Devising from an image: Narrative approaches

Waiting: an introduction to drama conventions

Acting Shakespeare: Monologues from A Midsummer Night's Dream

Practising physical and vocal skills

Live theatre responses: Becoming a critic

Narrative structures using poetry: Developing monologues

Who Cares?: A devising unit

Acting Shakespeare: Twelfth Night

Posture, gesture and voice in performance

Live theatre responses: Using social media

Approaching text: Bringing it to life

One text, different approaches

The journey: a verbatim project

Study of text in contemporary, cultural contexts

Live performance responses: Evaluating stagecraft

Understanding roles and responsibilities of the creative team

Commedia dell'arte: an introduction

Using Drama conventions to explore contemporary issues

Drama

Y8 Drama

Key Stage 3

Year 8

UNIT

The objective for this lesson is to begin to master the use of Shakespeare's language in depth, whilst working on a short monologue from Twelfth Night.

Shakespeare's use of language

﻿Hello there. My name is Mr. Burt, and welcome to your drama lesson. Now this is the first of three drama lessons, looking at a unit of learning called "Approaching Shakespeare, Twelfth Night." And in this first lesson we're going to start looking at the plot of the play. We're going to start looking at a character called Orsino and a monologue that he delivers at the very beginning of the performance. And we're also going to look at something called iambic pentameter, which is a way of language that Shakespeare wrote in which helps us as actors to perform his work. But before we do that, let's have a quick look at what equipment we need to be able to be successful in our lessons. So here's all the bits of equipment you're going to need in this lesson. You will need a worksheet or a piece of paper to write on. You're going to need a pen, and you might want a highlighter or to highlight your lines. So make sure you've got that equipment. And once you've got that, let's get on with the learning. So in today's lesson, we're going to start with an introduction to the play "Twelfth Night." Then we're going to focus on a character called Orsino, and a monologue that he delivers at the very beginning of the play. We're going to take a closer look at that, and in particular, his motivation for why he's saying the lines. Then we're going to use that to help us understand how Shakespeare wrote it using iambic pentameter, and we're going to combine those two to think about how we can perform the monologue to an audience. So let's get going. Before we start the lesson, though, we need some key terminology that's really going to help us understand and succeed in the lesson. The first key word is iambic pentameter, and that is the name of a widely used rhythm of speech that contains five beats on each line. The next word is monologue. Now a monologue is a long speech that an actor says on their own. And then finally, we're going to need to use the word motivation. And motivation is the term we use to describe why a character does something when they are on stage. Before we go on, let's just have a quick check of our understanding of one of those important key words, and that is monologue. So is monologue a long speech that an actor says on their own? True or false? Answer the question now. Well, yes, you're right. It's true. A monologue is a long speech that an actor says on their own. Although you might have heard the key word soliloquy. Now soliloquy is slightly different to a monologue. A soliloquy is a speech which an actor gives on their own but does so speaking directly to an audience, whereas in a monologue, the character is either just speaking to themselves or delivering it to another character who's on stage with them. Now, before we start our lesson properly I want us to do a quick vocal warmup. Now it's really important that we warm our voices up as actors, because we're going to be using our voice for a long and extended period of time. And our vocal cords are muscles. So just like when we do, when we go out and do PE or play football or netball, we warm up before we play we really need to warm up our vocal chords so that they don't hurt and they aren't damaged long-term. So we're going to start with a simple exercise to begin with where they're breathing exercise. So what I'd like you to do, first of all, is I'd like you to stand up and stand in neutral. Now, standing in neutral just means that your head is up, straight looking forward and your shoulders are slightly rolled back so that you've got a straight line from your head to your shoulders and then your shoulders exactly above your hips. And then your