January 29, 2016
The Rhetoric of Shakespeare’s First Folio
Dennis Krausnick, Director of Training, Shakespeare and Company
Notes by: Grace Lazarz
I.
INTRODUCTION
a. Stephen Booth: “To say that Shakespeare is head and shoulders above his peers,
is like saying King Kong is bigger than the other monkeys.”
i. If Shakespeare had been 10 years earlier or later, we wouldn’t have these
plays
ii. In Shakespeare’s language, there is a freedom and delight that hasn’t
existed since
iii. No grammar books written at the time
1. Ben Jonson wrote one in 1609
iv. Shakespeare wasn’t intending to write grammatically—he was writing
rhetorically: would write anything to make the moment work
1. How many butts could you get in the playhouse?
a. only real criteria was serving the moment
v. We miss complexity and layering of thought
1. Ex. Believe None of Us done by 6 actors
b. Changing Social Dynamics
i. Being born in 1564 meant that when he went to London, London was in
a stage where at that moment if a man went to a court of law swearing on
the Bible carried more weight than a signed contract
ii. By the time of Tempest, it had switched to a contract carrying more
weight than swearing on a Bible
iii. Enemy to the poet
1. Idea that writing doesn’t/shouldn’t have multiple layers of
meaning
II.
ON THE CUSP: ORAL CULTURE TO LITERATURE CULTURE
a. Oral & Literary cultural dynamic in Shakespeare’s London
i. Most communication at the time = family apprenticships
1. Learning a trade from a parent
ii. Actors at the time knew how to do it the “old way”
1. Still had prodigious memories
2. Actors were prepared to do at least a dozen plays at any point
3. New play = 3 days to learn it
a. Creates a different relationship to language, when you
don’t have the written word to back you up you have to
listen in a different way
4. Growing up in an oral culture = different use of memory
b. Richard Flatter
i. Translating Shakespeare’s plays in the 1940s into German and Neil
Freeman who worked with Shakes and Co
1. Influences on Krausnick’s conclusions
ii. Capitalization and long/short spellings and rhtetoric is more sophisticated
and more dense than any book from that time
iii. Even Ben Jonson’s sophistication doesn’t come close
1. Shakespeare’s sophistication was not how Shakespeare wrote it,
but how the actors put it down for future audiences
January 29, 2016
The Rhetoric of Shakespeare’s First Folio
Dennis Krausnick, Director of Training, Shakespeare and Company
2. Conveying passion and urgency through punctuation, spelling,
and capitalization
III.
EDITING POETRY FOR A READING AUDIENCE
a. Nicholas Rowe and Alexander Pope
i. First two editors of Shakespeare
1. Tried to turn anything they could into iambic pentameter
2. Shakespeare didn’t look at selling books as a way to make
money…rather, getting butts into the theatre
a. To Shakespeare the play on the page, didn’t mean much; the play was alive between actors and audience
b. Ex. Viola’s ring speech, Nicholas Rowe changing line’s
meaning
i. Rowe’s version: “Alas, our frailty is the cause,
not we! For such as we are made of, such we
be”
ii. F1: “Alas, O frailtie is the cause, not wee, For
such as we are made, if such we bee:”
iii. Rowe’s doesn’t make sense grammatically or
idea-wise, but the F1 line is what is commonly
used/in Riverside, etc.
IV.
VARIANT SPELLINGS IN ROMEO & JULIET AND LOVE’S LABOURS
LOST
a. Romeo’s “Defying Stars line”
i. Q1: “defie my”
ii. Q2; Q3; Q4; F1: “denie you”
iii. Q5; F2; F3; F4: “deny you”
1. Kittredge: “Is it e’en so? Then I defy you, stars!”
2. Riverside: “Is it e’en so? Then I defy you, stars!”
3. Arden: “Is it e’en so? Then I defy you, stars!”
4. Ferdinand in Love’s Labour’s Lost
iv. Variant spellings of the four times he says “Me” in four lines
1. Indicating how the joke works
2. Proof that spelling and capitalization carries information
b. Balcony Scene
i. Information contained in long spellings and capital letters
1. “It is my Lady, O it is my Love, O that she knew she were”
a. all one line, now it’s broken into two, 16 syllables at
once will show Romeo’s state
b. Capitalization: “This is Shakespeare creating a teenager
with an erection.”
