As You Like It

2nd Shakespare

Synopsis

The play is set in a duchy in France, but most of the action takes place in a location called the Forest of Arden, which may be intended for the Ardennes in Belgium, but sometimes is identified with Arden, Warwickshire, near Shakespeare's home town.

Frederick has usurped the Duchy and exiled his older brother, Duke Senior. The Duke's daughter, Rosalind, has been permitted to remain at court because she is the closest friend and cousin of Frederick's only child, Celia. Orlando, a young gentleman of the kingdom who at first sight has fallen in love with Rosalind, is forced to flee his home after being persecuted by his older brother, Oliver. Frederick becomes angry and banishes Rosalind from court. Celia and Rosalind decide to flee together accompanied by the jester, Touchstone, with Rosalind disguised as a young man and Celia disguised as a poor lady.

Rosalind, now disguised as Ganymede ("Jove's own page"), and Celia, now disguised as Aliena (Latin for "stranger"), arrive in the Arcadian Forest of Arden, where the exiled Duke now lives with some supporters, including "the melancholy Jaques," a malcontent figure, who is introduced to us weeping over the slaughter of a deer. "Ganymede" and "Aliena" do not immediately encounter the Duke and his companions, as they meet up with Corin, an impoverished tenant, and offer to buy his master's rude cottage.

Orlando and his servant Adam (a role possibly played by Shakespeare, though this story is said to be apocryphal),[ meanwhile, find the Duke and his men and are soon living with them and posting simplistic love poems for Rosalind on the trees. Rosalind, also in love with Orlando, meets him as Ganymede and pretends to counsel him to cure him of being in love. Ganymede says "he" will take Rosalind's place and "he" and Orlando can act out their relationship.

The shepherdess, Phebe, with whom Silvius is in love, has fallen in love with Ganymede (Rosalind in disguise), though "Ganymede" continually shows that "he" is not interested in Phebe. Touchstone, meanwhile, has fallen in love with the dull-witted shepherdess, Audrey, and tries to woo her, but eventually is forced to be married first. William, another shepherd, attempts to marry Audrey as well, but is stopped by Touchstone, who threatens to kill him "a hundred and fifty ways".

Finally, Silvius, Phebe, Ganymede, and Orlando are brought together in an argument with each other over who will get whom. Ganymede says he will solve the problem, having Orlando promise to marry Rosalind, and Phebe promise to marry Silvius if she cannot marry Ganymede.

Orlando sees Oliver in the forest and rescues him from a lioness, causing Oliver to repent for mistreating Orlando. Oliver meets Aliena (Celia's false identity) and falls in love with her, and they agree to marry. Orlando and Rosalind, Oliver and Celia, Silvius and Phebe, and Touchstone and Audrey all are married in the final scene, after which they discover that Frederick also has repented his faults, deciding to restore his legitimate brother to the dukedom and adopt a religious life. Jaques, ever melancholy, declines their invitation to return to the court preferring to stay in the forest and to adopt a religious life as well. Rosalind speaks an epilogue to the audience, commending the play to both men and women in the audience.

My Monologue

Think not I love him, though I ask for him.

'Tis but a peevish boy; yet he talks well;

But what care I for words? Yet words do well,

When he that speaks them pleases those that hear.

It is a pretty youth: not very pretty:

But, sure, he's proud; and yet his pride becomes him:

He'll make a proper man: the best thing in him

Is his complexion; and faster than his tongue

Did make offence his eye did heal it up.

He is not very tall; yet for his years he's tall:

His leg is but so so; and yet 'tis well:

There was a pretty redness in his lip,

A little riper and more lusty red

Than that mix'd in his cheek; 'twas just the difference

Betwixt the constant red and mingled damask.

There be some women, Silvius, had they mark'd him

In parcels as I did, would have gone near

To fall in love with him; but, for my part,

I love him not nor hate him not; and yet

Have more cause to hate him than to love him:

For what had he to do to chide at me?