legs are straight, your hips are over your knees, which are over your feet and your feet slightly apart, and your hands are gently resting by your sides. And we're going to breathe in for five seconds. We're going to hold the breath for five seconds, and then we're going to breathe out for five seconds. I'm going to demonstrate first. Because I can't count out loud, I'm going to do it on my hand. So I'm going to breathe in for five, hold for five, and breathe out for five. And what we're simply doing here, is we're simply forcing air up through our vocal chords and then back down through our vocal chords, just starting to warm them up. Now we're going to do that three times in a row. I'm going to count for you, okay. So let all the air out and then breathe in for one two, three, four, five. Hold for one, two, three, four, five. And out for one, two, three, four, five, and rest. It's quite easy really. And let all the air out. And in for one, two, three, four, five. Hold for one, two three, four, five. And out for one, two, three, four, five and rest. And one last time. In for one, two, three, four, five. Hold for one, two, three, four, five. And out for one, two three, four, five. Excellent. Like I said, what that exercise is doing is just beginning to get air flowing through your vocal chords and just beginning to warm them up. This time, what I'd like us to do is to start at a hum to the end. So we're going to breathe in for five, hold for five and breathe out through a hum. And I want you to hum for as long as you can. So I'm going to demonstrate and because I can't count out loud, I'm going to count on my fingers again. So breathe in for five. Hold for five. And then out in a hum. I know it sounds silly, but I really wanted to see if you can just feel your mouth with sound. All right we're going to do this just once. So let all the air out. And then in for one, two, three, four, five. Hold for one, two, three, four, five. And out where the hum. Let's see if you can make it louder, make it louder still, and keep going, and then out. Excellent. One last task, and it's going to involve a line of Shakespeare. a line of Shakespeare from "Twelfth Night" actually. And what I want you to do for this, is we're going to really overemphasise on the vowel sounds. And the line we're going to use is, "If music be the food of love." I'm going to say it just as a demonstration to begin with. "If music be the food of love." So really just emphasise the vowel sounds. Say it with me, say along with me. "If music be the food of love, play on." Excellent. And this time I want you to say it louder than the last time we said it. So take a deep breath before you say the line. "If music be the food of love, play on." Excellent. Actually this time, I want you to say it louder than the last time you said it. You ready? Let's go. "If music be the food of love, play on." Excellent. But you know what? I think we can be louder. So this time I want you to say it as loud as you can. But remember, we're not shouting, we're taking a big deep breath before we say the line. The reason why we're doing that is to be able to fill our lungs with enough air to say the line loud enough without shouting. So one last time, let's take a deep breath in. "If music be the food of love, play on." Excellent, well done. Doing a vocal warm up is really important, but it also can feel a bit hard sometimes, but it's really good to warm up our voices before we start the lesson, well done. So let's just find out a little bit more about the play "Twelfth Night". Now "Twelfth Night" is a romantic comedy and it has several plots, all of which interweave with each other. The play is set on a fictional island called Illyria. And the central plot, which is what we're going to look at today, follows the romantic relationship between the characters of Olivia, Orsino and Viola. So let's take a look at that central character of Orsino. Now Orsino is the Duke of Illyria. And he's in love with Olivia, he is hopelessly in love with Olivia. The trouble is Olivia has not yet declared her love for him. So he is pining for her. And as a character, he's self-indulgent and fanciful. And so his feelings and emotions are exaggerated and taken to the extreme. And he opens the play with a monologue, quite a famous monologue, one of Shakespeare's most famous monologues. And it goes like this. "If music be the food of love, play on; "give me excess of it, that surfeiting, "the appetite may sicken, and so die. "That strain again, it had a dying fall. "O, it came over my ear like the sweet south, "That breathes upon a bank of violets, "stealing and giving odour. "Enough, no more. "'Tis not so sweet