment: I am not going to touch you: don't be afraid. When my wife comes back she will want to know why you have gone. And when she finds that you are never going to cross our threshold again, she will want to have that explained, too. Now I don't wish to distress her by telling her that you have behaved like a blackguard.
MARCHBANKS (Coming back with renewed vehemence). You shall--you must. If you give any explanation but the true one, you are a liar and a coward. Tell her what I said; and how you were strong and manly, and shook me as a terrier shakes a rat; and how I shrank and was terrified; and how you called me a snivelling little whelp and put me out of the house. If you don't tell her, I will: I'll write to her.
MORELL (taken aback.) Why do you want her to know this?
MARCHBANKS (with lyric rapture.) Because she will understand me, and know that I understand her. If you keep back one word of it from her--if you are not ready to lay the truth at her feet as I am--then you will know to the end of your days that she really belongs to me and not to you. Good-bye. (Going.)
Candida
THE DEVIL.
Well, well, go your way, Senor Don Juan. I prefer to be my own master and not the tool of any blundering universal force. I know that beauty is good to look at; that music is good to hear; that love is good to feel; and that they are all good to think about and talk about. I know that to be well exercised in these sensations, emotions, and studies is to be a refined and cultivated being. Whatever they may say of me in churches on earth, I know that it is universally admitted in good society that the prince of Darkness is a gentleman; and that is enough for me. As to your Life Force, which you think irresistible, it is the most resistible thing in the world for a person of any character. But if you are naturally vulgar and credulous, as all reformers are, it will thrust you first into religion, where you will sprinkle water on babies to save their souls from me; then it will drive you from religion into science, where you will snatch the babies from the water sprinkling and inoculate them with disease to save them from catching it accidentally; then you will take to politics, where you will become the catspaw of corrupt functionaries and the henchman of ambitious humbugs; and the end will be despair and decrepitude, broken nerve and shattered hopes, vain regrets for that worst and silliest of wastes and sacrifices, the waste and sacrifice of the power of enjoyment: in a word, the punishment of the fool who pursues the better before he has secured the good.
Man and Superman
DOOLITTLE.
Dont say that, Governor. Dont look at it that way. What am I, Governors both? I ask you, what am I? Im one of the undeserving poor: thats what I am. Think of what that means to a man. It means that hes up agen middle class morality all the time. If theres anything going, and I put in for a bit of it, its always the same story: "Youre undeserving; so you cant have it." But my needs is as great as the most deserving widow's that ever got money out of six different charities in one week for the death of the same husband. I dont need less than a deserving man: I need more. I dont eat less hearty than him; and I drink a lot more. I want a bit of amusement, cause Im a thinking man. I want cheerfulness and a song and a band when I feel low. Well, they charge me just the same for everything as they charge the deserving. What is middle class morality? Just an excuse for never giving me anything. Therefore, I ask you, as two gentlemen, not to play that game on me. Im playing straight with you. I aint pretending to be deserving. Im undeserving; and I mean to go on being undeserving. I like it; and thats the truth. Will you take advantage of a man's nature to do him out of the price of his own daughter what hes brought up and fed and clothed by the sweat of his brow until shes growed big enough to be interesting to you two gentlemen? Is five pounds unreasonable? I put it to you; and I leave it to you.
Pygmalion
Shaw Monologues/ WOMEN
HYPATIA.
Oh, lots. Thats part of the routine of life here: the very dullest part of it. The young man who comes a-courting is as familiar an incident in my life as coffee for breakfast. Of course, hes too much of a gentleman to misbehave himself; and I'm too much of a lady to let him; and hes shy and sheepish; and I'm correct and self-possessed; and at last, when I can bear it no longer, I either frighten him off, or give him a chance of proposing, just to see how he'll do it, and refuse him because he does it in the same silly way as all the rest. You dont call that an event in one's life, do you? With you it was different. I should as soon have expected the North Pole to fall in love with me as you. You know I'm only a linen-draper's daughter when all's said. I was afraid of you: you, a great man! a lord! and older than my father. And then what a situation it was! Just think of it! I was engaged to your son; and you knew nothing about it. He was afraid to tell you: he brought you down here because he thought if he could throw us together I could get round you because I was such a ripping girl. We arranged it all: he and I. We got Papa and Mamma and Johnny out of the way splendidly; and then Bentley took himself off, and left us--you and me!--to take a walk through the heather and admire the scenery of Hindhead. You never dreamt that it was all a plan: that what made me so nice was the way I was playing up to my destiny as the sweet girl that was to make your boy happy. And then! and then! [She rises to dance and clap her hands in her glee].
