Before I come to what is probably the best thing I have ever heard anybody say – and what, regrettably, feels as if I had reached the end of my blog! – I have to make an addition to my last post about the gratification great actors get out of their art. Regrettably so as well – but, as Goethe said, where there is a lot of light there is always a deep shadow. There IS a downside – APART from permanently dealing with fear and not knowing half your life if you will ever have a career. When I found this quote by Richard Armitage, I realized that it was something I knew already but always kind of hoped that it wasn’t true. It was in an interview he gave the Sunday Times in April 2006, two years after success “struck” for the first time with “North and South” which suddenly made him famous. There he answered the question if he had any regrets about becoming an actor with uncompromising – and, as usual, unsurpassed – clarity:
“I regret it a lot. And I don’t know why because when it’s good, it’s great. But it can take its toll on your emotions. You can spend a bit of yourself if you give yourself to a character. At the end of a job you have to remind yourself who and what you are.”
😮 !!!
(There is nothing can be added to this! Except, maybe: If you have “made it” and are still “out there” at almost fifty you would have become better dealing with it. I think there is evidence, in his case.)
***
As a closure to my excursion into acting, I am pleased to come to what is uncontestedly a treat for every actor, though - uncontestedly as well - a great challenge and responsibility: PLAYING SHAKESPEARE.
“There is no other writer that demands so much.”
No other writer, in Tom Hiddleston’s opinion, who confronts the actor with such a COMPLEX challenge. On top of managing the text you have to figure out how to honour the spirit of Shakespeare and the complexity of the character. But, in his case, it always turned out as this great treat:
“The privilege and challenge of performing Shakespeare is having to ALIGN ONE’S MIND WITH HIS’. The profundity and breadth of his mind, the things he was able to understand, requires you to think about life in a very profound way. Every time I have done a Shakespeare part THERE IS AN EXTRA DIMENSION AND CLARITY TO MY LIFE AT THAT TIME.”
When I heard this last sentence, it just struck me: YESSS! THAT IS IT!!! That is exactly what happens to me when I am READING Shakespeare. It is just the best description ever of the state I am in while I am dealing with his stuff.
And it never comes cheap either. There is this challenge still of even UNDERSTANDING the text. I might not always realise it, but I think in every play I read and don’t know as well as I came to know “Richard III” and “Macbeth”, just because they are my favourite plays and I read them time and again, there are any number of sentences or whole passages about which I haven’t got a clue what they mean. Some of them even are the ones that stayed with me – like these stones that look like round pebbles but have enclaves of crystal, which I used to buy but never opened. One day, maybe, their secret of meaning will be revealed to me, as it has happened a few times already. One of my favourite bits from Shakespeare, for example, is what Mercutio says, in “Romeo and Juliet”, quite out of the blue:
“I talk of dreams which are the children of an idle brain begot of nothing but vain fantasy, which is as thin of substance as the air and more inconstant than the wind …”
I have not the faintest idea what he is referring to exactly, or where this sudden outburst of poetry might come from. But I love it!
Of course, being an actor playing a major role in Shakespeare, this extra dimension and clarity will automatically come into your life as this will BECOME your life for some time and you are COMPELLED to understand. Unlike the great realistic stuff I was just dealing with, in “Shakespeare” – though it might get quite naturalistic as well in its own way - I don’t get drawn in and entertained by an incredible amount of seemingly inconsequential detail. It’s actually a diversion and a relief to lose oneself pleasantly in beautiful or interestingly upsetting moments and get off the jarring predicament. Somehow, reading Shakespeare doesn’t allow this. I am COMPELLED and challenged not to get sidetracked but to align my mind with his’ – otherwise it doesn’t really work. But WHEN it works, just as by magic, nothing – in real life or outside it - appears quite as important. This “absoluteness” might be the reason why Shakespeare provides guidance for actors even when they are working on something quite different. And why Shakespeare actually became therapeutic in my case as this kind of utter concentration and focussing on what I make of the text automatically gives structure to my life. Unlike other kinds of great text, which are less “binding”, “Shakespeare” provides fetters which I am glad to get into. Usually I am very reluctant of taking on any fetters whatsoever but, in this case, the benefit is too apparent. I was aware of this, but now I am able to SAY what they are for. I would do almost anything short of actual S&M to procure this addition to my life!
There already WAS this light and clarity in my life when I was “brought back” to Shakespeare. And if you suddenly stand IN the light, stepping out of your own shadow, you don’t know where it comes from and what it is. I just knew – if I had prayed – that this would have been the answer to my prayers, and that I had to find a way to remain in it. It was just my good fortune that I got the idea that it might be reading Shakespeare. In the beginning mostly as a kind of mental exercise to be able to stay “in” something long enough to explore this newfound dimension and clarity. Now I believe I can walk a few steps on my own in the light, but at the time I just didn’t know how. There isn’t a lot of “Shakespeare” in my life right now, but I wouldn’t dream of shedding my “prop” entirely.