He said mine eyes were black and my hair black;

And, now I am remember'd, scorn'd at me.

I marvel why I answer'd not again:

But that's all one; omittance is no quittance.

I'll write to him a very taunting letter,

And thou shalt bear it: wilt thou, Silvius?

Modern Translation

Don’t think I’m in love with him just because I’m asking about him. He’s an irritable boy, though he speaks well. But what do I care about words? And yet, words are a good thing when the man speaking them is pleasant to listen to. He’s good-looking, but not too good-looking. He’s awfully proud, but his pride suits him. He’ll grow up to be a proper man. The best thing about him is his complexion: as fast as he offends me with words, his pretty face heals the wound. He’s not very tall, but he’s tall enough for his age. His legs aren’t great, but they’re alright. His lips were nice and red, a little more lively and passionate than the red that was in his cheeks one was pure red and the other more pink. There are women out there, Silvius, who would have nearly fallen in love with him after inspecting him as closely as I have. But I don’t love him or hate him though I suppose I have more reason to hate him than love him. What right did he have to scold me like that? He said my eyes and my hair were black and, now that I think of it, he scorned me. I’m surprised I didn’t bite back. But no matter I’ll get back at him soon enough. I’ll write him a taunting letter, and you can deliver it. Will you do that for me, Silvius?

Summary: Act III, Scene iii

Touchstone and a goatherd named Audrey wander through the forest, while Jaques follows behind them, eavesdropping. Touchstone laments that the gods have not made Audrey “poetical”. Where she a lover of poetry, she would appreciate the falsehoods of which all lovers are guilty and would be dishonest, a quality that Touchstone prefers she possess. His reason behind encouraging her dishonesty is that to have beauty and honesty together, as he claims he does in Audrey, is “to have honey a sauce to sugar”. Nevertheless, Touchstone has arranged to marry Audrey in the forest with Sir Oliver Martext, a vicar from a nearby village, officiating. Touchstone determines that many wives cheat on their husbands, but claims that the horns of cuckoldry are nothing of which to be ashamed. Oliver Martext arrives to perform the wedding ceremony and insists that someone “give the woman” so that the ceremony is “lawful” Jaques offers his services but convinces Touchstone that he should marry in a proper church. The clown counters that a nonchurch wedding will make for an ill marriage and that an ill marriage will make it easier for him to abandon his wife, but in the end he acquiesces. Jaques, Touchstone, and Audrey leave the rather bewildered vicar alone in the forest.

Summary: Act III, scene iv

Orlando has failed to show up for his morning appointment with Ganymede, the disguised Rosalind, and she is distraught. She wants desperately to weep. Rosalind compares Orlando’s hair to that of the infamous betrayer of Christ, Judas. Celia insists that Orlando’s hair is browner than Judas’s, and Rosalind agrees, slowly convincing herself that her lover is no traitor. Celia, however, then suggests that in matters of love, there is little truth in Orlando. A lover’s oath, Celia reasons, is of no more account than that of a bartender.

Corin enters and interrupts the women’s conversation. He explains that the young shepherd, Silvius, whose complaints about the tribulations of love Rosalind and Celia witness earlier, has decided to woo and win Phoebe. Corin invites the women to see the “pageant” of a hopeless lover and the scornful object of his desire, and Rosalind heads off to see the scene play out. Indeed, she determines to do more than watch she plans to intervene in the affair.

