How to Read Shakespeare Dialogue Aloud

How to Read Shakespeare Dialogue Aloud On first sight, Shakespeare dialogue may seem daunting. Indeed, the idea of performing a Shakespeare speech fills many young actors with fear. However, you should remember that Shakespeare was an actor himself and wrote for fellow performers. Forget criticism and textual analysis because everything an actor needs is right there in the dialogue – you just need to know what you’re looking for. Shakespeare Dialogue Every line of Shakespeare dialogue is packed with clues. Everything from the imagery, structure, and use of punctuation is an instruction for the actor - so stop looking at just the words in isolation! Clues in the Imagery Elizabethan theater didn’t rely on scenery and lighting to create a scene, so Shakespeare had to carefully choose language that created the right landscapes and moods for his plays. For example, read aloud this passage from A Midsummer Night’s Dream where Puck describes a place in the forest: I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows,Where oxlips and nodding violet grows. This speech is loaded with words to suggest the dream-like quality of the text. This is a clue from Shakespeare on how to read the speech. Clues in the Punctuation Shakespeares use of punctuation was very different – he used it to signal how each line should be delivered. Punctuation forces the reader to pause and slows down the pace of the text. Lines without punctuation naturally seem to gather momentum and emotional energy. Full stop (.) Full stops naturally bring the sense and energy of the line to a close.Infrequent commas (,)A comma forces a slight pause in delivery to reflect a tiny development or shift in the character’s thought process.For example, read aloud Malvolio’s line from Twelfth Night: â€Å"Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.† Did you notice how the commas forced you to pause and split this sentence into three parts?Repetition of commas (,)Commas can also cause a line to gather in emotional intensity. If you see lots of commas together, evenly spaced and splitting the lines into small snappy chunks, then this is Shakespeare’s way of asking you to emotionally invest in the dialogue and build up its rhythmic intensity, as in this example from King Lear: ... No, no, no life!Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life,And thou no breath at all? Thou’it come no more;Never, never, never, never, never.Colon (:) A colon signals that the next line should sound as if it is responding to the previous line, as in Hamlet’s â€Å"To be, or not to be: that is the question.† Do Not Add Punctuation If you’re reading aloud a speech written in verse, you may feel the need to pause at the end of each line. Do not do this unless the punctuation specifically requires you to do so. Try to carry the sense of what you’re saying into the next line and you’ll soon discover the correct rhythm of the speech. You should think of a Shakespeare play as a blueprint for performance. All the clues are there in the text if you know what you’re looking for – and with a little practice, you’ll soon discover that there’s nothing hard about reading Shakespeare’s dialogue aloud.

Reading Response # 4 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Reading Response # 4 - Essay Example nd other media, from where the Arab countries came from in terms of access to information, the popularity of satellite TV can already be considered as a positive development as it gives them greater freedom in terms of content of the medium. In a study made by Sakr among the Arab youth, the study reported that most Arab youths spent at least three a hours a day on TV (81). While this may be a spike in terms of the number of hours of exposure to TV among the youth in the Middle East, the figure is not unusual comparing to other youths in the rest of the world. Just like any other kid from the rest of the world, Arab youths also love to watch TV. Perhaps this concern of increased number of hours of watching satellite TV among the Arab youth came from the perspective that there was no such popularity of TV watching before as the state used to control the content of TV. Satellite beaming changed the media landscape for it rendered authoritarian governments powerless in controlling the content of this media. In turn, its audience, particularly the youth, found a greater sense of freedom in terms of content, hence the extended number of hours watching it. Freedom may be a given and an overlooked concept in the western world but it is a big deal in Middle East. In a study done again by Sakr (83), the findings showed that the main reason why educated Arabs left and wanting to leave their respective home countries is because of the lack of freedom. Television may have a powerful influence in a society but it has to be taken in its proper context. TV is just a platform of information and entertainment, and to a certain extent, a medium of public discourse. Compared to a state controlled content, satellite beaming of TV networks such as Dubai-based Middle East Broadcasting Centre (MBC) Lebanese-based Future TV in 1995, Qatar-based al-Jazeera, Lebanese LBCI, Syrian-owned, London-based ANN etch is way better because there is a degree of freedom over the content