now as it was before." Have you heard that before? Certainly, most people have come across that first line, "If music be the food of love, play on." It's used quite a lot in a variety of different ways. This is a very important monologue. Important because it is the very first thing that we, as the audience of the "Twelfth Night", see and hear about the play. And so it tells us one of the key themes of the play which is love. But also important because it tells us a lot about one of the key characters Orsino. Now, remember we described Orsino earlier as being self-indulgent and prone to suffering from emotions in extreme ways. And as I go through the monologue to explain it to you, perhaps you can be able to begin to see the connections between those characteristics and what he's saying. Now let's start by examining the section which I've put into bold. "If music be the food of love, play on. "Give me excess of it, that surfeiting, "the appetite may sicken, and so die." Now here, Shakespeare's using a metaphor. He saying that love is like food. And if love is like food the music is like the food to complete our appetite. And so he's saying that what he wants, what Orsino wants, is to get excess of it. And that he is so hungry that he wants to just eat and eat and eat and eat and eat so much that his appetite will go and die. In other words surfeiting, means to have too much of something. Now, remember, Orsino is desperately in love with Olivia, like really, to an extreme in love. So in love and it's actually hurting him. And so in this metaphor between love and food he's saying that he loves Olivia so much, just so much that it is hurting him. And then there's only two ways to go. And that is to do something about it or for it to hurt him so much that it will end up killing him. And so let's have a look at that second section which I've underlined. "That strain again, it had a dying fall. "Oh, it came over my ear like a sweet south "that breathes upon a bank of violets, "stealing and giving odour." Now imagine this for a moment. Orsino is sat listening to some musicians sing a song or play music, and he's contemplating his love for Olivia, and just how much it hurts, and he's using this clever metaphor between food and love. And he hears that strain of music, a piece of music and it's beautiful in his ears. And it reminds him just how much he loves Olivia. And it's got that dying fall, a descendant in the music, and he wants to hear it again. Because as he heard it it came across like a south wind, a beautiful hot breeze that breathed like a bank of violets, like a beautiful bank of flowers. Stealing and giving beautiful odours. So again, he makes that connection between the music and his love for Olivia and his desire for Olivia. And then that brings us up to the last bit of the monologue. "Enough, no more. "'Tis not so sweet now, as it was before." Which I think is my favourite bit because it just shows just how short of attention span he's got. Here he is, Orsino sat listening to some music, thinking and contemplating about how much he loves Olivia, how beautiful she is, how much his love for her hurts him, hearing this beautiful music. And then, "No yeah, no that's enough. "It's not so sweet now as it was before now. "Let's move on." And it just shows how short of attention span he's got and how quickly he gets bored of something. But before we can start writing the character out, we want to really think about our interpretation of the character and use those describing words, that's words of self-indulgent, extreme emotions, short attention span, and help us form the character's motivation. But before we can do that we just need to quickly check our understanding of what the key word motivation means. So tell me now, what does the key word motivation mean? That's right. So motivation is the term we use to describe why a character does something on stage. Now every time you see a character on stage or in screen, in television or in film, the character is there to do something, to say something and that has a purpose. And that is what we call motivation. So pause the video now for a moment and consider what is Orsino's motivation in delivering this speech? What does he want to get out of it? So pause the video now, write your thoughts down on your piece of paper, or your worksheet and resume when you're ready. Now, we want to start thinking about how to act this monologue out. And Shakespeare gives us a great way of helping us with that. And that is through iambic pentameter. So let's just quickly check our understanding of that key term. So tell me now, what is iambic pentameter. That's right. Iambic pentameter is the