George Bernard Shaw on Shakespearian Music and the Actor

Abstract

HE use of technological gadgets in manipulating range and volume of human voice has had most deleterious effects upon theater and, more particularly, on Shakespearian acting. Through dial adjustment by sound engineer, voice can be reduced to faint whisper or increased to thunderous outburst and deafening roar without much physical effort or bodily involvement. While restrained movement and mechanically regulated vocal utterance, with inevitable casual or suggestive gesture, may be adequate for camera and microphone-in radio, television, and film, where small effect and subtle nuance can be highlighted and projected-they are hardly sufficient for theater. They do not offer, Tyrone Guthrie pointed out, the opportunity for sweeping bold stroke, thunderous attack, effects of violent contrast, largescale deployment of temperament which display actor's art at its most exciting.1 Sir Tyrone is here affirming what George Bernard Shaw had stated many years ago, when he ridiculed actors who were reading Shakespeare as if they were portraying scene and character in cup-and-saucer play. Shaw's criticisms of prevalent acting style in his day are equally valid today in revealing inadequacy and absurdity of bad Actors' Studio acting, displaying improper training in projection and complete disregard for audience who, in words of John Gielgud, do not pay to see an actor and not hear him or see him properly all evening, however much he may have integrity in his performance and however much his shoulder blades may express his feelings.2 Indeed, strain is rarely on actor's vocal cords but rather on audience straining to hear him. For his plays, as well as Shakespeare's, Shaw demanded a sort of bustle and crepitation of life which requires extraordinary energy to bring out its fortissimos, its allegros, its precipitous moments, its contrasts, and all its big bits. Neither his plays, nor Bard's, can be adequately orchestrated on cottage piano; and he found cymbals disappointing on cups and saucers.3 The Shakespearian actor today, reading Shaw's trenchant comments (brilliantly illuminated throughout with apt musical allusion and metaphor), might succeed in restoring poetic splendor of Shakespearian line, and heighten dramatic interpretation. Only through mastery of Shakespearian score,