It is because of this that I am not surprised that, when I tell people that my MFA project revolves around the creation of a new musical, I am greeted with a mixture of surprise and indignation. If we can learn anything from the last season of Slings and Arrows, it's that the classically trained sort tends not to think very highly of the musical theatre trained, as if singing and dancing required any less discipline than a thorough understanding of prosody.
When someone from a classically trained background derides the work of the musical theatre performer, they're betraying their own ignorance: musical theatre performers engage in a different style of acting that has its own technique, it's own set of skills, and it's own customs and traditions. But I would argue that they are betraying a deeper ignorance because Shakespeare's plays and good book musicals share something in common: heightened language.
When Audrey sings "Suddenly Seymour" in Little Shop of Horrors, she does so because she is so overwhelmed by emotion that her prose is not enough. Because Little Shop is a very good musical, you can make this argument for every song in the play; every song represents a moment of overwhelming passion where the characters are in heightened situations, and are so overwhelmed by their heightened passions that song is the only method they have available to communicate.
Those of you who study Shakespeare already know where I'm going with this, but for the rest of you, I'll explain that Shakespeare does almost the same exact thing. Hamlet speaks in verse because he is a heightened character in a heightened situation, because he can't contain his passions, and because he can't keep the truth from escaping, but he doesn't always speak in verse. In fact, he offers one of his key speeches in prose:
293 I will tell you why; so shall my anticipation preventIt's important information for other characters to hear, and equally important for the audience to understand that this language is in the language of the head. These are Hamlet's thoughts, not his feelings; he is saying something he devised in advance, or is being otherwise duplicitous (or at least crafty) in some way. Of course, he isn't trying to fool us, the audience, he's trying to fool other characters. He'll be back to speaking in verse (and telling us how he really feels) by the end of the scene:
294 your discovery, and your secrecy to the king and
295 queen moult no feather. I have of late—but wherefore
296 I know not—lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of
297 exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my
298 disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to
299 me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy,
300 the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament,
301 this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why,
302 it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent
303 congregation of vapors. What a piece of work is a man!
304 How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties,
305 in form and moving how express and admirable,
306 in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like
307 a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!
308 And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man
309 delights not me—no, nor woman neither, though by
310 your smiling you seem to say so.
549 Now I am alone.His passions are too great, and the situation too heightened, for common language.
550 O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
551 Is it not monstrous that this player here,
552 But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
553 Could force his soul so to his own conceit
554 That from her working all his visage wann'd,
555 Tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect,
556 A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
557 With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing!
558 For Hecuba!
559 What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
560 That he should weep for her? What would he do,
561 Had he the motive and the cue for passion
562 That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
563 And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
564 Make mad the guilty and appall the free,
565 Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
566 The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I,
567 A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,
568 Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
569 And can say nothing; no, not for a king,
570 Upon whose property and most dear life
571 A damn'd defeat was made. Am I a coward?
572 Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?
573 Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face?
574 Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i' the throat,
575 As deep as to the lungs? who does me this?
576 Ha! 'Swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be
577 But I am pigeon-liver'd and lack gall
578 To make oppression bitter, or ere this
579 I should have fatted all the region kites
580 With this slave's offal. Bloody, bawdy villain!
581 Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!
582 O, vengeance!
583 Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
584 That I, the son of a dear father murder'd,
585 Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
586 Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words,
587 And fall a-cursing, like a very drab,
588 A stallion! Fie upon't! foh!
589 About, my brain! Hum — I have heard
590 That guilty creatures sitting at a play
591 Have by the very cunning of the scene
592 Been struck so to the soul that presently
593 They have proclaim'd their malefactions;
594 For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
595 With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players
596 Play something like the murder of my father
597 Before mine uncle. I'll observe his looks;
598 I'll tent him to the quick. If he but blench,
599 I know my course. The spirit that I have seen
600 May be the devil, and the devil hath power
601 To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps
602 Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
603 As he is very potent with such spirits,
604 Abuses me to damn me. I'll have grounds
605 More relative than this: the play's the thing
606 Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.
So I'm creating a musical for my MFA project. I am interested in telling a story that, as far as I can tell, no one else has told, and because of my classical training, I am very much interested in telling this story using the heightened language that musical theatre can offer. Modern audiences may not have as acute an ear for prosody as their early modern counterparts had, but the music will help them with that.
Because it's me we're talking about, I do have some grander philological ambitions with this piece, which I am tentatively calling "The Ballad of Dido." I have constructed the initial draft on the backs of the epic poetry of Vergil, the dramatic poetry of Marlowe, the narrative poetry of Ovid, and the rhythms of roots music. If you come to see it in April, you'll hear songs you know, and some you don't, and have the chance to explore a story that will be both familiar and strange.
It seems like the most logical possible culmination of my studies of Shakespeare and his contemporaries.
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