*{LORD SUMMERHAYS. _[shuddering]_ Stop, stop. Can no woman understand a man's delicacy?}
HYPATIA.
_[revelling in the recollection]_ And then--ha, ha!—you proposed. You! A father! For your son's girl!
Misalliance
*For the purposes of the monologue, drop out Lord Summerhays’ verbal response.
LINA.
But your Johnny! Oh, your Johnny! with his marriage. He will do the straight thing by me. He will give me a home, a position. He tells me I must know that my present position is not one for a nice woman. This to me, Lina Szczepanowska! I am an honest woman: I earn my living. I am a free woman: I live in my own house. I am a woman of the world: I have thousands of friends: every night crowds of people applaud me, delight in me, buy my picture, pay hard-earned money to see me. I am strong: I am skilful: I am brave: I am independent: I am unbought: I am all that a woman ought to be; and in my family there has not been a single drunkard for four generations. And this Englishman! this linendraper! he dares to ask me to come and live with him in this rrrrrrrabbit hutch, and take my bread from his hand, and ask him for pocket money, and wear soft clothes, and be his woman! his wife! Sooner than that, I would stoop to the lowest depths of my profession. I would stuff lions with food and pretend to tame them. I would deceive honest people's eyes with conjuring tricks instead of real feats of strength and skill. I would be a clown and set bad examples of conduct to little children. I would sink yet lower and be an actress or an opera singer, imperiling my soul by the wicked lie of pretending to be somebody else. All this I would do sooner than take my bread from the hand of a man and make him the master of my body and soul. And so you may tell your Johnny to buy an Englishwoman: he shall not buy Lina Szczepanowska; and I will not stay in the house where such dishonor is offered me. Adieu.
[She turns precipitately to go, but is faced in the pavilion doorway
by Johnny, who comes in slowly, his hands in his pockets, meditating
deeply].
Misalliance
Please note: ‘Lina’ is Polish. Shaw intends for her to speak with a Polish accent.
JOAN.
Where would you all have been now if I had heeded that sort of truth? There is no help, no counsel, in any of you. Yes: I am alone on earth: I have always been alone. My father told my brothers to drown me if I would not stay to mind his sheep while France was bleeding to death: France might perish if only our lambs were safe. I thought France would have friends at the court of the king of France; and I find only wolves fighting for pieces of her poor torn body. I thought God would have friends everywhere, because He is the friend of everyone; and in my innocence I believed that you who now cast me out would be like strong towers to keep harm from me. But I am wiser now; and nobody is any the worse for being wiser. Do not think you can frighten me by telling me that I am alone. France is alone; and God is alone; and what is my loneliness before the loneliness of my country and my God? I see now that the loneliness of God is His strength: what would He be if He listened to your jealous little counsels? Well, my loneliness shall be my strength too; it is better to be alone with God; His friendship will not fail me, nor His counsel, nor His love. In His strength I will dare, and dare, and dare, until I die. I will go out now to the common people, and let the love in their eyes comfort me for the hate in yours. You will all be glad to see me burnt; but if I go through the fire I shall go through it to their hearts for ever and ever. And so, God be with me!
Saint Joan
JOAN.
Ah! if, if, if, if! If ifs and ans were pots and pans there'd be no need of tinkers. [Rising impetuously] I tell you, Bastard, your art of war is no use, because your knights are no good for real fighting. War is only a game to them, like tennis and all their other games: they make rules as to what is fair and what is not fair, and heap armor on themselves and on their poor horses to keep out the arrows; and when they fall they cant get up, and have to wait for their squires to come and lift them to arrange about the ransom with the man that has poked them off their horse. Cant you see that all the like of that is gone by and done with? What use is armor against gunpowder? And if it was, do you think men that are fighting for France and for God will stop to bargain about ransoms, as half your knights live by doing? No: they will fight to win; and they will give up their lives out of their own hand into the hand of God when they go into battle, as I do. Common folks understand this. They cannot afford armor and cannot pay ransoms; but they followed me half naked into the moat and up the ladder and over the wall. With them it is my life or thine, and God defend the right! You may shake your head, Jack; and Bluebeard may twirl his billygoat's beard and cock his nose at me;m but remember the day your knights and captains refused to follow me to attack the English at Orleans! You locked the gates to keep me in; and it was the townsfolk and the common people that followed me, and forced the gate, and shewed you the way to fight in earnest.
Saint Joan
JOAN.
