OPHELIA
My honor’d lord, you know right well you did;
And, with them, words of so sweet breath composed
As made the things more rich: Their perfume lost,
Take these again; for to the noble mind
Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.
There, my lord. (gives letters to HAMLET)
HAMLET steps in close to OPHELIA and turns toward her.
HAMLET
I did love you once.
OPHELIA (takes a step toward HAMLET)
Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.
HAMLET (turns away suddenly)
You should not have believed me; I loved you not.
HAMLET returns the letters to OPHELIA.
OPHELIA (hurt)
I was the more deceived.
HAMLET (points at OPHELIA; yells)
Get thee to a nunnery: Why wouldst thou be a
breeder of sinners? Or, if thou wilt needs marry,
marry a fool; for wise men know well enough what
monsters you make of them. (points again) To a
nunnery, go, and quickly too. Farewell.
HAMLET begins to exit stage right.
OPHELIA
O heavenly powers, restore him!
HAMLET turns around and comes back toward OPHELIA.
HAMLET
God has given you one face, and you make yourselves another. Go to, I’ll no more on’t; it hath made me mad. I say, we will have no more marriages. To a nunnery, go.
Exit HAMLET stage right.
OPHELIA
O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!
The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue, sword,
Th’ expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion and the mold of form,
Th’ observed of all observers, quite, quite down!
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
That sucked the honey of his musicked vows,
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
Like sweet bells jangled, out of time and harsh;
That unmatched form and stature of blown youth
Blasted with ecstasy. O, woe is me
T’ have seen what I have seen, see what I see!
Exit OPHELIA stage left.
I directed this performance of Hamlet in 2010 with a group of high school seniors. The actress playing Hamlet in our production had wonderful presence, diction, commitment, and emotional delivery, but she tended to “saw the air too much” with her hands (an acting tic that Hamlet decries in his advice to the players). I appreciated her instincts toward physicalization, especially since most beginning actors move too little, but we had to choose specific moments where her arm movements enhanced the text rather than distracted from it. As with many scenes, by simply breaking the speech down moment by moment, we were able to “suit the action to the word, the word to the action.”
Living tableaux can provide visual reinforcement for key plot elements and allow the audience to see what happened in an omitted scene. This technique is often very helpful at the beginning of the play, and can be employed during the narrator’s introduction to acquaint the audience with key characters and plot elements. Audiences are not nearly as familiar with the story as the actors are. One should not assume the crowd knows the plot. Tell the tale, but also show the story in living color!
Many of the speeches in this play are full of rich imagery, such as the Ghost’s in Act I, Scene V. I asked the actress playing the Ghost to focus on the words themselves, how they sounded, and what they evoked. When an actor breaks a speech down to its individual words, she can “color” each expression and paint a beautifully textured scene for the listener. A player must appreciate the sound and feeling of the words as they leave her mouth: “father’s,” “spirit,” “doom’d,” “term,” “walk,” “night,” “day,” “confined,” “fast,” “fires,” “foul,” “crimes,” “nature,” “burnt,” “purged,” and “love.” Each of these words alone is expressive, and when spoken as part of a line of Shakespeare, they are poetic.
How does one speak “poetically”? The first rule is not to rush the phrases. Many novice actors hurry their lines, which perplexes the audience. Writing down beats and breathing points in the script helps curb this problem. Performers should mark a slash in their text at appropriate breathing points. They can also underline words or syllables that are accentuated, and then experiment with changing the emphasis to hear how this changes a line’s meaning.
Actors can also practice “coloring” their words. Think of the word as not just a word, but also an emotion evoker. See if the word can become a poem in itself, with a richness that echoes its sentiment or enhances the image it arouses. Marking beats and coloring words will encourage actors to slow down their speech.
Many of the decisions actors make can spring directly from the text, and I encourage performers to mine the text for clues to help them in their choices. However, the writing itself does not inform all acting choices. In fact, certain acting choices inform the narrative, i.e., they enable actors and audience to view the story in a different light, based on a performance choice an actor makes. That is why it is so helpful to experiment with different interpretations of a scene before making a final choice on how to perform it.
HAMLET: ACT III, SCENE I
Act III, Scene I is a powerful and emotional scene. It is also tricky to act, because the characters’ emotions, especially Hamlet’s, change rapidly and unpredictably. Hamlet
