Judi Dench was on Graham Norton last night to push her new book about her life and work with Shakespeare. After making the point we quote Shakespeare daily without knowing it, this happened: pic.twitter.com/CIhP39b4Bs
— Justin Sherin (@wychstreet) October 27, 2023
October 28, 2023
If suddenly called on to recite Shakespeare from memory, how would you do?
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Annnnd my 1967 Catholic High School Shakespeare classes kick in with Portia declaiming "The quality of mercy is not strained. It falls from heaven as gentle rain..." and all the whole Sister St Matthews is just behind with her wooden pointer firmly in hand. I would have rather fought the Viet Cong that Sister St Matthews.
Pretty sure that 40+ yrs later I can still get the "Dagger Speech" (as we called it) from MacBeth 95% correct, verbatim.
Yeah, I'd know the words to a bunch of passages, but I can't say them like that.
that's why a hate Shakespeare.. it's nothing but cliches. Kinda like the bible is
O for a muse of fire ...
I can't do shit with Shakespeare, but I'd blow her away in a game of "Name That Tune."
I can barely recall last Tuesday.
Dame Judith Dench is a treasure. Such a great actress.
Also this: Shakespeare should only be recited by people with English accents. Americans should avoid speaking it.
How do those Brits do it?
Wow indeed.
I mean, to be fair Judi Dench has been doing Shakespeare all her life.
I bet our hostess could quote verbatim huge slabs of the Constitution or other landmark legal texts on demand as well.
A pro.
I used to have all of Romeo and Juliet Act II Scene 2 (you know, the balcony scene... I was a romantic little critter) on tap.
But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?
It is the East, and Juliet is the sun.
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon
Who is already sick and pale with grief
That thou, her maid, art far more fair than she.
Et cetera.
I especially liked
Ay me!
She speaks!
Shakespeare captions the obvious.
And the line that surprised me into laughter in that freshman English class, from another scene, was where the Nurse is talking about how when Juliet was a tiny girl, she fell on her face, and her... father, I think? picks her up, brushes her off, and says that when she's older she'll fall on her back, "wilt thou not, Jule? And the little wench left crying and said 'Aye!'" I was the only person who laughed. Apparently I was the only freshman with a dirty mind.
I love Dame Judi Dench.
As Sir Ian McKellen said of a little secret of acting 'they tell you what to say'. Of course, some do it better than others...
I swear, Dame Judy Dench has always been 'old', but never ages. But then, I started watching 'As Time Goes By' in the 80's.
@Dave B. The Brits train with The Bard relentlessly
Also this: Shakespeare should only be recited by people with English accents. Americans should avoid speaking it.
========
of course you're wrong according to Britannica
he very likely sounded somewhat more like a speaker of mid-Atlantic American English, particularly in areas where Irish settlement was prominent, than he did a speaker of the English now associated with his native Thames River valley of southern England.
So how can we divine how Shakespeare’s players might have sounded on the stage of the Globe Theatre? One clue is the words that he rhymed, as in these lines from one of his sonnets:
If this be error and upon me proved
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Clearly “proved” and “loved” are meant to be rhymed. How to do so, however, remains a source of debate.
We know as well that Shakespeare lived at the time when what linguists call the Great Vowel Shift, an aspect of the transition from Middle English to Modern English, was still under way, so that the length of the vowels in his words was distinctly different from our own. It is also believed that the English of the time was rhotic—that is, that the “r” sound was prominent.
Research conducted by Paul Meier, a dialect and theater specialist at the University of Kansas, moves the sound a shade closer to American shores, but the lilt we associate with Ireland is very much present in his reconstruction as well.
Thus we can be reasonably sure—reasonably, but not entirely, sure—that Hamlet sounded something like this:
To bay, oar naught to bay.
Sorry, Laurence Olivier.
Love her work, but can't erase the disgust for her adoration (later discarded) for Harvey Weinstein:
Judi Dench, Who Had Harvey Weinstein 'Tattoo' on Her Butt, Says Sexual Harassment Reports Are 'Horrifying'
It was a temporary tattoo, but she and Oprah giggled about it at the time. After Weinstein's activities were made public, she was horrified. I wonder what Shakespeare quote came to mind.
