Changing the operative word can change the whole underlying meaning of the line. Let's look at some examples:
- "I love you" could be:
- I love you, "I'm the one who loves you, not her, why can't you see that?"
- I love you, "I don't just 'like' you, I am in love with you! My feelings run deep!"
- I love you, "I love you, baby, not the guy you just saw me with!"
It's the same line, but with a different emphasis, a different sense of what is important.
2. There's a story that says Ian Mackellan's advice to Patrick Stewart when he played Macbeth was, "In 'Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow', the operative is AND." This creates a whole new sound, the sound of the never ending days piling up relentlessly, before you are ready for them, tomorrow AND tomorrow AND tomorrow...
3. In the song "Love the Way You Lie", Eminem is describing the inside of the mind of an abuser. As he tries to talk his lady out of leaving him, and promises never to hit her again, he says, "Can't you hear sincerity in my voice when I talk?" Well, I think most of us would know better to believe that line, but you would expect him to deliver it in the sweetest way possible, and you could see how that might work. But he doesn't. He delivers it as, "Can't you hear sincerity in MY voice when I talk?" which skillfully conjures up the image of "Shut up, I'm talking!" underneath the apparent "come back, baby" facade.
I believe that when we go see Shakespeare plays over and over, and talk about different performances, we are often talking about their operatives. It's how you put your own spin on what is important, and how you can create your own version of the character.
Modern scripts use italics, bold, underlining, or caps to indicate the operative word. (Taking away some of that freedom you find in Shakespeare, I might add.) Shakespeare on the other hand does NOT tell you, but he does give you two hints in the verse.
The first is in the verse line itself. While Shakespeare does a lot of things to the form of "iambic pentameter" some elements of the form remain, and one of them is that the last word in every metered line is typically the most important. The structure of iambic pentameter is to drive to the last word. So this would indicate that the last word of each verse line is (more often than not) an operative.
The second is in the stresses. Only words that have stresses in them can be operatives. If we assume that this line is in iambic pentameter (and some may argue that because it's all monosyllabic, but let's just say it is for this exercise):
In sooth I know not why I am so sad.then only SOOTH, KNOW, WHY, AM, or SAD can be operatives. This can be a very interesting clue. Why did he put the stress on "why" instead of "not"? In the Analyzing Scansion tab on this site, I talk about ways to manipulate the scansion to suit yourself, and this monosyllabic line is one of those times-- you could interpret the meter as something other than IP and make the operative be "not". But this is an example of questions you should be asking yourself, why is the stress on x instead of y? Why isn't y the operative? What is Shakespeare trying to tell me here?
He narrows it down for you, but doesn't tell you exactly what the operatives should be.
In prose, he abandons you altogether and makes you work it out for yourself with no hints at all.
Now is a great time to introduce you to one of the newer "tricks" Shakespearean actors are using:
The Two Operatives Per Line Rule
The idea here is that too many operatives confuses the audience. If I savor evverrry wooordd Iiii sayyyy then it's harder for the audience to follow what's important. So, we are going to PARE it down to only TWO operatives per line. (See what I did there? Makes a much cleaner sound.)
The first one is probably going to be the last word in the line, because as we have learned, the verse form lends itself to that. So that means out of the whole rest of the line, I get to pick one more word, and it has to have a stress in it.
You'd be surprised how hard that is! I swear every line is a negotiation with myself, as I ALWAYS find an EXCUSE for THREE operatives! It's a tricky rule to live by. But it has great rewards in the sound.
As I said, prose has no clues, but this is a good lesson to learn for prose also. Keep the operatives to a minimum. Use them to hang your structure on (see the Prose tab) but try not to over-use them.
