How to Read Shakespeare, Part 2: Reading Aloud
How to Feel the Words in our Mouths
In this edition, we look at the difference it makes when we read Shakespeare aloud, and how to do it well. To access the entire series, see this TOC:
Part 6 on Defying Intimidation
Part 1 on Enjoying Shakespeare
Let’s get to it!
"I eat the air, promise-crammed."
Hamlet has reason to suspect that his father was murdered by his uncle, Claudius, and so he writes a dramatic scene for the visiting troop of actors to perform. His hope is that the murderous fiction will so startle Claudius through its similarity to reality, that his reaction will confirm that he too is a murderer.
The new king and his company enter the scene, and Claudius addresses Hamlet:
KING How fares our cousin Hamlet?
HAMLET Excellent, i’ faith, of the chameleon’s dish. I
eat the air, promise-crammed. You cannot feed
capons so.
KING I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet. These
words are not mine.
When I read them silently in my mind, Hamlet’s words transport me to the glossary and footnotes. A “chameleon’s dish?” Lore held that chameleons ate only the air. A “capon?” A castrated rooster.
But read it aloud, and the very speaking of the lines add meaning. Try it out. One thing you’ll find that you cannot pronounce the words fluidly. That’s on purpose.
Excellent, i’ faith, of the chameleon’s dish. I…
How many syllables are in that line? Where do the stresses fall? It’s not easy on purpose.
The blank verse is interrupted. “cha-MEL-eon’s-DISH.” It’s consonant-driven, and it falls heavy on certain syllables. I can just see David Tennant’s buggy mouth forcing the sounds out through his teeth. The same goes for “PRO-mise-CRAMMED.” Hamlet is saying that, like the chameleon, he eats nothing. He remains in his partly put-on melancholy state. But each word swallows a knockout punch, especially with the double meaning of “air” (heir, which you only hear when you say it aloud).
Read Shakespeare aloud, especially when you’re reading by yourself. You’ll catch the homophones (same pronunciation, different spellings and meanings), but more importantly, you’ll feel the words. It’s almost impossible not to jut out one’s jaw when saying Hamlet’s lines, almost like you’re biting the air, or even cramming words into your mouth unnaturally. Indeed, that’s exactly what he’s doing. He’s biting his tongue, putting on a face, playing a part by speaking chameleon-like words.
Choke on Your Words
There’s enormous return on reading Shakespeare’s plays out loud to oneself. I’d argue that it’s a different and equally gratifying return even compared to hearing an actor deliver them aloud. That’s because you feel the words in your mouth. And there’s meaning and beauty in how they feel.
Are the words slippery? Or powerful? Or puckery? Or caught between your upper teeth and bottom lip like “fickle.” Do they widen your mouth like “promised crammed?” Or does the consonance make you raise your eyebrows like Hamlet’s “I’ll have a suit of sables?”
Later in the play, Hamlet sneaks up on Claudius in a vulnerable moment. Claudius is praying, or at least trying to pray. Hamlet considers killing him then and there, but thinks better of it. Maybe Claudius has just confessed his sins to God and is freshly forgiven — “When he is fit and seasoned for his passage.” No, he’ll wait until Claudius is in the midst of a crime. That way, he’ll fly straight to hell instead of heaven.
“Pray can I not, / Though inclination be as sharp as will,” Claudius says to himself. He wrestles with the thought that he wants to pray for forgiveness but cannot because he is still living with the presumed benefits of his crime. He is:
like a man to double business bound,
I stand in pause where I shall first begin
And both neglect.
You can feel this binding to a “double business” when you read his soliloquy aloud. As you speak them, the words are caught between two minds.
And what’s in prayer but this twofold force,
To be forestallèd ere we come to fall,
Or ⟨pardoned⟩ being down? Then I’ll look up.
My fault is past. But, O, what form of prayer
Can serve my turn? “Forgive me my foul murder”?
Just hearing those words to myself, “Forgive me my foul murder,” feels absurd. Five words, three that start with an “F” and two with an “M.” It’s simplified into what sounds (physically, sonically) like a mockery of a liturgical prayer of confession.
Yet Claudius also recognizes that prayer is a powerful kind of speech. If it’s real, then its whole purpose is to do the impossible. If a prayer of confession works, then its sole function is for somebody who does not deserve pardon to solicit and receive it nonetheless. For a moment, it’s a remarkably wonderful thought and a clear presentation of the nature of mercy. But notably, it’s the language spoken aloud that gets in the way.
What then? What rests?
Try what repentance can. What can it not?
Yet what can it, when one cannot repent?
O wretched state! O bosom black as death!
O limèd soul, that, struggling to be free,
Art more engaged!
Say those lines aloud. Jolting and halting. They seem to reach a window to the outside world only to turn on themselves and then plummet back down into your “bosom.” In your mouth, they feel like thoughts that are “struggling to be free.” So much is represented in the final metaphor of a soul like a bird caught in a glue (“limèd”) trap.
