The Actor's (and Intelligent Reader's) Guide to the Language of Shakespeare, by Richard DiPrima
Ordering information: The Actor's Guide can be purchased through YSP. Email ysp(at)ysp (dot) org to reserve a copy or for more information. Or purchase online through PayPal. (Use the "no mailing" option below, if you intend to pick up your copy in person.)
What is this book about? To answer your first question first: Yes, there is a reason for yet another book on the language of William Shakespeare.
This one is intended to help the actor (or intelligent reader) to master the forms of Shakespeare’s language. I believe anyone who acts Shakespeare’s plays really well must have a deep familiarity with, and a confident feel for, the language of his plays. And I believe that anyone who reads Shakespeare’s plays really well must be a Shakespearean actor deep inside his or her mind.
It has been my honor and pleasure, as founder and director of The Young Shakespeare Players, to direct thousands of actors in the performance of full-length Shakespeare roles. These players have ranged in age from under 7 to over 80 years of age — with the great majority somewhere between 13 and 18 years old. Those who work with truly serious young minds as they master complex and beautiful material will most likely find, as I have, that they always learn at least as much as they teach. Nothing else can so clearly focus and define what the teacher or director must teach, and the student or actor must grasp. And so it is with the plays of Shakespeare.
At The Young Shakespeare Players we have always placed basic emphasis on the words of the plays — the unlimited resonance of those words, their precise and evocative beauty. Our young actors always quickly understood that, to perform Shakespeare’s plays as well they wanted to do, they needed to start to make his language their own. And this was always a central focus of our work.
But more than 25 years ago, we all found inadequacies in the many, many published works on the subject. Some were overly simplified, or even wrong-headed. Some were excellent, but even these simply did not go far enough. They tended, for example, to take an element of Shakespeare’s writing craft (say, his use of verse rhythm or of antitheses), explain its theoretical basis briefly, give a few brief illustrative examples, and move quickly on. The actor/reader might well understand the point (or part of the point) for the moment. But, far too often, that actor/reader left with so little experience of the key element that it was at best doubtful that he or she could apply this knowledge the next time it cropped up in Shakespeare’s text.
We needed something more. We needed a way for the serious actor to immerse in the key elements of Shakespeare’s text, to the point where each important element became so familiar that, more often than not, it would be recognized instantly when the actor came upon it.
And so, we developed the RISARA model.
The RISARA model
“RISARA” is an acronym for six major formal elements of Shakespeare’s language — six of the ways in which he shaped and varied the language of his plays:
= Rhythm and stress. Shakespeare wrote the great majority of the lines in his plays in verse — that is, language formed into expected rhythm patterns and specific line lengths. Then he regularly broke the rules of his own verse form. The “R” in RISARA leads the actor/reader to ask questions like these: In the passage you are reading, does the rhythm vary from his “regular” rhythm pattern? From “normal” line length? If so, why? And what can you as the actor/reader do to emphasize any special regularities or irregularities in the rhythm, to help make the meaning clearer?
= Imagery. Shakespeare and his fellow actors did not have movie cameras, stunt men, or special effects to help them. The “cameras” were the great poet’s words, spoken by the actors; and the “movie screens” were the ears and minds of the audience members who heard them. What visual pictures does Shakespeare give us to help us “see” the characters’ thoughts and ideas? Are the comparisons (often expressed in metaphors and similes) unusual? How do these images help the audience or reader to understand the passage?
= Sound. Language was heard long before it was seen. In Shakespeare’s time, language was still much more important for how it sounded than for how it looked on a page. Does the sound of Shakespeare’s words add to the feeling of the passage being read? Does it help us understand the meaning? How did Shakespeare vary the sounds? Are some passages dominated by soft or “big” vowels — by sharp or hard consonants? Do some words sound like what they mean, actually imitating meaning? How does the actor/reader use all this to enhance the many levels of meaning of the passage?
= Antitheses. Of the hundreds of figures of speech that Shakespeare regularly used, none was more important than the rhetorical device known as “antitheses.” These were the formal contrasts he set up to help sharpen and guide the thinking of character and audience alike. Shakespeare very often set one word or idea up against another to be compared and contrasted by the character who is speaking (e.g., “And this man is now become a god”). In the passage under study, does Shakespeare emphasize his meaning by comparing antithetical words or ideas? Do such comparisons need special emphasis by the actor or reader to bring out the meaning fully?
= Repetition. Schoolchildren in Shakespeare’s time were thoroughly trained in rhetoric, and drilled in many formal figures of repetition. Shakespeare used these to enormous effect in his plays — often strengthening the vividness and emotions of a passage by repeating certain sounds, or words, or whole phrases. And so, the actor/reader needs to ask: Did he use these kinds of repetition in the passage under study? If so, how does the repetition help tell the actor and the audience or reader about the mood or character or image? What extra feeling does it lend? Can the actor help heighten the meaning of the passage by strengthening the emphasis on the repeated phrases or words or sounds?
= Architecture. Shakespeare built a kind of architecture into his words in many other ways as well. These ranged from the form of his longer speeches (where and how he had the speaking character change ideas or “direction”); to individual lines (how he used the other RISARA elements, such as rhythm or antitheses, to instruct the actor/reader on the way a line should be phrased); to the use of special balanced “figures” in individual phrases or passages; to his shifts from prose to verse or verse to prose. The actor/reader should be able to spot the most important of these within a passage, and to feel comfortable in using them by asking: How do these “architectural” elements add to the meaning or feelings of the whole play, or scene, or speech, or passage? What can the actor/reader do to bring these “architectural features” out further, and help strengthen these meanings and feelings?
Brief, language-based Focused Workshops on each of the elements of RISARA are available to adults and young people at YSP.
Sample facing pages from The Actor's Guide (read as a pdf):
