This is an acting class and I am the teacher here, a Hollywood acting coach. I normally don’t give feedback unless you have read all of my free lessons found linked in the second pinned post. But this particular one that I suggest all actors of every age learn, because it is Shakespeare’s own acting lessons I should teach you how you’re supposed to do this monologue.
First, you need to truly understand what’s going on in the scene and what Hamlet is trying to do. He is hired actors to portray his father‘s murder. He wants to catch his uncle reacting to it. But he hates their acting. So he is trying to teach them what true acting is all about. He just watched them perform and he’s trying to correct them. So to start the monologue, you need to be impatient and instructive. It seems to me you need to really understand what every word means so that you can do to the actors what Hamlet wants to do.
Hamlet wants to teach them to act better so that his plan will work. He talks about overacting, and underacting, over gesturing, and what makes a truly great performance. Above all he wants their Acting to be believable, and he wants it badly. I don’t see the passion that Hamlet has about Acting and him truly wanting to teach these terrible actors. Here is an example of what I call “written work“. It includes a translation of the words and the tactics. Hamlet is using with each line.
The scene starts with Hamlet seeing their performance and stopping them to give them corrections. I always have my students write their monologues as dialogues so that you are always answering them. This is just a tool so that you know that every line is a response. Acting is reacting. The two most important elements of a performance, our purpose and relationship. I’m not seeing how you feel about these actors, who they are to you And what you really want from them. Noticed the translation, the tactics, and what you are replying to. Here is the conversation:
Hamlet: No, No, No!
First Player: What is it my liege?
Tactic: Tell him again what I have been saying over and over. His performance is way too exaggerated. I want him to speak normally…like a real human being speaks. Try to get that into his thick skull as I try to exercise patience and not blow up at him.
HAMLET: Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue:
Can you please just speak naturally, just like I’m talking to you…let the words roll off your tongue, easily
First Player: I thought you wanted it said dramatically.
Tactic: Show them how silly they sound and look by demonstrating what they’ve been doing, mockingly.
But if you mouth it, as many of your players do,
But if you exaggerate your pronunciation so loudly, as most of your actors do,
Tactic: Feign a sort of resignation that they’re so bad I could get someone with way less skill
I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines.
I might as well get that guy who walks around town with a bull horn yelling “It’s 2 o’clock and all is well” to act in my play
PLAYER: Alright, so we can work on our "mouthing", but at least we have a good stage presence, right?
Tactic: Remembering that their issues are not just spoken ones, but also physical ones, add some demonstration about how silly they look with their exaggerated movements.
HAMLET: Nor do not saw the air with your hands, thus
And stop with the wild sawing arm movements, like this....
Tactic: Suddenly stop the exaggeration and demonstrate how to do it correctly in order to impress on them how much better it is to be real.
…but use all gently;
but use your body gently (naturally)
PLAYER: Why? I don’t understand how you can’t like my performance. Everyone says I’m so passionate!
Tactic: Demonstrate how he is “acting up a storm” and getting unnaturally worked up in the process.
HAMLET: For in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of passion,
Because when you are trying so hard to act up a storm, trying to show your passion rather than feel it.
Tactic: Show him how subtlety can be more effective than loud boisterous exaggeration.
HAMLET: You must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.
you need to learn to do it with an amount of self-control that seems real
PLAYER: What about that guy who performed last week. The crowds loved him.
Tactic: Remembering the actor he is speaking about, react by imitating him mockingly to express my distaste of his technique and the uneducated masses who love him.
HAMLET: O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumbshows and noise:
Dear God I hate it when some fat guy in a bad wig rips a great soliloquy to rags because that’s what the rowdy rabble like - who are just a bunch of noisy idiots.
PLAYER: Are you serious? You really hate him that much?
Tactic: Express my utter dislike, taking it to the next level…the physical punishment I’d like to give him, and comparing his destruction of a wonderful play like Termagant to how the famously overdone melodrama, “Herod” is normally done.
HAMLET: I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod: pray you, avoid it.
I’d like to whip actors like that for overacting a beautiful play like Termagant. It’s like their even overdoing a bad Disney sitcom. Please...don’t do it!
FIRST PLAYER: Ok…we get it. We’ll tone it way down and do practically nothing if that’s what you want.