Yes: they told me you were fools [the word gives great offence], and that I was not to listen to your fine words nor trust to your charity. You promised me my life; but you lied [indignant exclamations]. You think that life is nothing but not being stone dead. It is not the bread and water I fear: I can live on bread: when have I asked for more? It is no hardship to drink water if the water be clean. Bread has no sorrow for me, and water no affliction. But to shut me from the light of the sky and the sight of the fields and flowers; to chain my feet so that I can never again ride with the soldiers nor climb the hills; to make me breathe foul damp darkness, and keep from me everything that brings me back to the love of God when your wickedness and foolishness tempt me to hate Him: all this is worse than the furnace in the Bible that was heated seven times. I could do without my warhorse; I could drag about in a skirt; I could let the banners and the trumpets and the knights and soldiers pass me and leave me behind as they leave the other women, if only I could still hear the wind in the trees, the larks in the sunshine, the young lambs crying through the healthy frost, and the blessed blessed church bells that send my angel voices floating to me on the wind. But without these things I cannot live; and by your wanting to take them away from me, or from any human creature, I know that your counsel is of the devil, and that mine is of God.
Saint Joan
LADY UTTERWORD.
[sitting down with a flounce on the sofa]. I know what you must feel. Oh, this house, this house! I come back to it after twenty-three years; and it is just the same: the luggage lying on the steps, the servants spoilt and impossible, nobody at home to receive anybody, no regular meals, nobody ever hungry because they are always gnawing bread and butter or munching apples, and, what is worse, the same disorder in ideas, in talk, in feeling. When I was a child I was used to it: I had never known anything better, though I was unhappy, and longed all the time--oh, how I longed!--to be respectable, to be a lady, to live as others did, not to have to think of everything for myself. I married at nineteen to escape from it. My husband is Sir Hastings Utterword, who has been governor of all the crown colonies in succession. I have always been the mistress of Government House. I have been so happy: I had forgotten that people could live like this. I wanted to see my father, my sister, my nephews and nieces (one ought to, you know), and I was looking forward to it. And now the state of the house! the way I'm received! the casual impudence of that woman Guinness, our old nurse! really Hesione might at least have been here: some preparation might have been made for me. You must excuse my going on in this way; but I am really very much hurt and annoyed and disillusioned: and if I had realized it was to be like this, I wouldn't have come. I have a great mind to go away without another word [she is on the point of weeping].
Heartbreak House
The following three Ellie speeches are to be done as a scene. You will need a scene partner.
ELLIE. Of course I shall get over it. You don't suppose I'm going to sit down and die of a broken heart, I hope, or be an old maid living on a pittance from the Sick and Indigent Roomkeepers' Association. But my heart is broken, all the same. What I mean by that is that I know that what has happened to me with Marcus will not happen to me ever again. In the world for me there is Marcus and a lot of other men of whom one is just the same as another. Well, if I can't have love, that's no reason why I should have poverty. If Mangan has nothing else, he has money
MRS HUSHABYE. And are there no young men with money?
ELLIE. Not within my reach. Besides, a young man would have the right to expect love from me, and would perhaps leave me when he found I could not give it to him. Rich young men can get rid of their wives, you know, pretty cheaply. But this object, as you call him, can expect nothing more from me than I am prepared to give him.
MRS HUSHABYE. He will be your owner, remember. If he buys you, he will make the bargain pay him and not you. Ask your father.
ELLIE [rising and strolling to the chair to contemplate their subject]. You need not trouble on that score, Hesione. I have more to give Boss Mangan than he has to give me: it is I who am buying him, and at a pretty good price too, I think. Women are better at that sort of bargain than men. I have taken the Boss's measure; and ten Boss Mangans shall not prevent me doing far more as I please as his wife than I have ever been able to do as a poor girl. [Stooping to the recumbent figure]. Shall they, Boss? I think not. [She passes on to the drawing-table, and leans against the end of it, facing to windows]. I shall not have to spend most of my time wondering how long my gloves will last, anyhow.
Heartbreak House
BARBARA.
That is why I have no class, Dolly: I come straight out of the heart of the whole people. If I were middle-class I should turn my back on my father's business; and we should both live in an artistic drawingroom, with you reading the reviews in one corner, and I in the other at the piano, playing Schumann: both very superior persons, and neither of us a bit of use. Sooner than that, I would sweep out the guncotton shed, or be one of Bodger's barmaids. Do you know what would have happened if you had refused papa's offer?
(CUSINS. I wonder!)
