George Bernard Shaw on Shakespearian Music and the Actor
| Autor: | Charles Haywood |
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| Rok vydání: | 1969 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Shakespeare Quarterly. 20:417-426 |
| ISSN: | 1538-3555 0037-3222 |
| DOI: | 10.2307/2868540 |
| Popis: | HE use of technological gadgets in manipulating the range and volume of the human voice has had the most deleterious effects upon the theater and, more particularly, on Shakespearian acting. Through dial adjustment by the sound engineer, the voice can be reduced to a faint whisper or increased to thunderous outburst and deafening roar without much physical effort or bodily involvement. While the restrained movement and the mechanically regulated vocal utterance, with the inevitable casual or suggestive gesture, may be adequate for the camera and microphone-in radio, television, and film, where the small effect and subtle nuance can be highlighted and projected-they are hardly sufficient for the theater. "They do not offer", Tyrone Guthrie pointed out, "the opportunity for the sweeping bold stroke, the thunderous attack, the effects of violent contrast, the largescale deployment of temperament which display the actor's art at its most exciting."1 Sir Tyrone is here affirming what George Bernard Shaw had stated many years ago, when he ridiculed the actors who were reading Shakespeare as if they were portraying scene and character in a cup-and-saucer play. Shaw's criticisms of the prevalent acting style in his day are equally valid today in revealing the inadequacy and absurdity of the bad Actors' Studio acting, displaying improper training in projection and complete disregard for the audience who, in the words of John Gielgud, do not "pay to see an actor and not hear him or see him properly all the evening, however much he may have integrity in his performance and however much his shoulder blades may express his feelings."2 Indeed, the strain is rarely on the actor's vocal cords but rather on the audience straining to hear him. For his plays, as well as Shakespeare's, Shaw demanded "a sort of bustle and crepitation of life which requires extraordinary energy to bring out its fortissimos, its allegros, its precipitous moments, its contrasts, and all its big bits." Neither his plays, nor the Bard's, can be adequately orchestrated on the cottage piano; and he found the cymbals disappointing on the cups and saucers.3 The Shakespearian actor today, reading Shaw's trenchant comments (brilliantly illuminated throughout with apt musical allusion and metaphor), might succeed in restoring the poetic splendor of the Shakespearian line, and heighten dramatic interpretation. Only through mastery of the Shakespearian score, the |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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