Looking for Richard Page #5

How about Lord Grey?

Richard will read Dorset.

- He's gonna do Buckingham.

- I thought Jim would do it.

PACINO:
He's doing Catesby.

- What do I read?

KIMBALL:

Dorset and Grey are the same people.

PACINO:
Dorset and Grey are the same...?

KIMBALL:
Yes.

You two guys better sit on each other.

We used two actors in the same part.

It'll take us four weeks of rehearsal

to figure out what parts we're playing.

In more modern plays, we feel that

we understand it. It's there for us.

But in Shakespeare, you have

an entire company on the stage...

...good actors not knowing where

they're going. Where they are!

[MUSIC PLAYING]

PACINO:
As Americans, what is that...?

That thing...

...that gets between us

and Shakespeare?

That makes some of our best actors

just stop when it comes to Shakespeare?

The problem with being

an American in Shakespeare...

...is you approach it reverentially.

We have a feeling, I think...

...of inferiority to the way

it has been done by the British.

I think Americans

have been made to feel inhibited...

... because they've been told so long

by their critics...

... by their scholars and commentators...

... that they cannot do Shakespeare.

Therefore they think they can't,

and you become totally self-conscious.

American actors are not self-conscious.

But they are when it comes

to Shakespeare.

Because they've been told they can't

do it, and they foolishly believed that.

Perhaps they don't go to picture galleries

and read books as much as we do.

I think it's the effect

of how everyone looked and behaved...

...that one got a sort of Elizabethan

feeling of period.

Experienced classical actors...

...have a few things that

they can use at a moment's notice.

The understanding of iambic

pentameter, for one thing.

PACINO:

Everybody says, "lambic pentameter. "

What is that supposed to mean?

Some say there are no rules.

I say there are rules...

...like the iambic pentameter,

that must be learned...

...and can be rejected once learned.

"Pentameter" means "meter,"

and "pen," meaning "five. "

So there's five beats.

Which, at its worst, sounds only like:

"Why, so. Now have I done

a good day's work. "

De-da de-da de-da de-da de-da.

And iambic is where the accent goes.

That's de-tum de-tum de-tum de-tum.

And five of them:

Da-da da-da da-da da-da da-da.

Make a pentameter line, five iambs.

An iamb is like an anteater.

Very high in the back

and very short, little front legs. Da-da!

Shakespeare's poetry and his iambics...

...floated and descended

through the pentameter of the soul.

And it's the soul, the spirit of real,

concrete people going through hell...

...and sometimes moments of great...

Rate this script:5.0 / 1 vote