Epiphany in rehearsal

Our first Twelfth Night rehearsal was a read-through, which is fairly standard procedure. Our second was another read-through but this time we had all translated our own lines into modern English. I found this really interesting and there were several lessons learned. Here are three of them:

1. Because people were only translating their own lines, some didn’t think about the speeches that followed. Some of the comic interchanges don’t work if a person hasn’t thought to use a word that the next person puns with. This proves the fundamental way a play works – that all the dialogue is interconnected and no one person, whether they be the lead or the comic relief, can consider their speeches in isolation.

2. Many had thought that the modern read-through would be shorter than the original, expecting the traditional Shakespeare speeches to be unnecessarily wordy. In fact, they were the same length. Modern speech may be much more economical, but it is also less colourful, having lost many idioms and phrases.

Things the sixteenth century peasants knew are no longer common knowledge. Words such as cuckold or cockatrice require lengthy translation, such as ‘man who has been betrayed sexually by his wife and another man, so now has horns growing out of his forehead’ or ‘fabulous beast hatched by a snake from an egg laid by a cock, with a serpent’s body and the legs, wings and head of a cock, which can kill people just by looking at them.’

Sure, sometimes the classical allusions may spin things out a bit, but they also enrich and delight, not to mention reveal an insight into the character and create a bond with the audience. After all, there is an argument that culture is based on shared stories and mythology.

3. This play is funny – the humour comes through clearly and it is not all visual, as some people contend. When people drop the ‘thee’s, ‘thou’s and ‘marry sirrah’s to make it flow in their own accent and vernacular (Shakespeare did not have the squeaky snipped vowels of the antipodes in mind when he penned his dialogue, which is why his plays can sound so awful here), they can really appreciate it.

"He’s a very fool and a prodigal" becomes 'He’s a right flash wanker' and it speaks to us as the bard intended. Of course, some of it defies translation, particularly the iambic pentameter and the rhyming couplets. There is a reason it has passed into the canon of literature and the litany of cliché.

“Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em.”