Shakespeare on Toast: Getting a Taste for the Bard (15 page)

Without the contractions, things can get a bit stressful
and you have to go for alternative rhythms:

It’s technically possible, but it’s a less natural, more awkward rhythm.

Contraction is a common trait in modern regular speech and informal writing, the most obvious example we still use probably being
o’clock
instead of
o’th’clock
(which in turn is contracted from
of the clock
) when telling time. Part of a word or a whole word is removed, letting two (sometimes three) words blend together. They’re easy to find in modern texts of Shakespeare because of the apostrophe.

It’s an easy thing to automatically correct, and many reading Shakespeare out loud for the first time pronounce, for example,
th’allowance
with four syllables:

Rather than:

It’s the same rule we discovered earlier when looking at the metrics of a line – if Shakespeare wanted a particular word spoken carefully, he wouldn’t contract it. If it’s contracted, it should be spoken quickly, and informally, like everyday speech. For example, the first line and a half of a speech from
Macbeth
(Act 1, Scene 7, lines 1–2), marked up, could be read like this:

The first line wants the attention: it’s a healthy line of ten syllables. If Shakespeare hadn’t contracted ’
tis
and ’
twere
(making
it is
and
it were
), it would be a line of twelve syllables.

Shakespeare wanted this a regular line of pentameter – though as you can see from the mark-up, despite the contractions helping to stress the important words like
done, well
and
quickly
, it’s still not evenly stressed. Why? Perhaps because the two sequences of weak syllables (
when ’tis
and the second
It were
) add pace to the lines – an appropriate effect for someone talking about being in a hurry.

An uneven yet regular line of metre, for a man who is becoming fairly uneven himself, and who is only a scene away from hallucinating a dagger …

If Shakespeare had wanted Macbeth to come onstage and speak slowly and carefully, he’d have written

If it were done when it is done, then it were well

Much more measured and controlled. Contraction brings speed: it makes characters speak faster than they would do if they were spelling out every syllable – a note for the actor, that the character is speaking (and so therefore thinking) quickly or is excited.

Contractions are a part of normal everyday speech, so in using them in his verse, Shakespeare knew that what is normally a very formal style of writing could sound much more colloquial. Not only that, it adds possible character notes for the actors, keeps the pace of the metre up, allows for the stress of particularly important words, and, with the associated informality, brings the audience in closer.

One of the great things about iambic pentameter is that because a strong stress usually falls on the last word of the line of metre, it acts as a vocal springboard into the next line. Try saying the two lines above together, with the stress on ’
twere
, instead of
well
as it should be, and you’ll see what I mean.

But if you’re not an actor, why am I getting you to act this? More to the point, what on earth does all this mean
in practical terms, and what good does it do us when reading Shakespeare?

I’ve a good answer. This very elaborate way of writing poetry, because of the rules that govern it, tells the reader which words to stress when that piece of poetry is being read out loud. Telling the reader which words to stress is, for all intents and purposes, the same as someone directing an actor.

Of course, when you direct an actor, there’s more to it than ‘which words do you stress’. Sometimes you might want to tell them when to move, where to move to, who to stand close to. Perhaps, if you’re feeling particularly inventive in your capacity as director, you might want to start directing the emotions that the text requires your actors to act out.

Shakespeare found a way not only to tell his actors which words to stress, but all the other things too.

This is why I’m taking so much time to explain the fundamentals of poetry, because once it’s clear what iambic pentameter actually is in practical terms, we’ll discover how Shakespeare directed his actors. This is the key to Shakespeare. Not in
understanding
Shakespeare – I hope I’ve made it clear that you can understand and enjoy Shakespeare
without
learning these literary terms and conceits – but in
owning
Shakespeare. Because what he did with this very popular style of poetry, this type of metre, was revolutionary.

He turned it on its head, made it do things that other writers didn’t, twisted it and played with it and broke every single one of the rules I’ve just explained to you, improvising like a great jazz player.

Scene 5

Breaking the law at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club, London

J
azz music came from the blues, which in turn took a lot of its structure from classical music. Dance music, electronica, break-beat, ragga, garage, grunge, house, deep house, hip-hop, trip-hop, ambient trip-hop and countless others – all of them originate from the basic forms that classical music is based on.

Musicians often take an original form and put their own mark on it, changing and developing it into ‘something else’. Many musicians do it, but jazz musicians in particular are known for working in this way.

A jazz musician like Miles Davis, or a modern classical musician like Philip Glass, will often play the same section, or riff, of music over and over again, with slight variations every time, making it up as they go along. The slight change will surprise them and you, sometimes make you laugh because you weren’t expecting a sudden change, or that note in that place, because everything beforehand led you to expect that after A and B comes C, but the musician gives you Q.

Shakespeare did exactly the same: he learnt the rules of iambic pentameter, then seemed to take great delight in playing around as much as possible with the form. A lot of the reason for all the excitement about this is that although he wasn’t the only writer of the time who played with metre in this way, as we’ll see in Act 5, the subtleties that came from his playing with it are truly staggering.

A criticism often laid at the door of Christopher Marlowe, one of Shakespeare’s contemporaries, is that in his early writing he rarely broke the rules of the metre (the solid structure of iambic pentameter means that once you hit that
de-
DUM
de
DUM
rhythm, you can keep going for hours) and that his characters’ speeches would endlessly roll on in straight, regular iambic pentameter:

de-
DUM
de-
DUM
de-
DUM
de-
DUM
de-
DUM

de-
DUM
de-
DUM
de-
DUM
de-
DUM
de-
DUM

de-
DUM
de-
DUM
de-
DUM
de-
DUM
de-
DUM

de-
DUM
de-
DUM
de-
DUM
de-
DUM
de-
DUM

Looks boring, doesn’t it? Some would say it sounds quite boring too. Whether or not this criticism is true, is not our concern. Everyone has to start somewhere. What really crumbles my cookie is what Shakespeare began to do when he got going, and Shakespeare did this: a speech would be rolling along quite innocently …

de-
DUM
de-
DUM
de-
DUM
de-
DUM
de-
DUM

de-
DUM
de-
DUM
de-
DUM
de-
DUM
de-
DUM

de-
DUM
de-
DUM
de-
DUM

Then, of a sudden, Shakespeare would use a word that can
only
be pronounced, or stressed,
STRONG
-weak –
DUM
-de – like
FEATH
-er
. And the speech would look – or more to the point sound – like this:

de-
DUM
de-
DUM
de-
DUM
de-
DUM
de-
DUM

de-
DUM
de-
DUM
de-
DUM
de-
DUM
de-
DUM

de-
DUM
de-
DUM DUM
-de

And as a member of the audience you hear those two
DUMS
together and think ‘Hang on! What was that? This is the Royal Iambic Pentameter after all! You can’t mess with that. I’ve spent ages learning what that means, you can’t change it now I’ve got the hang of it.’ Whatever that character has just said must have been really important to break such an important rule.