How Shakespeare rehearsed

And what that tells us about performance

The next Shakespeare Book Club is 16th June. Our next play is the glorious As You Like It.

My Western Canon salon series with Interintellect starts on 6th June. First, Shakespeare’s Inadequate Kings, but then Emma, and on to Goethe, Turgenev, Wilde.

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In Much Ado About Nothing, Claudio accuses Hero of being unfaithful in the middle of their wedding ceremony. He and his men leave and we are left with Hero (passed out), her father Leonato (so angry he wishes his daughter dead), Beatrice (Hero’s closest friend), Benedict (“apparelled in wonder”), and the Friar. Well-played this is hugely dramatic; picked apart in a classroom, or fluffed by too-clever directors, it is apt to be drained of all its blood by people more interested in themes, and commentary about sexism, and so on. Before you can get to all of that (and it is important) you need to know the mechanics of how the scene works, which means thinking about how the play would have been rehearsed.

First I’ll outline some basics of how rehearsal worked in Shakespeare’s theatre (drawing on Tiffany Stern’s truly splendid book Rehearsal from Shakespeare to Sheridan, which I cannot recommend highly enough), then I’ll look at a speech given by the Friar to point out just how much is going on in this scene.

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Rehearsal

Unlike modern theatre, there simply wasn’t very much rehearsal in the 1590s. Dozens of plays were kept in repertoire, many of them new; few were retained longer than twelve months. There wasn’t time to rehearse them all in the precious and delicate manner we are used to now. Actors focussed on learning and relearning multiple parts at a time. Maybe one new role every two weeks, plus another thirty in their head. Not all major parts, but still that was where most of the time would be spent.

The time between buying a play and putting it on varied between three and fifty-one days, averaging about twenty. These are fairly uncertain numbers (being based on one diary) but they give a good sense of the limited time available for rehearsals. Those twenty days would include several plays. Scholars disagree about these numbers, but the point is clear: you didn’t get several weeks of dedicated time to rehearsing and performing just one play. It was a busy, bustling job. A different play every day! Without mass tourism, that’s how theatres made their money.

Writers first sold a company the plot, then did a small private reading, then, when it was finished, read the play with the actors. Then the “parts” were handed out for learning. Actors did not receive a full script, as today, but just their lines and their cues. Those cues may be one or two words, and actors were given very little indication about who their speeches were directed towards. Lines were learned solo, not in a group. Stern says, “group preparation was a luxury, not a necessity.”

Learning parts, without the broader context, meant actors worked from their cues much more than they do today. Stern gives the example of Twelfth Night, I.v, when Olivia falls in love with Viola. Look at the cues, she says, and we can see the moment of the falling in love quite precisely. When Viola says “with sighs of fire”, Olivia’s next lines are verse, not prose; this is a huge shift in the scene, and in itself would be a significant cue to the actor that something momentous is happening. The same thing happens in Much Ado, when Beatrice realises Benedict loves her she says, “What fire is in mine ears? Can this be true?” This is verse, and until now she has spoken prose. She doesn’t need the whole script to know this is momentous. Shakespeare cues her with the switch to metre.

The use of cues meant you could put on a play very quickly. (It is also where the importance of missing a cue comes from; today, actors know the whole scene and can often patch it up; back then, literally no-one on stage would know what to do! Hence the prompter.) The actors were told what to do (writers taught major actors, major actors taught minor actors), and although they sometimes extemporised, they did it. Cues also explain why some speeches repeat phrases.

I’ll have my bond; I will not hear thee speak:
I’ll have my bond; and therefore speak no more.
I'll not be made a soft and dull-eyed fool,
To shake the head, relent, and sigh, and yield
To Christian intercessors. Follow not;
I'll have no speaking: I will have my bond.

You see here how every time Shylock says “I’ll have my bond” he then says something the equivalent of “shut up”. The actor playing Salarino will have been “falsely cued” by that line and, not having known the play, will have tried to interject. You do not need to direct the actor to be cross: that will happen by the constant frustration of the false cue (Shylock actually uses the cue phrase earlier on as well.) The script directs the actors more than anything else. Read the rehearsal scene in III.i of Midsummer Night’s Dream and you’ll see the false cue “never tyre” making comic mayhem with Bottom.

This meant that actors had to stay in character, constantly alert for their cue. Many did not, of course, and were criticised for it. Some would turn and play to the crowd. The great Burbage was praised for “never failing in his Part when he had done speaking; but with his looks and gesture maintaining it still.” So the way to perform these plays really well is to be, as Burbage was, constantly alert and reacting. Audiences followed the speaker, but in a play like Much Ado About Nothing, everyone is always speaking about someone else, and there is much for those being spoken about to be doing with their time.

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The Friar’s speech

Back to Much Ado. In a fury about his daughter’s infidelity (supposed) Leonato goes off on a rant about how he’ll kill Hero if the accusation is true (“These hands shall tear her”, he says, of his own daughter). If the accusation is false, he says, the men will pay.

But they shall find, awaked in such a kind,
Both strength of limb and policy of mind,
Ability in means and choice of friends,
To quit me of them throughly.