I should have given you up and married the man who accepted it. After all, my dear old mother has more sense than any of you. I felt like her when I saw this place--felt that I must have it--that never, never, never could I let it go; only she thought it was the houses and the kitchen ranges and the linen and china, when it was really all the human souls to be saved: not weak souls in starved bodies, crying with gratitude or a scrap of bread and treacle, but fullfed, quarrelsome, snobbish, uppish creatures, all standing on their little rights and dignities, and thinking that my father ought to be greatly obliged to them for making so much money for him--and so he ought. That is where salvation is really wanted. My father shall never throw it in my teeth again that my converts were bribed with bread. [She is transfigured]. I have got rid of the bribe of bread. I have got rid of the bribe of heaven. Let God's work be done for its own sake: the work he had to create us to do because it cannot he done by living men and women. When I die, let him be in my debt, not I in his; and let me forgive him as becomes a woman of my rank.
Major Barbara
CANDIDA.
Never mind that just at present. Now I want you to look at this other boy here--my boy--spoiled from his cradle. We go once a fortnight to see his parents. You should come with us, Eugene, and see the pictures of the hero of that household. James as a baby! the most wonderful of all babies. James holding his first school prize, won at the ripe age of eight! James as the captain of his eleven! James in his first frock coat! James under all sorts of glorious circumstances! You know how strong he is (I hope he didn't hurt you)--how clever he is--how happy! (With deepening gravity.) Ask James's mother and his three sisters what it cost to save James the trouble of doing anything but be strong and clever and happy. Ask me what it costs to be James's mother and three sisters and wife and mother to his children all in one. Ask Prossy and Maria how troublesome the house is even when we have no visitors to help us to slice the onions. Ask the tradesmen who want to worry James and spoil his beautiful sermons who it is that puts them off. When there is money to give, he gives it: when there is money to refuse, I refuse it. I build a castle of comfort and indulgence and love for him, and stand sentinel always to keep little vulgar cares out. I make him master here, though he does not know it, and could not tell you a moment ago how it came to be so. (With sweet irony.) And when he thought I might go away with you, his only anxiety was what should become of me! And to tempt me to stay he offered me (leaning forward to stroke his hair caressingly at each phrase) his strength for my defence, his industry for my livelihood, his position for my dignity, his-- (Relenting.) Ah, I am mixing up your beautiful sentences and spoiling them, am I not, darling? (She lays her cheek fondly against his.)
Candida
MRS WARREN.
I mean that youre throwing away all your chances for nothing. You think that people are what they pretend to be: that the way you were taught at school and college to think right and proper is the way things really are. But it's not: it's all only a pretence, to keep the cowardly slavish common run of people quiet. Do you want to find that out, like other women, at forty, when youve thrown yourself away and lost your chances; or wont you take it in good time now from your own mother, that loves you and swears to you that it's truth: gospel truth? [Urgently] Vivie: the big people, the clever people, the managing people, all know it. They do as I do, and think what I think. I know plenty of them. I know them to speak to, to introduce you to, to make friends of for you. I dont mean anything wrong: thats what you dont understand: your head is full of ignorant ideas about me. What do the people that taught you know about life or about people like me? When did they ever meet me, or speak to me, or let anyone tell them about me? the fools! Would they ever have done anything for you if I hadnt paid them? Havnt I told you that I want you to be respectable? Havnt I brought you up to be respectable? And how can you keep it up without my money and my influence and Lizzie's friends? Cant you see that youre cutting your own throat as well as breaking my heart in turning your back
on me?
Mrs. Warren’s Profession
MRS WARREN.
Well, of course, dearie, it's only good manners to be ashamed of it: it's expected from a woman. Women have to pretend to feel a great deal that they dont feel. Liz used to be angry with me for plumping out the truth about it. She used to say that when every woman could learn enough from what was going on in the world before her eyes, there was no need to talk about it to her. But then Liz was such a perfect lady! She had the true instinct of it; while I was always a bit of a vulgarian. I used to be so pleased when you sent me your photos to see that you were growing up like Liz: youve just her ladylike, determined way. But I cant stand saying one thing when everyone knows I mean another. Whats the use in such hypocrisy? If people arrange the world that way for women, theres no good pretending it's arranged the other way. No: I never was a bit ashamed really. I consider I had a right to be proud of how we manage everything so respectably, and never had a word against us, and how the girls were so well taken care of. Some of them did very well: one of them married an ambassador. But of course now I darent talk about such things: whatever would they think of us! [She yawns]. Oh dear! I do believe I'm getting sleepy after all. [She stretches herself lazily, thoroughly relieved by her explosion, and placidly ready for her night's rest].
