Decided to pull this out of the comments on this week's books post because I have a lot of opinions (shouts out to @garak for inspiring this). For the best experience I recommend being able to listen to/watch the linked YouTubes, but you can of course just read what I'm saying!
let's start with Beowulf
In my post, I said that a crucial feature of Maria Dahvana Headley's translation of Beowulf was that it reads like a transcribed oral work, and (at least for me) essentially demands to be read out loud. I think it's important to note here that Beowulf most likely started as oral tradition, as the kind of story you'd hear in a big hall, probably while people were drinking. In a world where most people can't read, you need story to pass along the important things—and the way you tell the story influences how you experience it.
I will admit that I haven't spent a tremendous amount of time on YouTube trying to find a good performance of Beowulf in Old English, but this one feels right. His performance gives life to the story. He could make a hall full of men shut up. That is a good scop.
You can see why I think it's so crucial that we have translations that feel like that can be performed. Obviously there are multiple schools of translation (and that's important)—it's good to have some translations that try to maintain fidelity with the actual Old English words—but somewhat freer translations that preserve the story and spirit of an oral tale are equally valuable.
Being a newer work (2020), I haven't been able to find a lot of people reading from Headley's translation on YouTube. However, I was able to find a video of her reading a bit of her own translation. You can tell that she wrote it while keeping in mind that this was and is a work for performance.
You know how I said that the way you tell a story influences how you experience it? Well, here's some of her translation:
The road was stone-cobbled, and kept them
coming correct, a straight line of marchers,
war-garb gleaming, chains linked by hardened hands,
their armor ringing, loud as any hall-bell. By the time
they arrived in Heorot, dressed for demons,
they were sagging, sea-stung. They stacked shields,
wood-weathered, against the walls, then sat down
on benches, their metal making music. Their spears,
they stood like sleeping soldiers, tall but tilting,
gray ash, a death-grove.
Here's the official audiobook performance of this. I am going to go to sleep. There is no life in this. (I'm sure this performer is good for some works... I wouldn't have given him this book though.) In contrast, here's (close to) the same portion in the Old English performance.
performing emotion
It's Shakespeare time. mostly because it's 1) famous so there's a lot of examples out there and 2) I know it well enough to have developed opinions.
Shakespeare, Sonnet 811
Or I shall live your epitaph to make,
Or you survive when I in earth am rotten,
From hence your memory death cannot take,
Although in me each part will be forgotten.
Your name from hence immortal life shall have,
Though I (once gone) to all the world must die.
The earth can yield me but a common grave
When you entombed in men’s eyes shall lie:
Your monument shall be my gentle verse,
Which eyes not yet created shall o’er-read,
And tongues-to-be your being shall rehearse,
When all the breathers of this world are dead.
You still shall live (such virtue hath my pen)
Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.
One way you can read this sonnet is as a text, a printed work with line breaks that must be respected and performed.
- Jamie Muffett. This performance Reads The Text. You can hear the line breaks. There really isn't interpretation or life given, they're just rendering words in audio2.
- The Marlowe Society. This performance still feels like it breaks up the reading by line, but it at least feels like something you're reading to someone. There's some sense of emotion here.
You can also read this sonnet as a conversation printed on a page, an emotional appeal. Yes, it's text. Yes, it obeys the prescribed sonnet form. Its essence, according to these readings, is a dialogue.
- Al Pacino. Introspective, considering how he will immortalize the subject of the sonnet. Delivered as an emotional aside.
- Amelia Donkor. Performed like part of a conversation with the subject of the sonnet. It almost feels like they will reply at the end.
- Ian McKellen. Performed as though addressing the subject of the sonnet, but without expectation of reply.
I'm not saying performing Shakespeare's sonnets as Text is incorrect, but you can see how the decisions you make in the reading give different meaning and emphasis to the same words.
performance affects comprehension
We're going to talk about Macbeth because it's been on my mind ever since I saw The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021, dir. Joel Coen). Is this in part an excuse to talk more about this production? Eeeeeeh maybe. (my wife will make fun of me for bringing it up yet again but I'm sorry, it's true)
One of the hills that I absolutely will die on is that Shakespeare is mass entertainment, and anyone who pretends otherwise is a smug, annoying, elitist jerk. You can like it or not like it (I don't care), but anyone who makes out that it's some kind of Fancy Art for Fancy People is not someone I want to hang out with.
Here's the thing: I get that language has changed since Shakespeare. It has! There's weird words and meanings in there that we just don't use anymore, and it can be confusing. If you're just reading the text, especially an edition without good notes3, it can be a slog. When it's performed, and performed well? A lot of those problems melt away. If the actors/performers understand what the line is conveying, does it really matter if you know who Prester John is, or that a galliard is a kind of dance? Not really. You get the sense of the line regardless.
I think part of the problem with Shakespeare As A Cultural Object is that, in the process of its canonization, we sometimes lost the way on letting it be a living, breathing document. (We are leaving aside how it tends to be taught/read as Precious Literature of the Western Canon in a way that sucks the life out of it. That's a different post5. This is about performances.) Now, I am very much not an expert on the history of trends in Shakespeare performance—that's a post for someone else to write, or perhaps me after a lot more study—but I think some of the reason we think of Shakespeare as stuffy is that we think of it as being Declaimed. You know the way, where instead of the actors portraying humans that are having human conversations, they are Avatars of Great Literature.
We're going to be looking at Act V, Scene 8. You know the one. It's famous. If you want to follow along, the text is below or also here, slightly better formatted because I'm too lazy to make it pretty here.
