Shakespeare on Toast: Getting a Taste for the Bard (23 page)

Which makes up a perfect ten.

As you can see from my syllable count, there are a lot of lines that don’t make up a perfect ten. Plenty of lines, in fact, that are far from having ten syllables.

In fact, as we’re getting all numerical, in 34 lines of text, there are only twelve pure, unbroken lines of pentameter. That’s a little odd, isn’t it …?

If we include shared lines, or lines that could be made ten if we work them a little when speaking them, the total can reach seventeen. But even if we do include those extras, that means there are still seventeen lines that have been messed about with, and that are either a little under ten syllables, or a little over.

Let’s not underestimate the significance of these sums.

If something is supposed to have ten syllables in it, then it should have ten syllables in it. Period.

Shakespeare, when he wrote this, was intending to write in iambic pentameter. And he
is
. But like a jazz musician, he plays around the riff of ten syllables.

Take Lady’s first speech again:

Look at the syllable counts! Shakespeare starts with a ten – this is the melody, the main tune that he’s going to play with – then he plays another ten (though it could be spoken as a nine if you speak the word
fire
monosyllabically),
then a cheeky eight, whacks it up to eleven, back to ten for two lines (to remind you of the tune), down to another cheeky eight, up to a ten/eleven (
about’em/about them
), and then to finish the speech, a ten (though it’s split by a line break).

Look at it this way:

He’s riffing. Miles Davis eat your heart out! Remember that he’s supposed to be writing in iambic pentameter, so the speech
should
look like this:

Take a look at the scene as a whole in this way (Figures 1 and 2 opposite):

The entire extract should, if absolutely sticking to regular iambic pentameter structure, look like Figure 1. But actually it looks like Figure 2.

Yes, I’ve too much time on my hands.

Full of murder and suspense, it’s an incredibly emotionally charged scene, so, as you would expect, the metre is very irregular. Or rather, the metre is very irregular, so we know it’s an incredibly emotionally charged scene.

But what advantage does the irregular metre give Shakespeare, and more to the point, his actors and his audience?

At the end of Act 4, I touched on the idea that if there’s a line of six syllables followed by a line of ten syllables then the actor
has
to fill the two-beat space that is left after the six but before the new line of ten, to observe the metre.

Numbers, numbers …

This is what I mean:

The scene is written in what is supposed to be iambic pentameter, and the basic steady rhythm of ten syllables per line. When there aren’t ten syllables in a line, to carry
straight on, ignoring the underlying rhythm, would wreck the pace of the scene that Shakespeare intended.

The actor playing Macbeth, speaking the lines above, should say ‘I have done the deed’, then should try to fill the following 2½ beats (five syllables) somehow: he could move to Lady Macbeth, he could look scared, he could listen out to hear if anyone is raising the alarm. Then, when he’s done that, after he says ‘Didst thou not heare a noyse?’ there’s another pause of two beats (to complete his line), before Lady can give her line. Perhaps she gets frustrated with him panicking. Or they both stand there listening …

The point is, for the actor playing Macbeth to run his two lines together, and Lady to come in immediately after Macbeth’s last line, would be to ignore the clues given by the metre.

I haue done the deed, didst thou not heare a noyse? I heard the Owle schreame …

And if the metre wasn’t important, if it wasn’t there to fill some function, Shakespeare would have written it in prose.

There are at least two good things that come from Shakespeare breaking the metre up like this. The break gives the actors time to act, react, move across the stage, do a bit of stage business, show the audience how their character is feeling, whatever. They’re pauses for ‘reaction shots’, I
suppose you would say, to steal a term from the movie business, and these breaks are good clues to the actors that some thing more is going on, beneath the plain speaking of the words.

But they also set the pace of the scene. Whether you give the character one beat or 4½ beats will determine how soon it will be before they say their next line, or how quickly the character they’re speaking to will start speaking
their
lines …

Take a look at the scene from
Macbeth
again – I’ve filled in the gaps in the metre, to clearly mark out where a bit of stage business (or a pause, or silence) is needed to keep the metrical rhythm steadily bouncing along:

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, Miles Davis, eat your heart out …

Now what do you do with all those gaps and pauses?

The little ‘O’

Talking of moments to show character, something you’ll find a lot of in Shakespeare’s plays is the letter
O
:

O that this too too sullied flesh would melt

O all you host of Heaven! O Earth; what else?

O what a Rogue and Peasant slave am I?

… to take three examples from a chap who says it rather a lot (Hamlet). With this little letter, Shakespeare practically gives an actor
carte blanche
to do, well, whatever they like. It is, for want of a better way to explain it, a blank space, a sign to tell the actor to vocally signal their emotional response. Sigh. Express contempt. Or frustration. Or relief. Make it brief or drag it out, but whatever you do, use it and don’t just say ‘Oh’. All together now,
Ohhhhh for a Muse of Fire
…