I want to see Al Pacino perform these lines! My God, the anger. It reminds me of Lear: come not between the dragon and his wrath! Strength of limb means he’ll kill them, and policy of mind means that, if he cannot, he’ll devise a plan. Ability of means and choice of friends is, quite simply, that he has the money and the contacts to have them killed, or, in his rather chilling formulation, to quit me of them thoroughly. We ought to feel anxious that this play is about to turn from comedy to bloody tragedy.

The Friar responds like this

Pause awhile,
And let my counsel sway you in this case.
Your daughter here the princes left for dead:
Let her awhile be secretly kept in,
And publish it that she is dead indeed;
Maintain a mourning ostentation
And on your family’s old monument
Hang mournful epitaphs and do all rites
That appertain unto a burial.

Pause awhile. The actor is being told to wait. It’s like code. Speech coming! But then, instead of a long interlude, Leonato is cued again after only eight lines! He will be, perhaps, caught off guard, which will provide the perfect tone for his cross retort “What shall become of this? what will this do?” The script is telling them what to do.

Now, think of all the others in this scene. How will Benedict and Beatrice react—and what about Hero herself? None of them speaks, but there are several dynamics at play. All are implicated, but indifferent ways. We know Hero is awake, but we don’t know when. Did she hear her father go full gangster? or does she wake up now, to hear them plan her false death?

The Friar then gives this speech.

Marry, this well carried shall on her behalf
Change slander to remorse; that is some good:
But not for that dream I on this strange course,
But on this travail look for greater birth.
She dying, as it must so be maintain'd,
Upon the instant that she was accused,
Shall be lamented, pitied and excused
Of every hearer: for it so falls out
That what we have we prize not to the worth
Whiles we enjoy it, but being lack'd and lost,
Why, then we rack the value, then we find
The virtue that possession would not show us
Whiles it was ours. So will it fare with Claudio:
When he shall hear she died upon his words,
The idea of her life shall sweetly creep
Into his study of imagination,
And every lovely organ of her life
Shall come apparell'd in more precious habit,
More moving-delicate and full of life,
Into the eye and prospect of his soul,
Than when she lived indeed; then shall he mourn,
If ever love had interest in his liver,
And wish he had not so accused her,
No, though he thought his accusation true.
Let this be so, and doubt not but success
Will fashion the event in better shape
Than I can lay it down in likelihood.
But if all aim but this be levell'd false,
The supposition of the lady's death
Will quench the wonder of her infamy:
And if it sort not well, you may conceal her,
As best befits her wounded reputation,
In some reclusive and religious life,
Out of all eyes, tongues, minds and injuries.

There are no false cues here. So a good actor needs to stay in character, as Burbage did. The third line “But not for that dream I on this strange course” is not a false cue, but is best delivered as a way of soothing Leonato, who would shrug off, perhaps forcefully, the Friar’s initial suggestion that faking Hero’s death will change slander to remorse.

The Friar speaks only to Leonato, but about Hero. This is a play of gossip, of people talking about each other. We have already had three scenes where people hide and eavesdrop on conversations; now we get a scene where the opposite happens. They talk about Hero knowing she is there, almost indifferent to her presence. The audience has got used to watching how a hidden character reacts to the speech of the others; now they get the same thing, but with a character out in the open.

Imagine you had been falsely accused of infidelity, had fainted at your own wedding, and woke up to hear this speech. There’s so much Hero can do here. The choices are vast. You can play up the “silent woman” part and have her shrink away, or interact with Beatrice, or cry, or show some anger, or really almost anything. That she is never cued is a very significant indicator: presumably she watches is dumb amazement, waiting for someone to turn to her.

The Friar says he wants to persuade Leonato, but it is Bendict who is cued at the end of the speech. This tells us two things. Benedict, a close friend of Claudio has been persuaded, but Leonato perhaps has not. He is taking a long pause indeed. He needs to use this time to deflate his rage.

Signior Leonato, let the friar advise you:
And though you know my inwardness and love
Is very much unto the prince and Claudio,
Yet, by mine honour, I will deal in this
As secretly and justly as your soul
Should with your body.

So both actors are given some information about their response, one by their cue, one by their lack of a cue. Leonato’s lines, “Being that I flow in grief,/ The smallest twine may lead me” suggest that, like Hero, he is ultimately shrunken by this news; once his anger has subsided he is left hollow. Let the friar advise you indeed.

The final cue is the most significant. It is for Benedict, not Hero. She never speaks again in this scene. So a good actor in this part must do a lot with a little. Poor Hero is constantly waiting for her cue and never receives it, even as the Friar says to her, “Come, lady, die to live.” Always waiting to be cued, what a perfect metaphor of the silent woman!

One final point. When only Beatrice and Benedict are left, he asks her if she has wept “all this while.” How would Beatrice have known to weep? The word “while” (though in slightly modified form) occurs four times in the scene, presumably giving Beatrice enough of a cue to know her own reaction to this sorry situation. She may not have taken this as a false cue, but it might have been a signal. Either way, an attentive actor will know exactly what Beatrice would make of all of this, and will play the part accordingly.

Much Ado is not accounted one of Shakespeare’s intellectual plays but it is rich is social complexity. As this short analysis shows, every actor has a lot to think about on stage. Performances were more like rehearsals in Shakespeare’s time (technically they had to be rehearsals, keeping the company well practised for when the Queen wanted them to perform). Leaving something for performance brings a play great energy, but only if the actors pay attention and read the cues properly.