Macbeth Act V, Scene 8
MACDUFFTurn, hell-hound, turn!
MACBETH
Of all men else I have avoided thee:
But get thee back; my soul is too much charged
With blood of thine already.
MACDUFF
I have no words:
My voice is in my sword: thou bloodier villain
Than terms can give thee out!
MACBETH
Thou losest labour:
As easy mayst thou the intrenchant air
With thy keen sword impress as make me bleed:
Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests;
I bear a charmed life, which must not yield,
To one of woman born.
MACDUFF
Despair thy charm;
And let the angel whom thou still hast served
Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother's womb
Untimely ripp'd.
MACBETH
Accursed be that tongue that tells me so,
For it hath cow'd my better part of man!
And be these juggling fiends no more believed,
That palter with us in a double sense;
That keep the word of promise to our ear,
And break it to our hope. I'll not fight with thee.
MACDUFF
Then yield thee, coward,
And live to be the show and gaze o' the time:
We'll have thee, as our rarer monsters are,
Painted on a pole, and underwrit,
'Here may you see the tyrant.'
MACBETH
I will not yield,
To kiss the ground before young Malcolm's feet,
And to be baited with the rabble's curse.
Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane,
And thou opposed, being of no woman born,
Yet I will try the last. Before my body
I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff,
And damn'd be him that first cries, 'Hold, enough!'
Time investment note: This scene lasts 2-3 minutes in all the linked videos except the Fassbender, which is just over 6 minutes.
Times are changing, so it's a little hard to find a Declamatory production on YouTube—it's an older style. I can obviously find high schoolers delivering lines poorly/in the style that received wisdom says is correct for Shakespeare, but I'm not here to dunk on un- or lightly-trained actors.
- Macbeth (1966, Paul Scofield, dir. John Tydeman): These are characters delivering lines. The lines address each other, but they still feel separate, almost as though they accidentally intersect. While you can, of course, hear the words, the relative lack of emotional throughline makes the archaic wording stand out more. The characters exist in service to the text, rather than the text existing to express character.
- Macbeth (2013, Kenneth Branagh, dir. Rob Ashford and Kenneth Branagh): I said I wasn't going to dunk on high schoolers, but KB is fair game. Frankly shocked there's any scenery left when they get done chewing it. An absolute exemplar of Declaiming Lines in the other person's general direction, to the point where it can be hard to understand the lines if you don't know the scene. A gem, a treasure. Atrocious.
A bridge production, neither Declamatory nor (for lack of a better term) "modern":
- Macbeth (1979, Ian McKellen, dir. Trevor Nunn): They're delivering their lines well, but it still comes across as, to an extent, a Shakespeare Performance. They are portraying characters rather than letting the characters exist through them. No shade, it's well performed, but the style they were aiming for is just different.
So, some more natural ones. I swear I'm not pulling these from movies on purpose, they're just what's easy to find on YouTube. To me, the emotion in these performances carries the sometimes-archaic phrasing—you don't stop to think about the specific words you're hearing, because you're carried along with the characters. The text exists to tell the story.
- The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021, Denzel Washington, dir. Joel Coen): The way they speak is just so natural. This is a quiet moment before a fight—there's tension there, but it hasn't broken out yet. "Lay on, Macduff" is the signal to fight.
- Macbeth (2020, Ian Merrill Peakes, dir. Teller and Aaron Posner [yes, seriously]): A stage play! Taking into account the fact that they're acting on a stage and need to project their voices, this is a pretty conversational staging. There's contour to the lines, a back and forth. They're not just speaking past each other, delivering lines to the audience.
- Macbeth (2015, Michael Fassbender, dir. Justin Kurzel): They're already fighting. It's big, it's shouted, there is a lot of time between lines (not my fav, I think it loses some of the poetry and rhythm, but it's not an indefensible choice for a big movie). "Lay on, Macduff" is practically his surrender.
- Macbeth (2010, Patrick Stewart, dir. Rupert Goold): Watch this before you reveal the spoiler text please. This is one where the words practically are the fight. It really, really changes the effect of the line. It is almost, but not... quite, a capitulation.
Spoiler
The choice to punctuate "Hold, enough!" with a full 20 seconds of staging is incredible.
I realize that it is, in some way, obvious to state that performance is so influential in the experience of a text (especially a play like Macbeth). And yet, it's very easy to forget. There is no One True Beowulf, there is no One True Macbeth. Every time we read these works we bring some new nuance, a new perspective on the lines.
And the coolest part? You can join. You can add to the millennia of people performing literature, even if it's just under your breath in your own home. Savor the words. Make them yours.
Notes:
1 The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Sonnets and Poems (2002)
2 For a video posted by an organization that says they want to promote literacy in children, I don't feel like this reading is a good way to get them invested in Shakespeare. At all
3 In general, I would recommend the Arden Shakespeare, Oxford Shakespeare, and New Cambridge Shakespeare editions. Folger Shakespeare Library editions tend to be cheaper than the above ones new, but you can often pick up Shakespeares (asstd) at used bookstores pretty cheaply. Arden/Oxford/Cambridge tend to have more notes on cultural references in the text in addition to vocab notes, Folger sticks to explaining vocabulary. That said, Folger is solid and if that's what you can find it will serve you well. If you love yourself (or me) you will avoid the "modern English" translations, especially No Fear Shakespeare. I am terrified at an existential level of No Fear Shakespeare.4
4 This is an entire post of its own probably and should not be confined to a footnote.5
5 Yeah, I'll probably write something about that someday.