Summary: Act III, scene v

Silvius has confessed his love to Phoebe, but his words fall on hostile ears. As the scene opens, he pleads with her not to reject him so bitterly, lest she prove worse than the “common executioner,” who has enough decency to ask forgiveness of those he kills. Rosalind and Celia, both still disguised, enter along with Corin to watch Phoebe’s cruel response. Phoebe mocks Silvius’s hyperbolic language, asking why he fails to fall down if her eyes are the murderers he claims them to be. Silvius assures her that the wounds of love are invisible, but Phoebe insists that the shepherd not approach her again until she too can feel these invisible wounds. Rosalind steps out from her hiding place and begins to berate Phoebe, proclaiming that the shepherdess is no great beauty and should consider herself lucky to win Silvius’s love. Confronted by what appears to be a handsome young man who treats her as harshly as she treats Silvius, Phoebe instantly falls in love with Ganymede. Rosalind, realizing this infatuation, mocks Phoebe further. Rosalind and Celia depart, and Phoebe employs Silvius, who can talk so well of love, to help her pursue Ganymede. Phoebe claims that she does not love Ganymede and wonders why she failed to defend herself against such criticism. She determines to write him “a very taunting letter,” and orders Silvius to deliver it.

Analysis: Act III, scenes iii–v

Although we learn of the romance between Audrey and Touchstone rather late in the game, the relationship is important to the play for many reasons. First, it produces laughs because of the incongruities between the two lovers. Touchstone delights in words and verbiage. He obsesses over them, wrings multiple and often bawdy meanings from them, and usually ends up tangling himself and others in them. That he chooses to wed Audrey, a simple goatherd who fails to comprehend the most basic vocabulary the words “features,” “poetical,” and “foul” are all beyond her grasp ensures the laughable absurdity of their exchange . Indeed, the play offers few moments more outrageous than Audrey’s declaration of virtue: “I am not a slut, though I thank the gods I am foul”.

 
The rustic romance between Audrey and Touchstone also provides a pointed contrast with the flowery, verbose love of Silvius for Phoebe or Orlando for Rosalind. Whereas Phoebe and Silvius are caught up in the poetics of love with the man in agonizing pursuit of an unattainable but, to his mind, perfect lover he attraction between Touchstone and Audrey is far from idealized. Indeed, if Audrey cannot grasp the meaning of the word “poetical,” there is little hope that she will be able to fulfil the part dictated to her by literary convention. Ideals have little to do with Touchstone’s affections for Audrey. By his own admission, the clown’s passions are much easier to understand. In explaining to Jaques his decision to marry Audrey, Touchstone says, “As the ox hath his bow, sir, the horse his curb, and the falcon her bells, so man hath his desires” . Here, Touchstone equates his sexual desire to various restraining devices for animals. Sexual gratification, or “nibbling,” to use Touchstone’s phrase, will keep his otherwise untamed passions in check .

Although Silvius and Phoebe’s and Touchstone and Audrey’s are two very different kinds of love relationships, taken together they form a complete satire of the two major influences on the play-pastoralism and courtly love. In pastoral literature, city dwellers take to the country in order to commune with and learn valuable lessons from its inhabitants. Audrey represents a truly rural individual, uncorrupted by the politics of court life, but she is, in all respects, far from ideal. In her supreme want of intelligence, Audrey shows the absurd unreality of the pastoral ideal of eloquent shepherds and shepherdesses. Silvius aspires to such eloquence and nearly achieves it, and his poetic plea for Phoebe’s mercy conforms to the conventions of the distraught but always lyrically precise lover. But Phoebe exposes the absurdity of Silvius’s lines by dragging romance into the harsh, unforgiving light of reality. When taken literally, his insistence that his lover’s eyes are his “executioner”  seems hopelessly lame when Phoebe demands, “Now show the wound mine eye hath made in thee” .

If Audrey and Touchstone’s and Phoebe and Silvius’s relationships stand at opposite ends of the romance continuum, then -Rosalind, in her courtship of Orlando, struggles to find a more livable middle ground. Although Phoebe wisely points out the literal flaws in Silvius’s verse, she cannot help falling into the same trap herself regarding Ganymede. In the entire play, only Rosalind can appreciate both the ideal and the real. Although she possesses the unflinching vision required to chastise Phoebe for her cruelty and Silvius for his blindness to it, she cannot help but indulge in the absurdity of romantic love, allowing herself to have a fit over Orlando’s tardiness. This inconsistency may explain why Rosalind is such a seductive, winning character: in her ability to experience and appreciate all emotions, she appeals to everyone.

