Globe Education Online

This is the fifth bulletin from Rosalind (Naomi Frederick). In it, she discusses work on the text and movement, and different interpretations of key moments in the play.

Text work

At the Globe, Giles Block who works with the text is in almost every rehearsal. As an actor, you have to obey the text at the same time as you have to depart from it, because you have to make it your own. Actors are such vain creatures – I include myself in that! – and we can get so full of ourselves and depart from the starting point of the text, that we need to be brought back to the actual details. So Giles is very discreet and is very helpful on the meanings of things. For example, he will tell me “You’re saying ‘you’ and it should be ‘thou’ in that line”, which doesn’t sound like much, but actually those things carry meaning. if I’m saying ‘you’, that can be very formal in Shakespeare’s time, so if I want to be friendly with someone at that moment, I should be saying thou, as it’s more familiar. Giles also has a very clear ear, and so he can hear when you’re badly mangling something: syllables and stresses and things like that. We’re having a few little fights about some things that he wishes I would say one way and I am saying another way. However, As You Like It has a massive percentage of prose, so there are far fewer rules than if it were verse (in fact, there aren’t really any rules for prose). So he can’t get too cross with me as often as he would be able to if it was verse since I’m not technically breaking any rules! But I listen and consider and we discuss.

Movement

We have to really think about movement in the Globe because it hasn’t got a lot of things that other theatres do have; we have to use our bodies in the space and on the stage to tell the story, without shafts of light, or amazing projections or even dramatic sound effects, We have to really make sure that the shapes we put on the stage are telling the story. Shakespeare needs to spring off the page but doesn’t always, especially if you haven’t seen it before and when the words themselves are hard, so I like to think of it as making pictures on the stage that help get that story across. The pictures matter and I think we have.

Unlocking key scenes

The whole relationship with Celia has needed a lot of unlocking, because the play starts with Celia asking Rosalind to be merrier, to which Rosalind replies:

Unless you could teach me to forget a Banished father you must not learn me how to Remember any extraordinary pleasure. 1.2.5-7

Initially, we were playing with Rosalind being in a bad temper, but then we realised that that could be a problem, The audience has to learn the relationship between these two very quickly, and if you open with them fighting, then the fact that these two girls adore each other isn’t very clear. Obviously, you do have fights with the people you love every much, but if that’s the first thing you show the audience, it’s a bit dangerous. These two have grown up together and are woven together, so we knew that we had to play it more like it was a chat, so that even while she is missing her dad terribly, Rosalind is so grateful for Celia’s comfort and love. Celia knows that Rosalind is not herself and asks what is wrong, which allows Rosalind to admit that she is feeling upset. You’ve got to be careful with what you present, so that was an interesting moment, discovering which might be a better way to start. There have also been developments in the scene where Rosalind encounters Silvius and Phoebe. I have been playing it that Rosalind watches Phoebe decimating Silvius, and because of her own frustration that she can’t be with Orlando, Rosalind then lays into Phoebe: “How dare you speak like that when you’re a woman!” Now, there is an element of that still there. But it also seems like Rosalind realises that she can get away with giving Phoebe a hard time because she is still disguised as Ganymede. As a result, there is a huge element of enjoyment in the telling off, rather than it just being an angry scolding. So there are these shifts, but they are significant in how we tell the story. But I think it is a constant case of unlocking the character, and that may never be fully done.

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

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