How ill agrees it with your gravity
To counterfeit thus grossly with your slave,
Abetting him to thwart me in my mood!
(tries a gentler approach, holding his arm) Come, I will fasten on this sleeve of thine:
Thou art an elm, my husband, I a vine.
LUCIANA
Why pratest thou to thyself and answer’st not?
Dromio, thou drone, thou snail, thou slug, thou sot!
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE (to ANTIPHOLUS)
I am transformed, master; I am an ape.
LUCIANA
If thou art changed to aught, ’tis to an ass.
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE
’Tis true; she rides me and I long for grass.
’Tis so, I am an ass; else it could never be
But I should know her as well as she knows me.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE
Am I in earth, in heaven, or in hell?
Sleeping or waking? Mad or well-advised?
Known unto these, and to myself disguised!
I’ll say as they say and persever so,
And in this mist at all adventures go.
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE
Master, shall I be porter at the gate?
ADRIANA takes DROMIO by the ear and leads him stage right.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE (walks downstage center, addressing audience)
To me she speaks; she moves me for her theme:
What, was I married to her in my dream?
ADRIANA
Ay; and let none enter, lest I break your pate.
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE (walks downstage center, addressing audience)
This is the fairy land: O spite of spites!
We talk with goblins, owls, and sprites.
LUCIANA
Come, come, Antipholus, we dine too late.
Exit ADRIANA, LUCIANA, and ANTIPHOLUS stage rear.
DROMIO looks to stage right entrance, looks to audience, shrugs, and exits stage right.
I directed this performance of The Comedy of Errors in 2004. Like many of the plays I have directed for the Folger Library Student Shakespeare Festival, this production has simple staging. We create a sense of place and character using our bodies and our words, plus a few well-placed musical cues.
Playing courtly music at the top of the first scene sets the mood, and helps define where we are (i.e., at the Duke’s palace). Duke Solinus sits on the throne. Egeon is hooded and bound with his hands behind his back, kneeling. Thus with a few props, costumes, and staging ideas we create a strong visual image that contributes to painting the scene, the relationship, and the status of the characters. The actress playing Duke of Solinus wanted to play her character as a female, so we changed the character from “Duke” to “Duchess,” which added an interesting dynamic to the play and inspired me to experiment with gender switching in subsequent performances.
In this confusing comedy of mistaken identity featuring two sets of identical twins, if the audience is not clear on the story from the outset, they will remain confused, which will detract from their enjoyment of the play. If the audience understands the story, they can then relax and enjoy the language and the characterizations.
In a comedy, it helps to have moments where the story could take a turn in the other direction, toward violence or tragedy. In general, playing the characters’ emotions and conflicts earnestly rather than playing them for laughs will reap the biggest comedic rewards. This way the humor comes from the characters, the language, the action, and the circumstances as they unfold to the audience. We trust that by believing in these elements, the humor will emerge!
There are numerous acting techniques and staging devices that enhance the production, but we must not forget to return to the beauty and power of William Shakespeare’s words. Rather than rushing through the speeches, actors must color individual words, and really let them hang in the air, only to fall evocatively on listeners’ ears.
The ninth-grade young woman who played Antipholus of Syracuse in our production of The Comedy of Errors had a nice clear voice accompanied by crisp gestures. In Act I, Scene II of the play, Antipholus of Syracuse and Dromio of Ephesus share a scene, the first of many mistaken identity scenes, which sets the tone for subsequent hilarious errors. In this scene, the actress playing Antipholus of Syracuse takes great pleasure in beating Dromio of Ephesus with her character’s hat. Fortunately, the performer portraying Dromio also took joy in cowering on his back, covering his head with his hands to avoid the beating. For the scene to succeed, the person being beaten must be the one in control. This is broad physical comedy, and it benefits from expansive exaggerated movements from the actors. The farther they take the physical comedy, through commitment to big movements and silliness, the more fun they have with it, and the audience picks up on the merriment.
How do we take it farther? One simple exercise is to play a theatrical moment four different ways: small, normal, bigger, and over the top. “Small” entails purposefully saying one’s line in an almost inaudible whisper with little body movement. Most participants agree that there is not much sense in delivering a line that the audience can’t hear. “Normal” means “as if one were sitting in a room talking.” The actor makes no additional effort to project or enunciate, nor does she try to emote. When an actor recites a line of Shakespeare in “normal” mode, other players usually find this lacking too. Sometimes I point out to them that this is actually what I am seeing and hearing when they think they are performing at the next level: “bigger.”
“Bigger” implies a level of exaggeration or stylization that is a hallmark of stage acting: chewing the words, holding a gesture or pose slightly larger and longer than usual, and projecting as if one were trying to reach the back row. It also calls for a greater vocal range: The words take on a more sing-song quality, the pitch gets higher and lower, and the facial expressions are more pronounced. If you are lucky, you will achieve this third level in performance. The final level is the most useful in comedy, but also helpful with beginning actors in any genre: “over the top.” In “over the top,” I encourage my thespians to throw caution to the wind and see just how big, loud, exaggerated, and ridiculous they can be, without regard to whether it makes sense for the scene. I am essentially asking them to go beyond their perceived limits of decorum. I assure them that it is impossible for them to overact or overemphasize in this exercise. I am asking for systematic and purposeful breaking of boundaries. This is where it gets interesting, because frequently what actors give me at this stage is exactly what I want! Nobody ever goes too far, and what many beginning actors consider “over the top” is actually what I see as the proper level of exaggeration for a silly comedy. The most important lesson to be derived from this exercise is that there is a great range of possibilities and we often don’t know what the scope is until we experiment with stretching our limits. This exercise can be applied to just vocals, as well as speech