Notice how Shakespeare’s words sweep away the show-biz frivolity of Norton and Schwarzenegger. It takes a moment, but all that cant doesn’t stand a chance against just one of Shakespeare’s sonnets. A great reservoir of truth lies under quotidian reality’s tawdry surface, and Shakespeare drew effortlessly on that well. “But. . .but. . .he’s a dead white European male, propped up by the patriarchy! There’s nothing real there!” Shouts contemporary academia. Then why does the glib prattle give way to hushed awe, as if by reflex?
gilbar said...
"that's why a hate Shakespeare.. it's nothing but cliches. Kinda like the bible is"
Got a little coffee in my nose.
No sonnets, but I have a handful of soliloquys in my memory. The opening from Richard III, To be or not to be, Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow -- the stuff assigned in school. Almost certain none of them are word perfect, though. After I had a stroke, which affected my ability to enunciate, I spent a lot of time lying in bed reciting poetry and bits of Shakespeare -- partly to practice enunciation and partly to reassure myself my condition wasn't getting any worse. So having practiced from memory quite a lot without having first checked the actual words, they're all probably a little off now.
Ditto Jamie.
I recite that when a female enters my orb. It gets their attention and occasionally I get a blush.
An artist who also is a professional is a wonderful thing to watch. Our friend Valerie made the pilgrimage to Stratford once and happened to be sitting behind Dame Judi (and a grandchild) in the audience. She was as chuffed as you would expect a dramaturge to be in that situation.
This makes me think of our great friend Valerie, who has been gone for over ten years now. We really miss her. She was terrific fun, and sui generis.
What an impressive actress.
At age 70, I cannot recite a few sentences without notes, much less a Shakespearean sonnet, delivered with such grace and poise.
It's not just that she remembered the words. It's that she only needed about five seconds to gather her wits before delivering that performance. What a pro.
Well, that made life worth living.
The patriarchal words of a Dead White European Male from a racist colonialist society that have no use in the modern world...and were probably written by a woman and stolen by Shakespeare anyway...at least all the good parts.
---Democraticals/lefties today
"that's why a hate Shakespeare.. it's nothing but cliches. Kinda like the bible is"
I assume you mean, in particular, the King James Bible. Yeah, we've all heard it before.
Most of what the Nurse says in Romeo and Juliet is actually quite naughty Elizabethan slang.
Nothing wrong with her memory.
@stldcr
I love "As Time Goes By".
Re: Naraynan:
he very likely sounded somewhat more like a speaker of mid-Atlantic American English, particularly in areas where Irish settlement was prominent, than he did a speaker of the English now associated with his native Thames River valley of southern England.
I think contemporary pronunciation in Shakespeare's day still had trilled/flapped R's, though, which isn't a feature of any American accents (that I can recall).
All that said, with no concern whatsoever for authenticity, a lot of Shakespeare works surprisingly well with a broad non-rhotic southern American accent.
Wish I could do that. And yes, with effort and practice I probably could. As it is, the best I can do is recite a few random lines here and there. On the other hand, I bought a copy of Hamlet on my last trip to the used book store. At 68, I figure it's about time I read it.
One of my favorites. Thanks for posting this!
I'm not a Shakespeare play fan, but the sonnets blow me away.
It was lovely and uplifting and a wonderful diversion from what's going on outside. But to say that this wasn't set up ahead of time--come on.
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time. While all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle. Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
I can do the Quality of Mercy speech too, and that ends my repertoire.
Sonnet 29 is one of 6 Shakespeare sonnets I had memorized at one time. Listening to Dench recite it, I knew which line came next, but I would have been unable to recite it in its entirety without some prompting lines- I simply haven't recited it to myself in at least a quarter century. I think the only Shakespeare I can still recite with 90%+ accuracy is the "To be or not to be" soliloquy from Hamlet.
Do a YouTube search for Ben Crystal (and his father David). They have several videos on how Shakespeare sounded back in the day.
Do a YouTube search for Ben Crystal (and his father David). They have several videos on how Shakespeare sounded back in the day.
In high school I had to memorize and deliver Hamlet’s soliloquy to the Players — probably an assignment from Senior English. I just proved to myself that I still remember the whole thing, much to my satisfaction. Keep in mind that for me high school is almost six full decades in the rear view mirror.
Shakespeare re invented the English language. and much more. Harold Bloom sees it as the invention of the human.
The other great influence on American english is Yiddish.
Neither of the above are taught in schools. Not in high school or at university. They are actively discouraged by the current crop of 'educators'.