A big part of my blog has been about this experience – but now Tom Hiddleston has provided the WORDS. I feel that my initial question “Why Shakespeare?” finally got answered to my satisfaction, and therefore it feels as if I had indeed reached the end of my blog. Especially as there has been an almost uncanny increase in clarity to my inner life also in other respects. So much light even that my world now appears a bit bleak, but on the whole – to my surprise! – I find that clarity NEVER hurts.
I suppose, though, there will always be things I will like – and need – to look into. There is still a lot of unfinished business - and of course there can be no end to “Shakespeare”! This experience will always go on. Already the next question presents itself as a matter of course:
WHAT IS IT EXACTLY that makes Shakespeare so special? Why does what I just described only happen in “Shakespeare”?
(I have probably explained this a few times already, but the repetition doesn’t hurt: When I put Shakespeare into quotation marks it indicates the fictional world I am referring to, not its author.)
At the moment I have a crude theory based on what I recently observed about realism. Why I “believe” Shakespeare – why I have come to accept his authority ABOVE MY OWN, which is necessary to impose his structure and clarity on my life! – has nothing to do with his realism. This realism – the attention to detail - is brought to “Shakespeare” mostly by the actors who have to make their characters realistic and believable. It is NOT an integral part of “Shakespeare” – which, in my opinion, even makes this fictional universe so historically flexible and readily adaptable. Everybody can always bring their own naturalism and environment to it, as people have probably done at all times. But it never really CHANGES “Shakespeare”. We find something so necessary and universal there, the kind of content people have been looking for at all times.
I am always careful to hold up, though, that the plays were not WRITTEN to provide some kind of timeless truth and universal overview of the human stuff IN THE FIRST PLACE. This is probably more of a “side-effect” of making the event of going to the theatre so memorable that people would want to go and see the next “Shakespeare” as well. The first reason to go to the theatre was – and is! – that it provides entertainment. Pageants and fights, the striking appearance and performance of the actors, and an intriguing story, were and are the main requirements. But this superficial entertainment value is not sustainable. To compete with other writers doing the same thing, you have to KEEP people entertained. And this means that you have to make your own stuff stand out, to feed people what they HAVEN’T tasted yet, what they don’t expect, what intrigues them, and what moves their hearts. And, in this respect, Shakespeare was just the best. (That’s why I never really believe “the times” - or the people - are as bad as they obviously are when I see great series teeming with the “human stuff” spring up like mushrooms. Obviously there is this universal need to deal with it in a way that doesn’t insult our intelligence and honours our feelings.)
So, all entertainment has to get us MOVED permanently, or else we’ll drop out. Especially in our day and age there is so much else to do online. Therefore there has to be this dramatic MOVEMENT which, in “Shakespeare”, appears to me to be a kind of circling around the TRUTH, relentlessly getting closer to it, making it ever more “like it”. And this is something we “automatically” join in when we follow through – actors as well as members of the audience. I know this is a rather bloodless description, but at the moment I cannot afford the time and energy it would take to describe myself on the hunt for “right versus wrong” in “The Merchant of Venice” (which is somewhere in my blog) or to pursue the story how I became a “Yorkist” – a rather ridiculous “fall-out” of reading Shakespeare which I recently discovered to my amusement. What business do I have to become a Yorkist or a Lancastrian, being not even English?! But I did nonetheless - ultimately so when I discovered what Shakespeare has ACTUALLY written on the matter. On the surface it is often obvious which side Shakespeare was on – and which side we should be on, for that matter! – but, digging deep enough, the truth will always “fall out”. It appears as if he just couldn’t help himself but had to dig deeper until he hit rock bottom. Even though I know that bullshit is vitally important, and life wouldn’t run smoothly without it, I actively take care to produce as little of it as possible. My deepest desire seems to be to live in a non-bullshit world, which – weirdly! - I mostly find in fiction. That’s why I love Austen and Shakespeare. They seem to cut through it direct. And Shakespeare appears to come closest. Considering my recent experience with my own life, I tend to believe that is because we always kind of know the truth but often don’t want to look at it as we fear it will be disagreeable. But when it finally comes out it is rather a RELIEF. Apparently I am convinced that the truth – per definition! - is something like our “natural” state, and that lying therefore must always feel “unreal” and uncomfortable. I suppose most people do, but quite often LIVING a lie is just easier whereas living the truth would take an effort. Therefore I think that this MOVING TOWARDS THE TRUTH as a pervasive text vortex in “Shakespeare” might be the innermost reason for the “added dimension and clarity”, at least in my case.
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