You Talkin' To Me?

In earlier posts regarding text sessions, we looked at scenes with multiple characters on stage.  But what about when a character is alone on a stage, or has a monologue?  During one of our workshops, a participant asked specifically about Act 1, scene 2 of Richard III in which Lady Anne is following the body of her dead father-in-law.  The question regarded to whom was Lady Anne speaking: the audience, or the hearse-bearers?  How much goes to one or the other?  How does the actress in the role at the moment know?

For today's blog post, I begin answering those questions with another question:  What kind of relationship is Anne trying to make with the audience, and what is her relationship with those bearing King Henry’s corpse?  This is, in fact, the first time that an audience meets Anne, so this is the first impression that she gets to make – and we all know what they say about first impressions.

So we are going to take a look at this monologue, and see what we can find in the text that will help answer some of those questions, or at least find places where the actress has a choice to make.

Anne.

Set downe, set downe your honourable load,
If Honor may be shrowded in a Herse;
Whil'st I a-while obsequiously lament
Th' untimely fall of Vertuous Lancaster.
Poore key-cold Figure of a holy King,
Pale Ashes of the House of Lancaster;
Thou bloodlesse Remnant of that Royall Blood,
Be it lawfull that I invocate thy Ghost,
To heare the Lamentations of poore Anne,
Wife to thy Edward, to thy slaughtred Sonne,
Stab'd by the selfesame hand that made these wounds.
Loe, in these windowes that let forth thy life,
I powre the helplesse Balme of my poore eyes.
O cursed be the hand that made these holes:
Cursed the Heart, that had the heart to do it:
Cursed the Blood, that let this blood from hence:
More direfull hap betide that hated Wretch
That makes us wretched by the death of thee,
Then I can wish to Wolves, to Spiders, Toades,
Or any creeping venom'd thing that lives.
If ever he have Childe, Abortive be it,
Prodigeous, and untimely brought to light,
Whose ugly and unnaturall Aspect
May fright the hopefull Mother at the view,
And that be Heyre to his unhappinesse.
If ever he have Wife, let her be made
More miserable by the death of him,
Then I am made by my young Lord, and thee.
Come now towards Chertsey with your holy Lode,
Taken from Paules, to be interred there.
And still as you are weary of this waight,
Rest you, whiles I lament King Henries Coarse.

Looking at the pronouns in this piece will give us a good clue of where to start.  Anne’s first line is clearly meant for those carrying the corpse, and also contains a stage direction:

Set downe, set downe your honourable load,

If Honor may be shrowded in a Herse;
Whil'st I a-while obsequiously lament
Th' untimely fall of Vertuous Lancaster. 

The comment about honor, off-set by a comma and a semi-colon, could be a shift away from the corpse bearers and to the audience, or the choice could be made to stay with the other characters until the semi-colon.  Her last two lines could also be given to them as an explanation for this abrupt stop, or they could be given to the audience to explain what is happening in an attempt to get them on her side.

With the Unrehearsed Cue Script Technique – and I venture to say in any performance of classical theatre – one should always include the audience as much as possible.  It is an important rule that the character never lies to the audience.  The audience already knows more about the plot than the characters do, or will by the end, and the connection with the audience is what makes them interested.  This is why we love Richard III: agree with him or not, he thinks we are on his side, and he includes us in everything.  From his first words on stage, we know exactly what he is going to do, how he is going to do it and why.  He pulls us in, and we love him for it.  Every character who speaks to the audience wants to do the same thing.

This is Anne’s time to do it, and I believe that sharing with the audience is always the more interesting and dramatic choice.  Whenever possible, include the audience.