For decades, Shakespeare has been used as a code word for white supremacy, and colonization.
She is one of the last to understand the power of language.
Again, Orwell spoke of eliminating a peoples history, to destroy them.
"A rose is a rose, now take it out of my nose."
I can do the entire "The Raven" and used to (broken and hesitant now) "The Bells".
Does that count?
Addendum: Crap, I just tried. I can do less of "The Bells" than I thought.
What do I remember of Shakespeare? Certainly nothing like that masterful performance. But I do remember this: “The first thing we do is kill all the lawyers.”
@Heartless Aztec, I won't look it up. But I recall it as "droppeth" not "falls"
I enjoyed the reaction of the people in the Graham Norton audience. Could've heard a pin drop. And let me just add the Graham Norton is the absolute best celebrity interviewer.
@Narayanan
Add to that spelling and pronunciation hadn't settled down yet and were all over the place, even within the same sentences.
I can't recite Shakespeare from memory, not much, but I can do Frost. Stopping by the woods one snowy evening. The Road Not Taken.
I’m impressed by the schism British and American television have made. Graham Norton is straight out of the 70s like Merv or something instead of the late night propagandists US has cultivated. Game shows like Countdown with no real prizes instead of Jeopardy! win till you lose. We’re not so far apart with Made in Chelsea/Real Housewives I suppose
Re: cassandra lite:
It was lovely and uplifting and a wonderful diversion from what's going on outside. But to say that this wasn't set up ahead of time--come on.
Eh, it could have been. But Judi Dench is (a) a professional actress who has done her fair share of Shakespeare, and (b) nearly 90 years old, from a generation where it was perfectly normal to expect schoolchildren to learn famous poems by heart. It seems pretty normal that she'd be prepped to rattle this off, off the top of her head, same as if you asked a pianist for a tune and he gave you a Chopin nocturne or a Bach fugue. And this isn't an obscure sonnet either.
The only sonnet I can remember exactly is "When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see," and that only because Benjamin Britten set it in his "Nocturne."
"To bay, oar naught to bay."
Narayan--are you suggesting that Shakespeare sounded like...Forrest Gump?
Hamlet done by Hanks as Forrest Gump might be interesting.
"Alas, pore Bubba! I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy; he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar."
Wow? Is that how far the BBC has fallen? To wow? And to what does this puerile ejaculation betoken, to Dame Judy's memory or to Shakespeare's art? An actor's memory for lines of verse or drama ought to be prodigious; isn't that the foundation of the actor's art? There was a time when movie stars were actors, most aren't nowadays, which is sad and inevitable given the bottomless stupidity we're offered as entertainment. Wow. Don't be amazed, be grateful for a rare and luscious morsel of beauty.
I have a couple of sonnets in my back pocket, 18 and 73. Just in case.
Seriously, I realized a long time ago that I could not even sing any songs outside of Christmas carols, so I started memorizing things. I highly recommend it. Just in case.
I often forget that it's Judi Dench. However, when elderly folk persist in using their childhood diminutives, those names deserve forgetting.
I would say, 'Out, damned spot' if your name was Spot.
What a dame!
I think I would do well, with one of the following (off the top of my head, so pardon typos, incorect punctuation, lack of line breaking, and misremembered lines):
St. Crispian's Day Seach from Henvry V
Westmorland: Oh that we now had here but one ten-thousand of those men in England that do no work today.
King Henry (the former Prince Hal): What's he that wishes so, my cousin Westmorland? No my fair coz, if we are marked to die, we are enogh to do our country loss, and if to live, the fewer men, the the greater share of honor. God's will I pray thee, wish not one man more. By Jove, I am not covetous for gold, nor care I who doth feed upon my cost. It yearns me not if men my garments wear. Such outward things dwell not in my desires. But if it be a sin to covet honor, I am the most offending soul alive. ....
Opening Monologue, Richard III:
King Richard: Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this sun of York, and all the clouds that lowered upon our house in the deep bosom of the ocean buried. Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths, our bruised arms hung up for monuments, our stern alarms changed to merry meetings, our dreadful marches to delightful measures. Grim visaged war hath smoothed his wrinkled front, and now, instead of mounting barbed steeds to fright the souls of fearful adversarys, he capers nimbly in a lady's change to the lacivious pleasing of a lute. ....
Prologue, Romeo and Juliet:
Two households, both alike in dignity, in fair Verona where we lay our scene, from ancient grudge break to new mutiny, where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. From forth the fatal loins of these two foes a pair of star-crossed lovers take their life....