 

Shakespeare 2nd

The Comedy of Errors

Act 2, scene 2; Act 3, scene 1

 

Summary

The Comedy of Errors tells the story of two sets of identical twins that were accidentally separated at birth. Antipholus of Syracuse and his servant, Dromio of Syracuse, arrive in Ephesus, which turns out to be the home of their twin brothers, Antipholus of Ephesus and his servant, Dromio of Ephesus. When the Syracusans encounter the friends and families of their twins, a series of wild mishaps based on mistaken identities lead to wrongful beatings, a near-seduction, the arrest of Antipholus of Ephesus, and false accusations of infidelity, theft, madness, and demonic possession.

Antipholus of Syracuse goes to the inn and finds that his slave did, in fact, bring his money and luggage safely there. Confused, he wanders the city until he encounters Dromio of Syracuse his Dromio who, of course, has no memory of telling him to come home to dinner or anything else from Antipholus' earlier conversation with Dromio of Ephesus. Antipholus grows angry with him, but the slave manages to defuse his anger through a long, involved joke about baldness.

While the master and slave converse and jest, Adriana and Luciana come upon them, mistaking them for Antipholus of Ephesus and his Dromio. Adriana immediately accuses the man she believes to be her husband of infidelity and rebukes him for violating his own promise of love and their marriage bed. Antipholus, confused, says that he has never met her, which only makes Adriana more furious. She insists on dragging her perplexed "husband" home to dinner, bringing Dromio with them, and the confused Antipholus decides to play along until he understands the situation better. They go into Antipholus of Ephesus' house, and Dromio is left below to guard the door during dinner. While his double is upstairs eating, Antipholus of Ephesus returns from the marketplace, accompanied by Dromio of Ephesus, Angelo the goldsmith, and Balthasar the merchant. He asks his fellow businessmen to give Adriana an excuse for his tardiness and then mentions that his slave is behaving oddly.

My Monologue

ADRIANA

Ay, ay, Antipholus look strange and frown.

Some other mistress hath thy sweet aspects.

I am not Adriana, nor thy wife.

The time was once when thou unurged wouldst vow

 That never words were music to thine ear,

 That never object pleasing in thine eye,

That never touch well welcome to thy hand,

That never meat sweet-savoured in thy taste,

Unless I spake, or looked, or touched, or carved to thee.

How comes it now, my husband, O, how comes it

That thou art thus estranged from thyself?

 “Thyself” I call it, being strange to me,

That, undividable, incorporate,

Am better than thy dear self’s better part.

 Ah, do not tear away thyself from me!

 For know, my love, as easy mayest thou fall

 A drop of water in the breaking gulf,

 And take unmingled thence that drop again

Without addition or diminishing,

 As take from me thyself and not me too.

 How dearly would it touch thee to the quick?

 Shouldst thou but hear I were licentious

And that this body, consecrate to thee

Morden Translation

Yes, yes, Antipholus: look bewildered and frown at me. You’ve given away all your sweet looks to some other woman; I am not Adriana or your wife. There was a time when you’d freely tell me that words were never music to your ear unless I said them, that objects never pleased your eye unless I showed them to you, that touches never pleased your hands unless they were my touches, and that food never tasted sweet to you unless I had prepared it. How is it, my husband, oh, how is it, that you have become a stranger to yourself? I say yourself because you are a stranger to me now, but when we are indivisible and united in one body, I am better than the best part of you. Ah, don’t tear yourself away from me! For you should know, my love, that it would be as easy to let a drop of water fall into the churning sea and then fish it out again, unmingled and undiminished, as it would be to take yourself from me without taking me out of myself as well. How deeply would it cut you if you heard that I had been cheating on you and that my body—which is sworn for you only—had been contaminated by vile lust?

 

 

Auditions for Actors. Unit 18. Monologue Selection.

