The More the Merrier! A variety of voices makes Shakespeare Live
We were about 10 years into doing our lecture/demonstrations on Romeo and Juliet, when we discovered the solution to a problem that had been nagging us for awhile.
In the balcony scene, after Romeo and Juliet have begun to talk with one another, we never quite understood why
Juliet makes the decision to open her heart up to Romeo in the speech that begins “Thou knowst the mask of night is on my face…”. She has been matter of fact in the conversation up to this point, asking questions about who he is, how he got there, and warning him that if he’s found there he will be murdered.
She does express her unease with the line “I would not for the world they saw thee here,” but that still isn’t very passionate (especially if you compare it to the things Romeo has been saying). She, and we, know her cousin Tybalt’s temper — it probably wouldn’t be good for anyone to be seen there.
And then Juliet’s response to Romeo’s next line is back to being very matter-of-fact, asking who directed him there.
What makes her pour her heart out in the next line? Is it just because Romeo has finally worn her down with his romantic declarations? It never felt right, but it was all any of us could think of….
Until we had a new Romeo, Amaudy. He discovered what made Juliet given in!
We were playing with his lines, just before Juliet starts her speech:
I am no Pilot, yet wert thou as far
As that vast shore washed with the farthest Sea,
I should adventure for such Merchandise.
Amaudy was what we call “over-speaking” the lines — emphasizing every sound, listening to see if there were any repeats that might give us something to play with. (Visit the first Study on Romeo and Juliet to see how the repeated “s, st, sh” sounds in their first lines gave us a sense of the overall tone of the conversation.)
We’d noticed in working with other actors all the “r” in those lines: “wert”, “far”, “shore”, “farthest”, “adventure”, “for”, “merchandise”. But Amaudy speaks with a Puerto Rican accent, and those “r’s” really popped out when he was playing with them. And most fun: when he pronounced the “l” in “pilot” it almost sounded like “pirate”.
Pirate! Arrgh!!!!! With all those “r’s” Romeo could sound like a pirate! Of course, we don’t know if pirates were caricatured with an “aargh” in Shakespeare’s time, but there were pirates sailing the seas, and here, now, it worked great. Amaudy started playing around like he was a pirate, which made his Juliet laugh almost hysterically.
The reason Juliet gave in was because Romeo made her laugh!
Playing with that, we found going backwards into the text, more places where what seems like a serious romantic pronouncement could be played a little goofier: “love’s light wings” as Cupid, “night’s cloak” as worn by spy. Playing it all a bit lighter, helped us see Juliet resisting Romeo’s humor and charm with her matter-of-factness, and we could see why she gave in: she could no longer resist a guy who was so much fun. I’m not sure we would have found that out, if we had not heard Amaudy say the lines in his accent.
It reminded us of how much Shakespeare seems to have been fascinated by accents, and used them to great effect. Play with the scene in Macbeth when Lady Macbeth is on stage, waiting for the murder of Duncan to be completed.
Emphasize the sounds highlighted below, and discover how easy it is to speak with a Scottish accent!
Hearke, peace: it was the Owl that shriek’d,
The fatal bellman, which gives the sternest good night.
He is about it, the doors are open:
And the surfeited Groomes do mock their charge
With snores. ….
And, in fact, we made a similar discovery by playing with accents, to a problem Chrissy Calkins and I had when we were working together as Juliet and the Nurse before Chicspeare even started.
In playing the scene where the Nurse counsels Juliet to marry Paris after Romeo has been banished, Chrissy sometimes found it difficult to react with the anger required for the line “Ancient damnation” when the Nurse leaves the room. As she listened to me say the lines before that, she said she could tell the Nurse had her best interests at heart, even if she could not accept what I was saying.
But then one day, just playing around, I began to use a strong Chicago accent to say my lines; I was in another play at the time where the character had a real “da Bulls, da Bears”, flat “a” Chic-aa-guh accent.
Say just these first lines of the Nurse’s with that flat accent:
Faith here it is,
Romeo is banished, and all the world to nothing,
That he dares ne’er come back to challenge you
Or if he do, it need must be by stealth.
Then since the case so stands as now it doth,
I think it best you married with the County,
O he’s a Lovely Gentle man….
Hearing the lines in the Chicago accent, Chrissy said was almost painful — the Nurse began to sound like the parents do in a Peanuts, no words, just brass instruments braying. It didn’t matter really what the Nurse was saying — the sound of her voice was grating.
And then, listen to how her response could actually be an angry mocking:
Ancient damnation…
All this reminds us how much any accent brings to Shakespeare; the more voices, the merrier!