name of a widely used rhythm of speech that contains five beats on each line. And it looks like this. Bah BOM! Bah BOM! Bah BOM! Bah BOM! Bah BOM! A bit like a heartbeat. Bah BOM! Bah BOM! Bah BOM! Bah BOM! Bah BOM! Be where you rest, and then you emphasise, rest, emphasise, rest, emphasise, rest, emphasise, rest, emphasise. And when we look at the first line of our monologue that we're working with, and we placed that same rhythm onto it, we can see it really clearly. If music be the food of love, play on. Bah BOM, bah BOM, bah BOM, bah BOM, bah BOM. And you will notice straight away that by applying this rhythm, the key words of the line are suddenly emphasised and highlighted. Music, be, food, love, on. "If music be the food of love, play on." It's a lovely way of highlighting and emphasising the key words in the line. So it's over to you for a moment. What I'd like you to do is I'd like you to identify where you think the iambic pentameter might be in this monologue. So pause the video now, and either pointing at it on the screen, or using the copy of it on the worksheet, highlight where you think the iambic pentameter falls in this opening monologue. Pause the video and resume once you've finished. Now, how did you find that? I've got here one of the work that I've done with it, and you're more than welcome to copy this down onto a piece of paper or onto your worksheet that you're working with, but it goes something like this. "If music be the food of love, play on. "Give me excess of it, "that surfeiting, that appetite may sicken and so die. "That strain a gain, it had a dying for. "O, it came over my ear like the sweets south, "that breathes upon a bank of violets, "stealing and giving odour. "Enough, no more. "'Tis not so sweet as it was before." So pause the video now, you might want to write this version of it down on a piece of paper, or you might want to annotate your own version on the worksheet. When you're ready, resume and we will carry on. Now, before I ask you to act this monologue out I'm going to demonstrate my interpretation of it. But before I do that, I just want to talk you through some of the processes that I've gone through, and what I'm trying to communicate to you as my audience. So we've identified Orsino's character as being quite self-indulgent, as experiencing quite extreme emotions, as well as getting quite bored quite easily and having a short attention span. So I feel using that, that the character's motivation in this monologue is to wallow in that self-pity, is to slightly enjoy the fact that he's really upset and quite sad, but also that at the end of the monologue, he's got bored of it by then and wants to move on to something else. Now, I also want to experiment with gesture and movement to emphasise some of those things, as well as trying to pick up on the iambic pentameter. So here we go. "If music be the food of love, play on, "Give me excess of it. "That surfeiting the appetite may sicken and die. "That strain a gain, it had a dying fall. "O, it came over my ear like a sweet south "that breathes upon the bank of violets, "stealing and giving odour. "Enough, no more. "'Tis not so sweet as it was before." And so this brings us up to our next task which is for you to perform the monologue. So I want you to act out the monologue using the flow of the iambic pentameter. And to show the use of words and the motivation of the character. And also see if you can experiment with movement and gestures to add depth to performance. So using the monologue, as you see it on the screen here or the one on your worksheet, I want you to rehearse the monologue and then perform it. So pause the video now and resume once you finished How did that performance go for you? What was your interpretation of Orsino? Were you able to communicate your character's motivation to the audience, do you think? How well did you use gestures and movements to emphasise what you wanted to communicate? So before we go, let's just check on some of our understanding of iambic pentameter. So which one of these statements is correct? Option one, iambic pentameter is a rhythm where each line has six beats. Option two, iambic pentameter is a rhythm where each nine has five beats. Option three, iambic pentameter is a rhythm where each line has four beats. Or is it option four, iambic pentameter is a rhythm where each line has three beats? Points to your answer on the screen now. That's right. Iambic pentameter is a rhythm where each line has five beats. Before we go today I want to say one last thing, and that's well done. I know that performing can be really, really hard, so well done performing today. You've done a good job.