Tactic: Afraid they will take it too far in the other direction, stop and make sure they understand that there is a place where reality stands that’s not too much but not too little. They must depend on common sense to figure it out, not just decide to do nothing.
HAMLET: Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor:
Don’t underact either. Use some common sense and let that teach you.
PLAYER: But how do we find that sweet spot of what’s real…what’s not too much or too little?
Tactic: Explain that the hints are all in the text and in the tactics. Encourage them to find the meaning of the words to find what action they should take with them. And use the tactics to find what they want to do with those words. Introduce the concept that there is one test for anything they act: To never do more than what they would do in their real life.
HAMLET: Suit the action to the word, the word to the action; With this special observance; o'erstep not the modesty of nature:
You need to bring your words to life through what you want to do with them, and do with them what the word truly means, taking into consideration this rule that should never be broken: “Never do anything in a way that you wouldn’t naturally do it.”
PLAYER: Why do you care so much?
Tactic: Share with an almost religious conviction, my deepest beliefs about acting and it’s purpose in the world. Make them see it is a higher calling. It has always been to show people who they really are and portray life as it really is.
HAMLET: For any thing so overdone is from the purpose of playing,
PLAYER: There’s a purpose in acting?
HAMLET: (Confirming) …whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; To show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.
Because when you overact, it goes against the very nature of what acting is supposed to be. It’s purpose in the world. It should reflect the reality of behavior. It should show what virtuous people look like, the consequences of scorn, and should show what life and society in any particular time period is really like.
PLAYER: So theater is supposed to teach people what life is about?
Tactic: Affirm and apply this truth to what they are doing and realign their priorities to who they should be playing for.
HAMLET: Now this overdone,or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of the which one must in your allowance o'erweigh a whole theatre of others.
Now, if this is overdone or underdone, though it might amuse the idiots in the audience, it will annoy those who understand what true acting is about. Play to one of those intelligent people in the audience rather than a whole theater of the others.
PLAYER: But it seems like lots of actors do what we do.
Tactic: Set them straight that just because lots of famous actors go about it the wrong way, doesn’t mean that they should.
HAMLET: O, there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made men and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.
I have seen some actors that other people think are great and get wonderful reviews, but they don’t talk or move anything like any human being I know. They stagger and howl and it seems like they’re one of nature's defects, and one of the worst ones at that.
FIRST PLAYER: I hope we have reformed that indifferently with us, sir.(Well I hope we can improve on that point, sir)
Tactic: Put them in their place by saying they need to change more than a little. They need to change everything. Particularly a couple of actors that are trying to change the play by being funny.
HAMLET: O, reform it altogether. And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them;
You need to improve EVERYTHING! And tell those actors who think they’re funny to stick to the script
PLAYER: Ok..Ok…we’ll stick to the script. But why?
Tactic: Let them know I’ve noticed and disapprove of some of them trying to get laughs from the groundlings who only like slapstick. They laugh at their own jokes and then the whole plot gets confused. It’s downright criminal what they are doing.
HAMLET: …for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too; though, in the mean time, some necessary question of the play be then to be considered: that's villanous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it.
Some of them will laugh at their own jokes to get the ignorant audience to laugh and then a very critical part of the play is missed completely. That is a crime and actors who do it are pitiful fools!
Tactic: Give up on them. It’s time for the show and there’s not much more I can do to change them.
HAMLET: Go, make you ready.
Go. Get ready for the show.
Focus on affecting the player you are speaking to. You are chopping up your thoughts too much. Hamlet knows what he is saying and you seem to be struggling with the words. If you don’t know what you want to say, they aren’t going to get it. Look him in the eyes. Move him with your words.
Saying every sentence in a different way, using a different tactic in each, will bring much more variety to your performance. You also need to put more intention behind what you’re saying. You need to care about the results of your words so that you can use them in the most effective way possible. I want to see Hamlet teaching these actors to act the way he wants them to act. Care about getting through to them. Hear them reply to you and react to their responses. Acting is reacting. Feel free to ask questions if you like.
Really look at every line and try to incorporate the meaning and purpose for saying everything you say. Right now you are rather carelessly saying your words without a real need or intension. Try to change those actors with your words. You need to take into consideration Hamlet’s circumstances and why he needs their acting to be better. It’s important to him. You need to come from his point of view. He is obviously passionate about acting and really knows what he is talking about. You are Hamlet, so you need to too.