Moving on:

Poore key-cold Figure of a holy King,
Pale Ashes of the House of Lancaster;
Thou bloodlesse Remnant of that Royall Blood,
Be it lawfull that I invocate thy Ghost,
To heare the Lamentations of poore Anne,
Wife to thy Edward, to thy slaughtred Sonne,
Stab'd by the selfesame hand that made these wounds.
Loe, in these windowes that let forth thy life,
I powre the helplesse Balme of my poore eyes.
O cursed be the hand that made these holes:
Cursed the Heart, that had the heart to do it:
Cursed the Blood, that let this blood from hence:
More direfull hap betide that hated Wretch
That makes us wretched by the death of thee,
Then I can wish to Wolves, to Spiders, Toades,
Or any creeping venom'd thing that lives.

Here, in the first lines, she is addressing the corpse of dead King Henry, and throughout these two long and measured thoughts (only 1 line positively has 11 beats), she uses pronouns and articles that indicate a closeness to the corpse.  This section could be taken to the body itself, or at least by the body, touching it in some way while giving all of this information to the audience.  The measure of the meter lets the actress know that the words are paramount to the emotion, so why such control even though these curses and images are horrendous?  It is a question that the actress must decide.

If ever he have Childe, Abortive be it,

Prodigeous, and untimely brought to light,
Whose ugly and unnaturall Aspect
May fright the hopefull Mother at the view,
And that be Heyre to his unhappinesse.
If ever he have Wife, let her be made
More miserable by the death of him,
Then I am made by my young Lord, and thee.

In the next two sentences, Anne only uses one ‘thee.’  She speaks of ‘he,’ whoever killed the King.  She could have entered into a scene where this person is, and this whole speech could be for his benefit, but as the stage direction at the top of her cue indicates that this entrance begins a new scene, it is not likely.  Whoever this ‘he’ is, he is not on stage, or if so, she is not crossing to him, because she is talking about him.

So where does she cross?  There is a ‘thee’ at the end of the second sentence, which in context brings her back to the corpse.  The argument could be made that she has stayed by the body this entire time, but that gives the audience 24 lines of text to not see Anne move, and no one wants to watch park-and-bark Shakespeare.

Anne is giving herself a number of stage directions in this section, and in the last as well, that should be executed, giving the audience an outward vision of how she feels about her husband’s murderer on the inside.  By getting away from the corpse and giving these lines to the audience, Anne gives herself a cross at the end of her speech that brings her back to the body, and sets up the stage directions in the last lines:

Come now towards Chertsey with your holy Lode,

Taken from Paules, to be interred there.
And still as you are weary of this waight,
Rest you, whiles I lament King Henries Coarse.

Here she tells the herse-bearers to pick up the body.  She then tells them that they are ‘weary of this waight’ – which the characters are unaware of until Anne tells them – and to put down the body again while she laments some more.  These lines are obviously delivered to, and for, other characters on the stage.

Honor, Vertuous, slaughtered Sonne, hated Wretch, Wolves, Spiders, Toades, Abortive Child, unnatural Aspect – these are all in some form capitalized (among others) which means these are important words for Anne to show the audience.  How does she curse the blood?  How does she curse the heart?  While this is an emotional speech, it is a very physically active speech.  Anne says several times that she is lamenting, but the speech is so metrically even, that these images come to the front and need to executed in a way to make them understood.  The audience needs this understanding more than the folks carrying the body, and as much as possible, the speech needs to be given to them and for their benefit, and not to show how emotional the actress can be. 

Now, stepping away, or at least to the side of the Unrehearsed Cue Script Technique, why would we take away, or seem to lessen, the emotional impact of this speech.  This assumes that there should be some emotional impact for the audience.  This is not what this speech is about.  It is expositional.  The imagery that Anne invokes here sets up the famous scene that comes afterward when Richard, the murderer she has just cursed, woos her and wins her over this corpse she has just been lamenting.  If this speech is all emotion, then we loose the information that makes what follows truly impactful.

Now, in preparation for the role in an unrehearsed production, Anne would not know everything that follows, but the fact that the speech is so consistent in its meter should tell her to reign in the emotions at this point.

There are some speeches that do get carried away, to a point, by emotion, and Shakespeare lets us know when this is the case.  We will examine that in a future post.

 

-Andy Kirtland