Sonnet CXVI (recently delivered by me at my eldest daughter's wedding):
Let me not to the marriage of two minds admit impediments. Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove. Oh no, it is an ever fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken [at which point said eldest duaghter breaks out laughing and I am nonplussed and temporarily lose my place]. It is the star to every wandering bark whose worth's unknown though his height be taken. ....
Then there is quasi Shakespeare, such as the peroration of W.S. Churchill's first speach as Prime Minister May 1940:
To form an administration of this scale and complexity is a serious undertaking in itself, but it must be remembered that we are in the preliminary stages of one of the greatest battles in history, that we are in action at many points in Norway and in Holland, that the air battle is continuous, that we must be prepared in the Mediterranean, and that there are may preparations to be made here at home. In this crisis I hope I may be pardoned if I do not address the House at any length tonight. I hope than any of my friends and colleagues, or former colleagues, who have been affected by the political reconstruction will make all allowance for any lack of ceremony with which it has been necessary to act. I would say to the House, as I have said to those who have joined the government, I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat. ....
And finally, from the best tongue in cheek Shakespearean send-up, the Prologue from So That's the Way You Like It by Beyond the Fringe:
Sustain we now description of a time when petty lust and overweaning tyranny offend the ruck of state. Thus fly we now, as oft with Phoebus did fair Asterope, unto proud Flander's court, where is the warlike Warick, like to the mole that sat on Hector's brow, fair set for England and for war!
Never lose Shakespeare and his words that flow trippingly off the tongue.
Yah- for those if you calling fake the Brits know their Shakespeare- pretty much all of them and Dench as a pro very much knows her Shakespeare. I remember when Hugh Laurie hosted SNL and in the open monologue made a Shakespeare joke then could have heard a pin drop. Laurie commented the writers told him it wouldn’t fly…
A favorite sonnet.
John Chisholm of my Jupiter High School (and later MIT) could recite The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
Me, I can recite the theme from Mr. Ed as well as the lyrics to The Wanderer and Runaround Sue.
I liked the sonnets, hated the plays (I figured out the fake language in A Clockwork Orange but William S. stymied me.). Got an "F" in Shakespeare mainly because I skipped a lot of classes and you cannot bullshit your way through an exam about a play you haven't read or studied. As a result, this "Most Likely To Succeed" guy was a half-credit short for graduation and failed to walk across the stage with my classmates.
MarcusB. THEOLDMAN
"Hamlet done by Hanks as Forrest Gump might be interesting."
If it's Forrest remembering Bubba, then let it be about Bubba and not Yorrick.
Alas, poor Bubba. I knew him, Lieutenant Dan, a fellow of infinite uses for shrimp, of most extreme underbite; he hath policed the barracks with me a thousand times...
Likely set up, but well played.
Ms. Dench has been at this fora LONG time. We all know best what we've spent a lifetime performing.
She’s a wonderful actress and quite beautifully aged, as well. Bless her for sharing her love of Shakespeare.
Alas, seeing Arnold there reminds me that me and my ilk can only recite lines from the Terminator and such…. such a low brow bunch are we.
Friends Romans countrymen. Lend me your ears, I come to bury Caesar not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them the good is of'd interred with their bones. So let it be with Caesar. The Brute hath told you Caesar was ambitious and if it were true, grievously hath Caesar answered it.
That's all I can remember from 11th grade English class. I'm sure there's some errors in there somewhere. Something about the lupricals and thrice refusal yada yada yada.
A) HOW GREAT IS JUDI DENCH!
B) Way upthread crispr did the "Tomorrow and tomorrow" speech from The Scottish Play, which is the only passage from Shakespeare that I was ever able to memorize. He did it right, so far as I can recall. CONGRATS! Incidentlty, my only appearance in that play was as one of the Witches.
C) I acted in plays, a few by the Bard, until I got to the middle of college and decided that it would be nice to earn a living. I concluded, correctly, I think, that theatre wasn't it for me.
C) Judi Dench is a wonderful actress
I swear, Dame Judy Dench has always been 'old', but never ages.
You can still see a young Judi Dench in the film version of "Midsummer Night's Dream." More of her than you might have guessed. Also Helen Mirren.
And yes, committing lines to memory is what actors do, but that wouldn't necessarily extend to the sonnets. Beautifully read, even if it was set up in advance.
