Isabella inspires

Movement: Verity stands and lifts her arms above her head

(Representational action) Sound: ‘Ah’ (laugh)

(Psychologically truthful sound)

Improvised words: ‘Be ready for tomorrow’

Claudio: Yes… Action 12. Claudio accepts

Figure 5.4 Verity’s action three: ‘Isabella parades the beast’

5.4.7 What happened in Verity’s performance of Stages One, Two, Three and Four in her Active Analysis

As in Verity’s earlier cohort class presentation, Stages One, Two and Three of the Active Analysis were performed with a lively commitment (although deeper analysis of her choices are investigated further on in Stage Five). Also replicating her class presentation, (despite having ample rehearsal time), when reading the text in Stage Four, Verity made noticeable mistakes over several phrases by missing out and supplanting small words.

In her spoken inaccuracies she said:

 ‘ i’head’ rather than ‘i’ th’ head’

 ‘as falcon as the fowl’ rather than ‘as falcon doth the fowl’

 ‘he would appear as deep as a pond’, rather than ‘he would

appear a pond as deep as hell’

 She also trips over the articulation of the words, ‘his filth’ 5.4.8 Insert Stage Five. Feeding the lines to Verity

Acting on the advice of my critical friend, in an attempt to secure the words in Verity’s mind, I now added Stanislavski’s Fifth Stage; his method of feeding the words aurally to the actor. I read Isabella’s lines aloud, directing Verity to action them as she heard them.

5.4.9 Stage Five. What happened with Verity

During this aurally received process, Verity became lost. As I read Isabella’s speech aloud in short, easily assimilated sense phrases, Verity’s gestures remained energised, but changed into vague, poking movements, indicating a scant correlation with the words in the text. In addition, there was an obvious mismatch between Verity’s attempts to find a physical relationship with the words being read to her, and her pre-planned Verb Actions that she had already entrenched in the previous stages of the work. As some of Isabella’s speeches have obscure words linked with images in Shakespeare’s multi- layered metaphors, it was clearly hard for Verity to hold all the words in her working memory, make sense of them, and translate them into actions. When carrying out Stanislavski’s sequence in the class situation, Verity’s actions, sounds and few improvised words had appeared effective in the first showing. To an observer, it was not evident that she had not fully comprehended the elements within the words. But, when I introduced Stanislavski’s method of aurally feeding the words to the actor, as she attempted to action them, Verity’s lack of the grasp of the details within the text was revealed.

 Verity’s Action One is entitled: ‘Isabella unveils the devil’. This simple statement is meant to summarise Isabella’s six line speech, ‘This outward sainted deputy … A pond as deep as hell’, wherein she describes Angelo’s actions and her strong feelings about his character. The speech involves vivid imagery, with homonymic, multi layered meanings entrenched within the word/images. Verity’s single action to encapsulate all the six lines was too generalised to capture what Isabella was actually saying. Her improvised words were simply: ‘look at him’. This is an extremely skimpy translation of what Shakespeare has included. In a subsequent discussion, Verity admitted that she did not understand the meaning of some of the words in this speech, nor did she have a precise grasp of the intricacies of what she was saying. She had thought that if she had an overall idea of what it was about, it might be enough to get by without her puzzlement being revealed. Her dyslexia meant that the spelling of words did not offer a key to meaning. Verity had misread the word ‘fowl’ thinking it meant ‘foul’. She knew Isabella meant something about Angelo being horrible, but she had no notion of the reference of the falcon preying on the small bird, thereby missing out on the metaphor illustrating Angelo’s destructive power over her and her brother Claudio. In the editor’s notes for ‘Measure for Measure’ Lever reports that a bird of prey kills by nipping in the head (1965: 72). Isabella’s description of Angelo nipping youth in the head captures the triple meaning of his condemning Claudio to death (by beheading him,) wanting to take away Isabella’s maidenhead, plus killing in the manner of a bird of prey. Shakespeare’s polysemic metaphor was completely missed by Verity. This is a prime example of the layers within Shakespeare’s words that need to be perceived by the actor to enhance performance and to serve Shakespeare’s intentions.

 Verity also disclosed to me that she had not understood the speech

about Angelo’s body being dressed in ‘prenzie guards and the livery of hell’. For the lines:

The damned’st body to invest and cover In prenzie guards,

It is acknowledged here that the word prenzie comes from the First Folio. Editors Bate & Rasmussen in the RSC edition of the play’s text state that the meaning of the word prenzie is unclear, and could mean precise, puritanical, priestly or princely (2010:60). Some editors such as J. W. Lever in the Arden edition of the play have amended prenzie to ‘precise’ in the play script (1965). I had previously explained this question about the meaning of prenzie to all of the students at the initial reading of the scene in class work, and advised them to retain the use of the word, but to understand the meaning of prenzie as ‘precise’; Angelo is hyper- correct and precise in his behaviour, views and, no doubt, his clothes (guards).

Verity’s improvised words for this bit of the text were, ‘Yes, this is what he wants me to do’. Isabella’s exposure of Angelo’s double-crossing hypocrisy, hidden underneath his robes of authority is overlooked by Verity. Verity is speaking words wherein the meaning is a blur.

Through an inability to engage with all of the words, (despite her concentrated work on the unit and actions), Verity remained unable to give a fluent reading or speaking of the content of her scene.

5.4.10 Examples of Amelia as Isabella and Abigail as Claudio; the filming of Unit A & Unit B in Act III, Scene I ‘Measure For Measure’, (with Callum in the role of director).

Reference to the Appendices: there are filmed examples of the Stanislavski Units and Action sequences with Amelia and Abigail on DVD Three, Appendix Eight, Volume Two. This includes evidential examples relating to misunderstanding of the text which is focussed on in this section.

Present: my critical friend, Ken Robertson as observer and assisting with filming. Participant Amelia is playing Isabella, and Abigail is playing Claudio and Callum is their director of their Units A & B. It was filmed in the Movement

Table 5.2 Unit A: Isabella brings sentence to Claudio who wants to know more

Isabella enters. Action 1. Isabella enters and hovers

Movement: Amelia steps back and forth (Representationalaction)

Sound: ‘ah ho ah ho’ (Representational sound)

Improvised words: ‘Hi, um, hey’ (Psychologically real words) Claudio: Now sister, what’s the

comfort?

Action 2. Claudio begs for comfort