Globe Education Online

John has been in As You Like It twice before; once as Silvius, in 1967 at The Old Vic and Duke Frederick, then again at The Old Vic with Fiona Shaw playing Rosalind. Coming to the play a third time John is beginning to wish he had paid more attention to the parts that he was not playing! This would give him a better insight for the current production. Today, actors are expected to attend a range of rehearsals and to understand the play as a whole, rather than just their own parts. John does, however remember the actors who played Jaques in these productions – Robert Stephens and Karl Johnson, he has a auditory memory of these performances which will act as a kind of touchstone for John’s own performance.

During the rehearsal process the actors had workshops with Peter Dawkins, an academic, who talked about notions of thought, emotion and action in the play. John finds sessions like this useful as they give him new ways of understanding the text.

John has also been thinking about Jaques relationship to Shakespeare himself; some scholars have argued that the identity of Shakespeare is drawn in the character of Jaques. Some people believe that the Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere was really the writer of the plays credited to Shakespeare, John has been researching the life of the Earl of Oxford and plans to use him as a character reference for Jaques. He now plans to play Jaques as an aristocrat in his own right, rather than simply a courtier.

John is now ready to go into the technical rehearsals and feels he will greatly benefit from his experience of playing on the Globe stage last year.

He is still finding the above mentioned speech "Why who cries out on pride", (Act 3 Scene 2) elliptical and obtuse; he cannot find a ‘through line’ in the speech.

Now his main concerns are to play Jaques in such a way that the audience are able to hear the text and to take it, or interpret it, as they like it.

These comments are the actor's thoughts or ideas about the part as s/he goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply his/her own interpretations and frequently change as the rehearsal process progresses.

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