Speaking in Shakespeare's Voice: A Guide for American Actors by Linda Gates

Abstract

Reviewed by: Speaking in Shakespeare's Voice: A Guide for American Actors by Linda Gates Julie Foh Speaking in Shakespeare's Voice: A Guide for American Actors. By Linda Gates. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2019; pp. 248. Providing practical exercises, historical context, and the author's personal insight, Speaking in Shakespeare's Voice: A Guide for American Actors seeks to be an all-inclusive voice textbook for US actors who want to perform Shakespeare. Gates, who is head of voice in the Department of Theatre at Northwestern University and a very accomplished vocal coach, begins by making the argument that many American actors presently working in theatre "are still uncertain about how to perform Shakespeare's text" (3), and, with this book, she will "help all actors, but especially American actors, build the vocal skills and confidence necessary to speak Shakespeare's text and to communicate it to an audience" (3–4). To that end, the book provides instruction on the physical aspects of vocal production, the sounds of "Standard American English" (4), elements of Shakespeare's rhetoric and verse structure, and how to use these tools in performance. Additionally, Gates includes an appendix listing monologues and scenes that actors might use to practice these skills in a classroom setting or for an audition. After an introduction outlining the history of Shakespeare performance in the United States, the structure of the book follows the physical process of using language to communicate. The first three chapters include theory and exercises addressing the physical actions of voice work: breath, phonation, and speech sounds (vowels and consonants). The fourth and fifth chapters deal with those elements of voice work united into language: rhetoric and structure (verse and prose). The sixth chapter shifts back from the practical skills of performance of Shakespeare's text to historical context, asking the question, "Which text is Shakespeare's text?" (189). Interwoven throughout the entire book are excerpts from Shakespeare's writings, used as examples for the skills being practiced. Gates has chosen to draw all of these excerpts from Open Source Shakespeare, a free, online compilation of the Bard's works. In explaining her choice to write this book with American actors in mind, Gates describes a number of circumstances under which American actors might have soured on Shakespeare—a dry English class or a bad rehearsal process perhaps. She references the belief, held by some, that only classically trained British actors possess the ability to perform his text well. She seeks to prove to American actors that Shakespeare can belong to them as well, and one piece of evidence she offers to that end is that the pronunciation of Elizabethan British English (or "Original Pronunciation") was closer to the pronunciation of contemporary American English than it is to contemporary British English (by which she means Standard British, otherwise known as Received Pronunciation [RP]). There is evidence to support this assertion, and she cites David Crystal's research into Original Pronunciation several times in the book. So perhaps American actors speaking in their own voices can come close to speaking in Shakespeare's voice. In her chapter on "Breathing for Shakespeare's Text," she includes physical exercises for breath support and capacity so that actors may ultimately communicate longer, denser thoughts. She also describes the difference in function between rhetorical and grammatical uses of punctuation. A rhetorical use of punctuation will tell the speaker when to breathe so that the meaning of the thought is not interrupted by an inhalation. Also in this chapter, Gates advocates for a use of upward inflections right before those catch breaths at pieces of punctuation to keep the thought going until one reaches an end-stop. In her chapter on "Voice Work for Shakespeare," she includes physical exercises for resonance and for finding "optimal pitch" (38). These are common practices in the world of voice training; they come from a prescriptive approach to breath, voice, and text work. In telling the actor when precisely to breathe, when to upward inflect, and where in their pitch/resonance range to speak, Gates lays out a set of rules that could limit the range of the actor's choices. In her chapter on...