The Objective for this lesson is to learn and perform an extract of Shakespeare with nuanced understanding of how to use voice and movement to communicate comedy clearly to the audience.

How to speak Shakespeare

﻿Hello, my name is Mr. Burt, and welcome to our drama lesson. This is the second of three drama lessons looking at a unit of learning called Acting Shakespeare Twelfth Night. In our first lesson, we look to the character Orsino, and his self consented love for Olivia. And we also looked at how Shakespeare uses Iambic pentameter, to help us as actors to perform his work. And in this lesson, we're going to develop on that knowledge by looking at another character, viola. And looking also at how Shakespeare encouraged us to use our breath, and pauses to add meaning to what we're saying. But before we do that, let's make sure we got all the right equipment before you make a start. So this is the equipment we're going to need for our lesson, you're going to need a worksheet or a piece of paper to work from, you're going to need a pen, and you might want a highlighter to highlight some of your lines. So make sure you've got that equipment now and let's make start once you have. So this is the rundown of our lesson today. We're going to start with a quick recap of the play, and then from that, we're going to look at the character viola, and a monologue that she gives at the beginning of the play. I talked earlier about secrets that Shakespeare gave us in terms of using our breath and pauses. So we're going to have a quick exercise at using our breath. Then we're going to use that technique to help us perform a monologue before finishing with a quiz. But there are of course, keywords we need to know to help us succeed in this lesson. And today's keywords are motivation. And motivation is the term we use to describe why a character does something on stage. Facial expressions. Facial expressions are the way we use our faces, to communicate meaning to an audience. Gestures. Gestures are small movements made by the body that communicates something to an audience. And finally, pauses. Pauses are deliberately adding a moment of silence, to add meaning to your performance. Before we go on, let's just check our understanding of one of those really key important keywords we've just looked at there, motivation. So you tell me now, what does the keyword motivation mean? That's right. Motivation is the term we use to describe why a character does something on stage. We're going to start today's lesson with a quick vertical warmup. Now our voices comes from our vocal cords, and then muscles. So just like when we do any physical exercise, we need to warm our bodies up to make sure that we don't do any damage. When we're using our voice, we need to warm our voice up, so that we avoid doing any damage long term. So we're going to start with some breathing exercises. And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to demonstrate first of all. What we're going to do is we're going to breathe out all the air, and then we're going to breathe in for five seconds, we're going to hold for five seconds, and then we're going to breathe out for five seconds. And we're going to try to make sure that all the air inside our lungs comes out in those five seconds. So a demonstrate to begin with, I'm going to let all the air out first, and I'm going to breathe in for, hold, and out for, excellent. Now we're going to do it together, we're going to do it twice through, I'm going to count you through it. So let all the air out. And in for one, two, three, four, five, hold for one, two, three, four, five, and out for one, two, three, four, five, and in for one, two, three, four, five, hold for one, two, three, four, five, and out for one, two, three, four, five, excellent. All we're doing there is we're just gently warming up those vocal cords that allow air to come through and then back out and to help them warm up a bit. This time we're going to add a hum at the end. So I'll demonstrate first of all to show you. We're going to breathe in for five seconds, hold for five seconds and hum instead of breathing out for five seconds. Are you ready? So I'm going to let all the air out, and then in for, hold for, and out for. Excellent, there we're just warming up those muscles again, just gently, this forces them and makes them gently press against each other, which warms them up. So we're going to do that twice, I'm going to lead you through it. So then all the air out, and in for one, two, three, four, five, hold for one, two, three, four, five, and then hum for. Excellent. Let all the air out, and in for one, two, three, four, five, hold for one, two, three, four, five, and out for, Excellent, well done. So we're just gently warming up those vocal cords. And we're going to do the next exercise, which is a quick tongue twister. And it's going to be New York unique, unique New York. I'm going to say it, you say it. Unique New York, New York Unique. You say it unique New York, New York unique. I say it knew he, knew he. Say it again, unique New York, New York unique. You say it. And I'm going to say it this time, this time I'm going to try to get our mouth as wide as we can, as we say it. Unique New York, New York unique. Over to you really push the mouth as wide as you can. Three, two, one go. Excellent, well done. Now we're going to combine those two exercises, the breathing technique with the tongue twister. And the reason why we're going to do this is because when we're acting and we're performing, it's the