Mrs. Warren’s Profession
VIVIE.
It would not matter if you did: you would not succeed. [Mrs Warren winces, deeply hurt by the implied indifference towards her affectionate intention. Vivie, neither understanding this nor concerning herself about it, goes on calmly] Mother: you dont at all know the sort of person I am. I dont object to Crofts more than to any other coarsely built man of his class. To tell you the truth, I rather admire him for being strongminded enough to enjoy himself in his own way and make plenty of money instead of living the usual shooting, hunting, dining-out, tailoring, loafing life of his set merely because all the rest do it. And I'm perfectly aware that if I'd been in the same circumstances as my aunt Liz, I'd have done exactly what she did.
I dont think I'm more prejudiced or straitlaced than you: I think I'm less. I'm certain I'm less sentimental. I know very well that fashionable morality is all a pretence, and that if I took your money and devoted the rest of my life to spending it fashionably, I might be as worthless and vicious as the silliest woman could possibly be without having a word said to me about it. But I dont want to be worthless. I shouldnt enjoy trotting about the park to advertize my dressmaker and carriage builder, or being bored at the opera to shew off a shop windowful of diamonds.
MRS WARREN [bewildered] But--
VIVIE.
Wait a moment: Ive not done. Tell me why you continue your business now that you are independent of it. Your sister, you told me, has left all that behind her. Why dont you do the same?
Mrs. Warren’s Profession
LAVINIA.
No. I couldn't. That is the strange thing, Captain, that a little pinch of incense should make all that difference. Religion is such a great thing that when I meet really religious people we are friends at once, no matter what name we give to the divine will that made us and moves us. Oh, do you think that I, a woman, would quarrel with you for sacrificing to a woman god like Diana, if Diana meant to you what Christ means to me? No: we should kneel side by side before her altar like two children. But when men who believe neither in my god nor in their own--men who do not know the meaning of the word religion--when these men drag me to the foot of an iron statue that has become the symbol of the terror and darkness through which they walk, of their cruelty and greed, of their hatred of God and their oppression of man-- when they ask me to pledge my soul before the people that this hideous idol is God, and that all this wickedness and falsehood is divine truth, I cannot do it, not if they could put a thousand cruel deaths on me. I tell you, it is physically impossible. Listen, Captain: did you ever try to catch a mouse in your hand? Once there was a dear little mouse that used to come out and play on my table as I was reading. I wanted to take him in my hand and caress him; and sometimes he got among my books so that he could not escape me when I stretched out my hand. And I did stretch out my hand; but it always came back in spite of me. I was not afraid of him in my heart; but my hand refused: it is not in the nature of my hand to touch a mouse. Well, Captain, if I took a pinch of incense in my hand and stretched it out over the altar fire, my hand would come back. My body would be true to my faith even if you could corrupt my mind. And all the time I should believe more in Diana than my persecutors have ever believed in anything. Can you understand that?
Androcles and the Lion
Cold Reading--Shadow Bay
Jo/Fish
JO
They’re beautiful.
FISH
And. Here’s the money I borrowed yesterday, and the day before
and last week and here’s the interest and a bonus.
JO
Very impressive.
FISH
Won the fifth race, the seventh race, the feature, and the ninth.
On fire. He’s back! You should’ve seen it. You know how it is -
suddenly it’s all so clear, can’t miss, horses leap at you off the
page. Everyone else is sweating it out, you’re sitting back relaxed,
like some blessed minister... doesn’t matter if your horse is running last, or is boxed in on the turn, or out too fast, gonna come in. It was fine. God such a god damn wonderful feeling. You know how it is.
JO
It’s been so long.
FISH
You’ve got to come. C’mon. What’s keeping you?
JO
Have to watch the restaurant.
FISH
The restaurant, the restaurant...
JO
It’s my job. Everything I have is in it.
FISH
That’s not true. That was never true. When you were at Edgar’s
you were there but you lived, you went to the track, we went out,
we stayed out all night.
JO
I didn’t care about Edgar’s.
FISH
So why do you care about... this is the same thing.
JO
It isn’t.
FISH
It is. It’s still a bar, tables, seats. People come in, they want they
want they want. Why is it any different.
JO
Because I want to keep it.
FISH
This is what you want? The Sloop John B? I don’t get it. All your
life this is what you’re doing. You’d think... You know what horse
turned it around in the fifth race? Twice Told Tails. Remember
him? He’s a gelding now. Still runs like a truck. Big outside move.
JO
Thanks for the flowers.
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