Contemporary Monologue 1

 

Shakers

Shakers Cocktail Bar is THE place to be! After work, before a club, to meet the blokes, to pick up the girls, to drink to celebrate or drown your sorrows, for birthdays and parties and romance and sin, this is the place to be seen.

And in 'Shakers' the four young waitresses reveal the lives of its staff and customers and offer an insight into their hopes, dreams and disappointments. John Godber's sparkling writing builds on the success of his earlier 'Bouncers' to create a richly absorbing yet tellingly revealing modern comedy.

         Title and Author

John Godber and Jane Thornton

1.       Brief Synopsis

Shakers was written in 1987, when every town in the UK had its abundant cocktail bar and the numbers of such establishments were increasing. The play is a sequence of quick-fire humour combined with serious monologues, which start off very light hearted. We are given a glimpse of this world by the four long-suffering waitresses who work at the local trendy cocktail bar. Each actress's main character has a very distinct personality and every one of the actresses used their own particular style to portray these four quite different young girls. As the story unfolds, the waitresses take turns to describe their character to the audience. Multi-role-play and cross cutting are used frequently within the play to allow the audience to meet a wide range of characters.

2.       Genre and style of the play.

Comedy

3.       Character you have chosen

Nicki

 

4.       What appeals to you about this character?

She is feisty and very ambitious; she doesn’t care about what people think of her.

5.       What similarities are there?

She reminds me of myself; she’s young and misunderstood and has big dreams of being on TV

6.       What differences are there?

She is older than me; she’s 21

7.       What is going to be the biggest challenge in playing this role?

Doing a liverpool accent

8.       What will you need to work on physically?

The play doesn’t mention anything about her physical appearance, but I’ll have to work on being less fidgety.

9.       What will you need to work on vocally?

To learn how to say things with a Liverpool accent.

10.    What will you need to work on emotionally?

Being more nonchalant, then becoming really nervous

11.    What background research will you need to do?

Things about the Liverpool in the 1980‘s and how they lived and such.

12.    What impact should this piece have upon an audience?

You can do anything if you put your mind to it and it’s never too late to achieve your dreams.

Contemporary 2

Reasons to Be Pretty

                                                                        

The plot centres on four young working class friends and lovers who become increasingly dissatisfied with their dead-end lives and each other. Steph is the central argument of the play. Throughout the story, she is furious. She feels emotionally wounded by her boyfriend, who believes that her face is "regular" (which she views as a way of saying that she is not beautiful).

Greg, the character, spends most of his life trying to explain his misunderstood intentions to others. Like other leading men in Neil LaBute plays, he is far more affable than the male supporting characters (who are always foul-mouthed jerks). In spite of his low-key, eager-to-remain-calm personality, Greg somehow evokes anger from the rest of the characters.

Kent is the obnoxious character we were just talking about. He is crude, down-to-earth, and believes that his life is better than perfect. He not only has a good-looking wife, but he's also tangled in a work-related affair.

Carly is the wife of Kent and the best friend of Stephanie. She sets the conflict in motion, spreading gossip about Greg's supposedly true feelings.

Scene Three

Steph meets Greg in neutral territory: a restaurant at lunchtime. He has brought her flowers, but she remains intent on moving out and ending their four year relationship.

She wants to be with someone who sees her as beautiful. After unleashing more of her anger and rebuking Greg's attempts at reconciliation, Steph demands the keys so she can remove all of her items from their home. Greg finally fights back (verbally) and says that he doesn't want to see her "stupid face" any more. That makes Stephanie snap!

Steph makes him sit back down at the table. She them pulls out a letter from her purse. She has written down everything about Greg that she dislikes. Her letter is a vicious (yet amusing) tirade, detailing all of his physical and sexual flaws, from head to toe. After reading the hateful letter, she admits that she wrote all of those things to hurt him. However, she says that his comment about her face represents his true beliefs, and can therefore never be forgotten or taken back.