Shakespearean Characterization: A Guide for Actors and Students

Shakespeare's plays were written some four hundred years ago, and while his characters are enduring, they are also alien. In grappling with the text of his plays, the modern actor must bring Shakespeare's Renaissance characters to life for a modern audience. And while it is difficult enough for twentieth-century spectators to make sense of the plays, it is also hard for modern actors to understand the Elizabethan world that created the personalities so vividly sketched in Shakespeare's texts. This reference is a convenient and practical guide for actors faced with the task of playing Shakespeare's characters.

The volume begins with an overview of Elizabethan theatrical conventions, including the training of actors. It then looks at the dramatic tradition of personification, which Shakespeare's world inherited from the medieval stage. Later chapters give special attention to how language reveals character and to the social and cultural contexts of the Renaissance. Throughout, the emphasis is on how to translate Shakespeare's text into action on the stage. While the volume contains much useful information, that information is presented to meet the special needs of theater professionals.

Provides practical advice for the modern actor on how to portray Shakespeare's characters.

Library Journal

The goal of this trio of books by O'Dell (theater and English, Wilfrid Laurier Univ.), the text consultant for the Stratford Festival, is to help actors and students gain access to Shakespeare's plays. Each combines background information with practical techniques and exercises to be used for interpreting Shakespeare in performance. Shakespearean Language covers Shakespeare's use of rhetoric and iambic pentameter patterns to project emotion and to develop character and plot. Instructions on 16th-century scansion, grammar, and rhetorical devices are included. Shakespearean Characterization identifies the challenges involved in bringing 400-year-old characters to life. Solutions for translating Elizabethan theatrical conventions for death scenes, exits and entrances, the passage of time, and personification into conventions understood by 21st-century audiences are presented as well. In Shakespearean Scholarship, O'Dell identifies the materials she feels are the most useful for a performance-based approach, including glossaries and dictionaries, versions of the plays, pictorial representations of Elizabethan life, and other sources of historical information about the details of Shakespeare's world. Recognizing that there are differences between her ideas and scholarly ones, O'Dell emphasizes that her suggestions are intended to provide a practical approach to theatrical productions of Shakespeare's plays. Extensive reference lists and indexes are included. Recommended for public and academic libraries serving people interested in better understanding Shakespeare's plays as audience member, student, or player. Shana C. Fair, Ohio Univ., Zanesville Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

LESLIE O'DELL is Associate Professor of Theatre and English at Wilfrid Laurier University and Text Consultant for the Stratford Festival in Ontario.