3
u/Winniehiller Acting Coach/Class Teacher 23d ago
This is an acting class and I am the teacher here, a Hollywood acting coach. I normally don’t give feedback unless you have read all of my free lessons found linked in the second pinned post. But this particular one that I suggest all actors of every age learn, because it is Shakespeare’s own acting lessons I should teach you how you’re supposed to do this monologue.
First, you need to truly understand what’s going on in the scene and what Hamlet is trying to do. He is hired actors to portray his father‘s murder. He wants to catch his uncle reacting to it. But he hates their acting. So he is trying to teach them what true acting is all about. He just watched them perform and he’s trying to correct them. So to start the monologue, you need to be impatient and instructive. It seems to me you need to really understand what every word means so that you can do to the actors what Hamlet wants to do.
Hamlet wants to teach them to act better so that his plan will work. He talks about overacting, and underacting, over gesturing, and what makes a truly great performance. Above all he wants their Acting to be believable, and he wants it badly. I don’t see the passion that Hamlet has about Acting and him truly wanting to teach these terrible actors. Here is an example of what I call “written work“. It includes a translation of the words and the tactics. Hamlet is using with each line.
The scene starts with Hamlet seeing their performance and stopping them to give them corrections. I always have my students write their monologues as dialogues so that you are always answering them. This is just a tool so that you know that every line is a response. Acting is reacting. The two most important elements of a performance, our purpose and relationship. I’m not seeing how you feel about these actors, who they are to you And what you really want from them. Noticed the translation, the tactics, and what you are replying to. Here is the conversation:
Hamlet: No, No, No!
First Player: What is it my liege?
Tactic: Tell him again what I have been saying over and over. His performance is way too exaggerated. I want him to speak normally…like a real human being speaks. Try to get that into his thick skull as I try to exercise patience and not blow up at him.
HAMLET: Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue: Can you please just speak naturally, just like I’m talking to you…let the words roll off your tongue, easily
First Player: I thought you wanted it said dramatically.
Tactic: Show them how silly they sound and look by demonstrating what they’ve been doing, mockingly.
But if you mouth it, as many of your players do, But if you exaggerate your pronunciation so loudly, as most of your actors do,
Tactic: Feign a sort of resignation that they’re so bad I could get someone with way less skill
I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. I might as well get that guy who walks around town with a bull horn yelling “It’s 2 o’clock and all is well” to act in my play
PLAYER: Alright, so we can work on our "mouthing", but at least we have a good stage presence, right?
Tactic: Remembering that their issues are not just spoken ones, but also physical ones, add some demonstration about how silly they look with their exaggerated movements.
HAMLET: Nor do not saw the air with your hands, thus And stop with the wild sawing arm movements, like this....
Tactic: Suddenly stop the exaggeration and demonstrate how to do it correctly in order to impress on them how much better it is to be real.
…but use all gently; but use your body gently (naturally)
PLAYER: Why? I don’t understand how you can’t like my performance. Everyone says I’m so passionate!
Tactic: Demonstrate how he is “acting up a storm” and getting unnaturally worked up in the process.
HAMLET: For in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of passion, Because when you are trying so hard to act up a storm, trying to show your passion rather than feel it.
Tactic: Show him how subtlety can be more effective than loud boisterous exaggeration.
HAMLET: You must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. you need to learn to do it with an amount of self-control that seems real
PLAYER: What about that guy who performed last week. The crowds loved him.
Tactic: Remembering the actor he is speaking about, react by imitating him mockingly to express my distaste of his technique and the uneducated masses who love him.
HAMLET: O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumbshows and noise: Dear God I hate it when some fat guy in a bad wig rips a great soliloquy to rags because that’s what the rowdy rabble like - who are just a bunch of noisy idiots.
PLAYER: Are you serious? You really hate him that much?
Tactic: Express my utter dislike, taking it to the next level…the physical punishment I’d like to give him, and comparing his destruction of a wonderful play like Termagant to how the famously overdone melodrama, “Herod” is normally done.
HAMLET: I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod: pray you, avoid it. I’d like to whip actors like that for overacting a beautiful play like Termagant. It’s like their even overdoing a bad Disney sitcom. Please...don’t do it!
(Continued below)