breath that we have that gives us projection and volume. We should avoid shouting because shouting is forcing the air through our vocal cords and forcing them together, which is going to cause long term damage. Whereas using the breath to get volume is using the vocal cords to a much better effect. So I'm going to demonstrate first of all, and then I want you to copy me afterwards. So my demonstration goes like this. So I'm going to let all the air out. And breathe in for five, and hold for, and unique New York, New York unique. And notice, I let all the breath out in that line, making sure there's no breath left before I take a new breath in. So I'm going to do it with you this time, we'll do it together. So let all the air out, and in for, hold for, and unique New York, New York unique, excellent. It's a tongue twister, I think I got it the wrong way around. So let's do one last time, this time, I want you to do it, and I'll count you through it. Alright, so that all the air out. And in for one, two, three, four, five, hold for one, two, three, four, five, unique New York, New York unique, excellent. Remember is that breath control that gives us projection and volume. We can shout, of course we can shout, but that does long term damage to our vocal cords. Instead, we need to focus on our vocal cords and breath work to help that breath give volume and projection to what we're saying. Let's have a quick recap of the plot of the Twelfth Night. So remember Twelfth Night is a romantic comedy, that's set on the fictional island of Illyria. Now there are several plots, all of which interweave as the play goes on. But the central plot is the romantic relationship between Orsino Olivia, and the third character called Viola. Now in our last lesson, we looked at Orsino and how he is desperately in love with Olivia. But yet Olivia hasn't declared her love for Orsino. And in this lesson, we're going to be introduced to the character of Viola. So let's have a closer look at her character now. So let's have a closer look at viola's plot in the Twelfth Night, and especially at the beginning of the play. It starts with a shipwreck. Viola arrives in Illyria, having shipwrecked off the coast, and she believes her twin brother to be lost in the shipwreck. So she arrives with just one other character, the captain, and she believes the rest of all perished in the shipwreck. So she arrives, sad, isolated and traumatised by the events. But the captain recognises the land that they arrive at, Illyria, and tells Viola that the person who's in charge, the duke is Duke Orsino. And so Viola decides to disguise herself as a boy, and going by the name of Cesario goes to work for Duke Orsino. The Duke is quite happy with this takes a viola as Cesario under his employment, and sends Cesario to woo Olivia on his behalf. Remember, Orsino was deeply in love with Olivia. Instead of accepting are seen as advances, Olivia, however, falls in love with Cesario, who of course, is Viola. And if there's not any enough complications, Viola falls in love with Orsino. So this is Viola's plot at the very beginning of the play. But we're going to look at a monologue that comes right at the beginning, where Viola tells the captain her plan to conceal herself as a boy and go to work for Duke Orsino and the monologue goes like this. I prithee, and I'll pay thee bounteously, conceal me what I am, and be my aid for such disguise as haply shall become the form of my intent. I'll serve this duke, thou shalt present me as a eunuch to him. It may be worth thy pains for I can sing and speak to him and many sorts of music that will allow me very worth his service. What else there may hap to time I will commit. Only shape thou thy silence to my wit. Now we talked to the beginning of the lesson about a keyword, motivation. Motivation being the reason why a character is on stage, and the reason for what they are doing on stage, and the reason why they are saying what they say on stage. So what do you think Viola's motivation, in saying this monologue is? We're going to break the monologue down into the two parts. So pause the video now, and either using the monologue on your worksheet, or the monologue as it does on the screen. What do you think, is Viola's motivation in this part of the monologue? So here are my thoughts, and I've highlighted them on the screen, and you can copy those down onto your worksheet if you want. I've got keywords like conceal me what I am, such disguise as happy shall become, both of those the words conceal and disguise, her motivation here is to come across to the duke as a boy to conceal her true identity, which I think are two different things there. And the I'll serve this duke, her intention here is very much clear that she's going to go to serve the duke. Let's have a look at the second part of Viola's monologue. So either using the copy on your worksheet, or the copy on the screen, pause the video now and see if you can identify Viola's motivation for this monologue. So here's some thoughts that I've got, and again, you can copy these down onto your worksheet, if you're using it. For I can sing and speak to him in many sorts of music, will allow me very worth his service. I think she's almost convincing herself here as much as the captain, that she will be able to do the things that he wants her to do, or I should say him to do because she's going to dress up as him and for all Orsino knows, it's going to be Cesario, who's going to be a servant. And so he's suggesting that he can sing, he can make music, he