Acting is an interpretive art. We take one existing art form, a play, and transform it into another art form, a live performance. It takes a lot of work on our part to make this journey, we have to understand thoroughly the first art, the play, and find the life hidden within it, in order to create the second form, the performance.
To my mind, the study of scansion is NOT about performance. It's about understanding and unlocking the PLAY.
This can sometimes be confusing, as when we are studying the play we might talk about how a line sounds (lots of vowels or clickety consonants, alliteration, rhymes, rhythm)-- but we are still only talking about how it is written. It doesn't "sound" like anything until you say it, it has no inherent delivery of its own because it is text on a page, and we are not yet at performance.
But the way that it is written tells us a lot about the psychological makeup of our characters in that moment. A simple example is rhyming: I believe no one ever rhymes unintentionally in Shakespeare, so if a character is rhyming, what is he doing? Showing how clever he is? Uniting his words with the last ones said as he creates a rhyming couplet? Flirting? Playing an Elizabethan form of the dozens?
Whatever the answer you decide (and THERE is your moment to make this your own), go play that and don't worry so much about the scansion. Once you have interpreted its meaning and play that meaning, once you have understood the structure and use the structure to your advantage, the actual scansion delivery will follow you like a little puppy. It will just come.
If you have a short line, like Lady M's famous, "Ay," this indicates a long pause follows. What is in that pause is up to you. But once you understand why it's there, how it fits into the scene and the lines before, it is easy to fill that pause up with whatever you've discovered. So then you go out into the hot lights and you play that moment-- and lo and behold you've said "Ay," with a long pause afterward without even really thinking about it. You're just thinking about [fill in the blank, perhaps looking deep into his eyes to see if he's weakening?] and letting that moment happen.
It's true I wouldn't wander away too much from the written scansion-- for example, I was recently coaching an actor to quit breaking up her metered lines-- but here's why.
I shame to hear thee speak. Ah, timorous wretch!
The structure is telling you that "Ah, timorous wretch!" follows right on the heels of "I shame to hear thee speak." Why? Well, for one thing, she's not letting him speak if she runs the two together, so that works out. She doesn't want him to talk so she keeps talking. Also, the structure is saying that when she gets to "speak" she is NOT done berating him, and running them together lets him know that too. So I go out under the hot lights and I let him know, "I don't want to hear any more from you, don't interrupt me, you freakin' scaredy cat!" And lo and behold, I have held the metered line. If I wander from that, if I say the first half and then pause and then say the second half, I have weakened the moment. Shakespeare gave me a stronger moment to play than that slow and breathy interpretation. And frankly, I like his moments better than anything I could come up with.
Which isn't to say you can't mess around with the scansion. There are two things to keep in mind.
First, you need to break a rule with another rule. For example, you could take that metered line above and break it into two short lines-- but then you must play that new moment you created. You now have a short line, a pause, another short line, and another pause. This is a new structure for the moment that you have invented, but having done so, you must play it out. What are the pauses? Fill them up. Craft the new moment and then play it.
Second, you need to weigh your new invention against what Shakespeare gave you. As I said, I've never come up with a scansion (moment) yet that beats what Ol' Billy gave me. There's a line from an old terrible movie I saw in a Mystery Science Theater with a gunslinger saying, "You think you can take me? Go ahead on." My money's on Shakespeare every time.
Because you must keep in mind that the moment you are playing fits into the greater scansion of the scene, and you need to make sure you are fitting your moment into the greater whole of the scene, and so monkeying around with it can lead to problems. But yes, you are free to do so if you wish. [EDIT: Also, the scansion of the lines are designed to be easy to speak and follow natural stresses and breath patterns. Monkeying with the scansion can cause you to trip over your lines or get off your breath, if your replacement scansion is not as easy to speak.]
Since I've mentioned "scenes", let me advise you directors out there that this is very important for you as well. I will delve into this aspect more in the future, but scansion is also a tool for unlocking how whole scenes move, and can be very beneficial in creating blocking and staging, as well as directing your actors.
I hope that this introduction to the way I use scansion will set the stage for conversations to follow. Now I hope you know where I am coming from. I am not here to tell you how to say a line, only how to unlock what is going on with your character in that line. I have many thoughts to share on this subject, and I look forward to putting some thoughts down here (as well as offering workshops starting in 2010!). In the meantime, I welcome your comments!
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