And this is what the whole of English Literature departments at Ivy League insane asylums want to replace with representation from every weird sex fetish and race on earth in their rush to destroy Old White Men.
I have seen so many Shakespeare plays, been in so many Shakespeare plays and worked on so many Shakespeare plays that I can quote Shakespeare with the best of them. (I can even quote a lot of the sonnets.)
We had an acting exercise once where we had to pick a sonnet and perform it in a different way than most people thought it should be done. I picked Sonnet 57. "Being your slave, what should I do but tend upon the hours and times of your desire..." Instead of doing it as a person in love, I did it sarcastically, as a person who was pissed off because they finally realized that their "love" was a heartless manipulator.
gilbar said...
"that's why a hate Shakespeare.. it's nothing but cliches. Kinda like the bible is"
Maybe you should try actually going to a good Shakespeare play instead of just skimming over Shakespeare and dismissing him.
"The play's the thing, wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King."
Back in the days of the Bicentennial there was a documentary with dramatizations about the AmRev/War of Independence, featuring some big name actors.
I recall in particular Peter Ustinov explaining how he approached the role of Lord North(?), and his commentary TTE that upper-class British probably sounded more like modern Midatlantic
than stereotypical posh Brits today--the plummy tones weren't there.
That supports what someone suggested above, and seemed plausible at the time.
She is perfection
Vicki from Pasadena
I'm going to echo Larry J:
"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers".
Old Bill certainly was one heck of a poet, but this line shows that he had a practical side, too.
Also, continuing in the political vein:
"Let me have men about me that are fat,
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep a-nights.
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look,
He thinks too much;
such men are dangerous"
loudogblog @ 7:11pm,
You should simply throw away your facetiousness detector and get a brand new one. Your current one is broken beyond repair.
@Narayanan
Thought of another difference - the meanings of phrases.
"I don't care to."
Now, typically it means I don't want to.
Then, the "care" emphasized the "to", meaning it doesn't bother me to do that. That's how it's still used down here.
Like you said, they migrated to the east coast, Appalachia mostly and from there to the Ozarks, concentrated in the panhandle.
***
loudogblog:
gilbar said...
"that's why a hate Shakespeare.. it's nothing but cliches. Kinda like the bible is"
Maybe you should try actually going to a good Shakespeare play instead of just skimming over Shakespeare and dismissing him.
He didn't indicate it but that is a common joke in English literature.
Shamefully, Shakespeare is not taught by many feminist teachers.
Very impressive. I can do bits and pieces of Shakespeare, but nothing like that, and nothing of that quality. I did impress my granddaughters the other day though, talking to my daughter and granddaughters on the phone and it came up that the oldest was studying Poe in high school English and I reeled off the first 4 or 5 stanzas of the Raven.
I had a high school English teacher who required memorization to pass her class. I happen to be rather good at it and have retained it ever since. I can still do the prologue to the Canterbury Tales in the original Middle English, as well as Hamlet’s soliloquy, the Band of Brothers speech from Henry V, the 23rd, 46th, and 121st Psalms, and a dozen classic poems like Ozymandias and If and Crossing the Bar.
It never fails to astonish my children, especially when my memory is jogged and they hear one they haven’t heard before.
Dear old Mrs. Tunstall would be dragged away in handcuffs by the Thought Police if she tried to do that now.
loudogblog:
gilbar said...
"that's why a hate Shakespeare.. it's nothing but cliches. Kinda like the bible is"
Maybe you should try actually going to a good Shakespeare play instead of just skimming over Shakespeare and dismissing him.
"He didn't indicate it but that is a common joke in English literature."
That's not the least bit funny.
Don't know why, but my favorite line from Shakespeare is Lady MacBeth's: "Who'd have thought the old man had so much blood in him?"
I'm getting rusty, but I used to be able to do a number of soliliquies, mostly from Hamlet and MacBeth.
A couple of years ago, I was at the Drunken Shakespeare performance of MacBeth in their (very intimate) theater in Chicago, I was (quietly!) reciting along with the "Tomorrow and tomorrow" bit, when the actor doing MacBeth let me finish off several of the lines. Great fun.
I had a ticket for last year, but got snowed out of the train. Despite the mishegas that's going on, I look forward to returning to my hometown (and still location of most of my 100+ immediate family members) for the holidays this year.
--gpm
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