Sounds as Ethos
When we read aloud, we hear the quality of Shakespeare’s language fully. And often, quality of speech reflects quality of character.
Shakespeare inherited a much fuller conception of personal moral character than we have now. It stems from the Greek, ethos, from which we get the term “ethics.” Ethos is not just a person’s internal moral constitution. It accounts for a person’s accumulated actions over time. Somebody’s character (ethos) can only be determined by the habits of their behavior, when their life was looked at as a whole over time. “Character” was not understood to be a fictional persona in Shakespeare’s time. An actor was called a “player,” and what we today call a fictional character was called a “person.” And so the historical sense of moral character had an ethical dimension that included notions of habit, moral continence, and the performance of goodness.
It thus makes sense in Shakespeare’s paradigm that how a person speaks reflects and also determines who they are morally. And in Shakespeare’s play, that character exists not just on the page but also in the air and in your mouth as you say them.
All’s Well that Ends Well’s female protagonist, Helena, has a virtuous character. The man she is inexplicably in love with, Bertram, has a vicious character. Read aloud Bertram’s letter to his mother explaining why he abandoned Helena his new wife:
I have sent you a daughter-in-law. She hath recovered the King and undone me. I have
wedded her, not bedded her, and sworn to make the “not” eternal. You shall hear I am run away. Know it before the report come. If there be breadth enough in the world, I will hold a long distance. My duty to you.
Notice first that this is written in prose. Shakespeare’s plays are mostly in verse. Some are in prose, and the decision to use one or the other style is always purposeful. Here, Bertram’s insidious intentions are laid bare. They cannot be stylized even in a machiavellian rhetoric, as we get with Othello’s Iago or the infamous Richard III. At least these villains have craft.
But the lines from Bertram are read aloud by his mother in a letter. “Wedded her, not bedded her” — some of the baldest and ugliest language in the play. Not to mention the stupid pun on making the “not” (knot) eternal. That’s because Bertram himself is a fool.
Contrast Helena’s words to the same Countess, where she informs the Countess of her adoration of her son, the disdainful Bertram:
I know I love in vain, strive against hope,
Yet in this captious and intenible sieve
I still pour in the waters of my love
And lack not to lose still. Thus, Indian-like,
Religious in mine error, I adore
The sun that looks upon his worshipper
But knows of him no more.
These lines hold one of my favorite of Shakespeare’s metaphors of love. She pours her love like water into “this captious and intenible sieve,” and even though it falls through the cracks, she doesn’t lack. It expresses an infinite well of affection and unconditional love. She is an idolator, a foreigner, whom Shakespeare’s society caricatured as a sun-worshipper, giving all of their worship but not being seen in return.
Read aloud, you can feel the ease with which the words come forth. That’s due to the variation in hard and soft consonants and to the presence of slant rhyme and end rhyme. It simply feels good to say, “intenible sieve.” The words fall through effortless — not to put too fine a point on it, but as if in a sieve.
Do some lines feel easy to say? …That reflects something about the character. Are they interrupted and cumbersome? …The character is probably restrained by conscience or external circumstances. Is the language particularly beautiful? …Whether tragic or romantic, that’s a reflection of a beautiful soul.
How to Read Aloud
Some practical tips for reading Shakespeare aloud to oneself.
Follow the Syntax
Do not automatically stop at the end of a line. That goes for all poetry. Verse lines are used to give structure to rhyme and meter. Where they end does not mark a pause, unless there is a comma, semicolon, or period. When you read, follow the syntax instead. That is, pay attention to the punctuation and the flow of thoughts. Allow the sentences to inform when you pause.
Attend to the Stresses
Blank verse is the general rule, and typically, it follows a da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM iambic rhythm. But some of the most beautiful moments of Shakespeare’s verse come when he purposely deviates from this rhythm.
Sometimes it is subtle and beautiful. For example, strictly speaking, Hermia’s lines in A Midnight Summer’s Dream can be read in iambic pentameter.
If then true lovers have been ever crossed,
It stands as an edict in destiny.
Then let us teach our trial patience
Because it is a customary cross,
But if you read them while stressing every second syllable, it would sound awkward: it STANDS as AN e-DICT in DES-ti-NY. Much more elegant is: IT STANDS as an E-dict in DES-tin-y.
Allow yourself to feel the natural rhythm as you speak the words, and take advantage of those moments when you can tastefully deviate from the rule, like an accidental in a musical key.
Smile and Move
Shakespeare wrote popular drama. Enjoy it. And smile. The shape of your face and mouth make a difference to how the lines sound. So try to appreciate the emotions of a discourse. Is it happy, hopeful, and light? Or gentle and delicate? Or angry and passionate? Odd as it may sound, it can help to shape your face accordingly.
And for that matter, move your body. You don’t have to pace your room, book held at eye level, hand lifted with gusto. But move at least a little to the musical qualities of the lines and to the feeling of the moment.