This week, Emily MacLeod, our production dramaturg for Henry IV, Part 1, reflects on a week of text work in the rehearsal room …
We started tablework for Henry IV, Part 1 last week with a slew of scenes between Falstaff, Prince Hal, and the other tavern denizens of London. The majority of these scenes are written in prose, as opposed to verse or poetry. Prose is the language of the common folk in Shakespearean plays, and most often, the language of comedy. Benedick and Beatrice speak witty nothings to each other in prose; Bottom waxes philosophical on the nature of dreams in prose. Richard II, a play not without laughs but mostly serious, and the previous play to Henry IV in the histories cycle, is written entirely in verse. Prince Hal switches between the two forms throughout the plays in which he appears. This dexterity with language shows an ability to code-switch — when he’s in the court, he waxes poetically, but his saucy similes in the tavern would make any wench blush.
One of the most enjoyable parts of the Brave Spirits tablework session is the process of paraphrasing. Every actor for every line they speak must make a word-for-word paraphrase of Shakespeare’s language. Brave Spirits issues a textual analysis handbook to aid its actors in their script preparation that explains this practice: “Paraphrasing is not just about knowing what your lines mean. It is about owning every word and understanding the shades of meaning and word play that Shakespeare employs.” This results in a kind of translation that is more personal and specific for the actor, while also being (at times) laugh-out-loud funny. “My lads” often becomes “my dudes” or “bros,” and an innuendo of any kind can get quite creative. Some actors like to keep the alliteration of the original, or try to retain the rhyming couplet at the end of a scene. One element in particular that we noticed in Henry IV, Part 1 is the amount of oaths, phrases like “For God’s sake,” which become easily translated into modern obscenities. You can see in Brendan Kennedy’s paraphrase of his first speech as Prince Hal (pictured below), he paraphrases “What a devil hast thou to do with the time of the day?” to something a little more vulgar. The way Ian Blackwell Rogers as Falstaff and Brendan as Hal bounced off each other in this exercise was truly a pleasure to watch, and one that will surely be translated to their performances of the actual text.
The first page of Brendan Kennedy’s (Prince Hal) paraphrasing notes
The relationship between Prince Hal and Falstaff is often the most memorable in Part 1. Hal’s destiny, his ascension to the English throne, at times overshadows their light exchanges, which are full of insults and ribaldry. Falstaff often questions him on his future palace policies and hopes for advancement when his “sweet wag” will become king. Hal, however, brushes off Falstaff’s attempts to ingratiate himself politically. At the end of their first scene together, Hal is left alone onstage, and confesses to the audience, in neatly metrical verse, what he actually plans to do. He will “throw off” this “loose behavior” and abandon his friends, therefore “redeeming time when men think least [he] will.” This act of a character turning to the audience and revealing what they actually intend to do in the play seems more from the playbook of a villain, like Richard III, than a future “star of England.” Is Hal doing the opposite, revealing that underneath this cover of being a cad and a scoundrel, he is actually a hero? In modern drama we think of characters having an arc, where they learn and grow throughout a play until they face a challenge that tests who they are and how they consider the world. Here we have a character who tells us who he is in the first scene, but here’s another question — do we believe him? Brendan, our Hal, while discussing the speech, offered an interesting take — maybe actually going through with this plan is harder for the prince than just saying he will do it.
Finding the shades of complexity in Shakespeare’s characterizations is a big part of the tablework process. The play is still an open book full of possibility, and it is our task to make interesting decisions to support the story that we wish to tell. Over the next two years, this ensemble will have to answer many questions about who their characters are, why they use the words they do, and how they might not always mean what they say. We are certainly off to an exciting start!
– Emily MacLeod, Production Dramaturg