From the King (Blog #5)October 7th 2007 |
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POGUE HAMLET BLOG #5
So we got through the off-book run-through last night…more or less. I called for line probably a dozen times, but fluffed many more and made mistakes that no one called me on. Bashing lines with my wife, Julieanne today, I felt like this is going to be either the most paraphrased Claudius ever…or the slowest. Because if I go very slowly, clearly enunciating, calming my panicked thought process; I do much better than when I try to ramble through the lines at something approximating a performance tempo.
What I keep missing is not anything that changes the thought of the line…just its exactness, flow, and verse. I’ve decided I hate doing Shakespeare. He can’t just write the way people talk? All these damned introverted nouns and verbs and qualifiers slipped in any old where. It’s little shit that proves my undoing…”but” vs. “yet”; “which” or “that”; “I” or “We”; “mine” or “ours”; “My dear Gertrude”, “ Sweet Gertrude”, “My sweet Gertrude”, “Oh, my dear Gertrude”, “Oh, Gertrude, Gertrude”.
It puts me in mind of a Shakespeare quote test I once wanted to give, matching the plays with quotes like: “Yes, my lord,” “Most honoured lord,” “My good lord”. I’m reminded of this repetitious recognition every time our Rosencrantz and Guildenstern come on (delightfully played by Tim Hull and Todd Culley). Let’s see, this time do I call them “my dear friends” or “good friends” or “friends both” or “good gentlemen”?
The lines are there roughly. But I want to be precise and it frustrates me how much I still get wrong…no matter how small. I mean most are things that if I got them wrong in performance probably only some venerable UK English prof or the ghost of Winston Churchill would notice. And me, of course. Well, sadly, maybe not me. So I keep trying.
But, man…my wife would correct me and I’d say the line as I thought she said it to me and I’d still have said it wrong. Or worse, I’d have said it right and couldn’t remember how or why it was different from the previous way I said it. For two weeks I was saying “Well, we shall shift him”, before I discovered the line was “Well, we shall sift him.” To be fair, the line had been restored after having been cut and I had been reading it through a heavy black ink mark. But today Julieanne pointed out a phrase I had been consistently dropping from a speech I had and it was like hearing it for the first time. What’s even scarier; I only think I’ve been dropping it, I couldn’t tell you for sure.
And then, of course, there are my improvements to Shakespeare. I’ve been saying, “I do doubt the hatch and the disclose will PROVE some danger” when, in fact the phrase ends “will BE some danger.” Where did I come up with this? Did I just think “prove” sounded more interesting than “be” (Actually I do, which makes me think I’m an arrogant asshole daring to question the Bard’s word choice)?
All through rehearsal, folks…when not onstage emoting…were slumped in chairs or huddled in hallways, clutching scripts or sides, feverishly mouthing lines for their next scene. I like to actually roll them around in my mouth aloud, so I was pacing in the upstairs lobby outside the rehearsal room, declaiming.
Jack Parrish, doing double-duty as Polonius and the Grave-Digger (both quite amusing), and our most experienced Shakespearean, stormed by me on his way outside for a smoke, script clenched in fist, mumbling iambic pentameter. “I’m too old for this shit,” he growled to me, as he went by. “It isn’t fun anymore.” Jack is younger than me.
I think I’ll just take the old actor’s advice from Kenneth Branagh’s hilarious film about another Hamlet production, IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER (AKA A MIDWINTER’S TALE), and keep on file his back-up line for any and all Shakespearean disasters. “Crouch we here awhile and lurk.”
And while I’m lurking, maybe a line or two will come to me…
Charles Edward Pogue, “Claudius”
Mr. Pogue appears courtesy of Actor's Equity Association
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