2. Question: Would you always instruct to breathe at the end of
each line?
a. Dennis: learn the text that way, train the body-mind
otherwise you’ll turn it to prose and start breathing in the
middle of lines, etc.
i. A breath does not mean a pause
January 29, 2016
The Rhetoric of Shakespeare’s First Folio
Dennis Krausnick, Director of Training, Shakespeare and Company
ii. When you get so self-conscious about the speech
that it alters your speech pattern, it doesn’t work
c. Hamlet’s To be or not to be
i. Capital letters: masculine, intellectual, driving
ii. Long spellings: feminine, emotional, embracing
1. Sententia: a complete universe of thought (not the same way we
think about sentences), five sentences in the speech
a. Note all sentences within the speech begin in the middle
of the line of verse
2. Fardle: long needle
a. Only became a knife after Olivier
3. “To dye to sleep”, no comma, changes the thought
a. Gives you a different reading of the text, gives you a
surprise, if you allow yourself to use what’s there
V.
ELIZABETHAN RHETORICAL PUNCTUATION AND WHAT IT MEANS
a. Proper names
i. Always capitalized
ii. Character names are always italicized in Folio text
b. Punctuation
i. 16th century writers used punctuation to shape thought, not conform to
pre-existing set of rules governing the relationship between parts of
speech
1. The dash
a. Emotional response to what is being spoken by
speaker/other person
b. Also indicates character interrupted by character or event
2. Parentheses
a. Further definition by speaker, so light that it doesn’t
affect development of thought
3. Comma
a. Light shaping of development of thought
4. Semicolon
a. Development of thought driven by an emotional
response to the phrase it follows
5. Colon
a. Development of thought driven by an intellectual energy
which propels and expands the thought
6. Period (full stop):
a. Marks end of the universe of thought.
b. After the period, the speaker speaks an entirely new (not
necessarily unrelated) thought
c. Leonte’s Speech; “Too hot; inch-thick, knee deep”
i. Uses of parentheses: lightest shaping of thought
ii. Comma: shapes thought, comma marks second half of line which has
more energy, not a breath
1. Demonstrating the chaotic disintegration of Leontes’ frantic,
restless, desperate mind
January 29, 2016
The Rhetoric of Shakespeare’s First Folio
Dennis Krausnick, Director of Training, Shakespeare and Company
VI.
2. When learning this speech, would learn it without the
parentheses so as not to lose the through-line; once you have that
line you can drop those things back in
3. “Breath at end of the line allows you that nanosecond to choose
whether you go this way or that way.”
d. What piece of work is man
i. Exclamation marks: a sudden illumination/insight which the speaker
realizes is widely known, even as he/she speaks it
ii. Question marks: may signal not a question but an in-the-moment
realization on the part of the speaker who is expanding on this insight as
he/she speaks
e. Macbeth and Lennox; Act II Scene III
i. Modern editor changes the First Folio lineation in order to make as many
lines as possible fit the “assumed superiority” of iambic pentameter
1. Macbeth’s mind is not where Lennox’s is, Lennox is a kid with
the greatest Scottish hero
a. Trying to make conversation while Macbeth is thinking
about where Macduff is
f. “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow”
i. Notice end words of lines: “hereafter”, “word”, “tomorrow”, “day”,
“time”, “fooles”,etc.
1. 3 sentences (universes of thought)
a. Colons: developing thought forward, different ways of
saying the same thing, speaker realizes “this is not
enough” and keeps adding
CONCLUSION
a. Two categories of thinking within Shakespeare’s thought
i. Masculine/feminine, intellectual/emotional, driving/embracing,
vertical/lateral, developing, building/remembering, recollecting,
future/past, colon/semicolon
ii. These ideas are meant to open doors, don’t have to agree
iii. Rule of thumb
1. “When I speak prose I speak my mind. When I speak poetry, I
speak my soul.” Ex: Beatrice and Benedick not speaking
soulfully until last act