can do anything that the Orsino wants him to do. So let's turn our attention to thinking about how we're going to perform this monologue. Now earlier I mentioned how Shakespeare gave us clues about how we can use our breath pauses to add meaning to our performances. But before we do that, let's just have a quick recap on our understanding of the keyword pause. So tell me now, what does the keyword pause mean? Excellent, well done. Pauses are deliberately adding a moment of silence to add meaning to your performance. Now, Shakespeare was very clever in this and did something that I like to call punctuation pauses. So Shakespeare guides us to where to place pauses for dramatic effect, and that is to take a pause every time you get to some punctuation. But there are some rules. There are short pauses and long pauses. Short pauses come in any punctuation that breaks sentence up. So things like commas, brackets, semicolons, or colons. Whereas long pauses come at the end of sentences. So they come when you see a full stop, a question mark, or exclamation mark. So if we look at the monologue we're working with at the moment, I have made some annotations to that, which you can copy down onto your worksheet, or you can use the version that's on the screen now. And it becomes like this, I prithee, short pause, and I'll pay thee bounteously, conceal me for what I am, and be my aid for such disguise as haply shall become the form of my intent. Longer pause, but did you notice that what happened is because I didn't take a pause at the end of aid and become, that whole section becomes one long sentence, as you don't read it like poetry, where you take a pause at the end of the line, you take a pause at the punctuation. So I'm going to read that whole sequence again, and see if you can notice it again. So I prithee, and I'll pay the bounteously, conceal me for what I am, and be my aid for such disguises haply shall become the form of my intent. So I read through across each line until the next punctuation point, then I get a long pause. I'll serve this juke, and then there's another long pause, thou shalt present me as a eunuch to him, long pause, because there's a full stop at the end of the sentence, takes us to the next part. And you'll notice that there's only one short pause, in that three lines. So we're going to say those three lines in one. I'll start, it may be worth thy pains, for I can sing and speak to him in many sorts of music that will allow me very worth his service. So it's all one breath, it all becomes all one line. So we don't get to the end of the line, take a breath, and start the next one. After then we got to his service, long pause, what else may hap, to time I will commit, long pause. Only shape thou thy silence to my wit. Now, what's interesting is when you add the pauses on punctuation is we start to come away from the idea that it's poetry, and then we speak it like poetry. But normally with poems, we pause at the end of the line, before we start the next one. Here, we're speaking all the way through the lines until we get to the next punctuation point. So we could rewrite this monologue as something else. We could rewrite it like this. And here, I've just taken out of that format of being in poetry, and I've kept the same annotations with it. What is also useful for us to think about is where we can have breaths. In the warm up we were talking about how we use breaths to help our voice to project across the space, and how before we say a line, we take a breath, and use that out breath to give volume and projection. So here we've got this idea of short pauses and long pauses, so you should know short pauses are also opportunities for you to take a quick breath. Whereas a long pause, allows you to take a long breath in. And if you can see here, we've got two really long sentences. So we need to make sure that we've got enough breath to say all of that sentence. So I'm going to present this as I've written it down on this form. So I'm going to start with a deep breath, I prithee and I'll pay thee bounteously, conceal me for what I am, and be my aid for such disguise as haply shall become the form of my intent. I'll serve this duke. Thou shalt present me as a eunuch to him. It may be worth thy pains for I can sing and I can speak to him in many sorts of music that will allow me very worth his service. What else may hap to time I will commit. Only shape thou thy silence to my wit. By breaking it up, you start to see a little different structure to it as well, because we've got two long sentences followed by two short sentences. It also changes the pace. Because it's such long sentences, we tend to quicken our pace to get through that sentence in order to maintain the same breath before we start the next sentence. So you see, following that little secret of punctuation pauses, really changes the way in which we speak and present the language that Shakespeare has written. Now before we perform it, let's just check which of these statements are true. Option one, facial expressions are the way we use our faces to communicate. Option two, proxemics are small movements that communicate meaning. Option three, gestures are small movements that communicate meaning. And option four, body language is the way we use our faces to communicate. Tell me now, which of these statements are true. That's right, option one and option three. Option one, facial expressions are the way we use our faces to communicate, and option three, gestures are small movements that communicate meaning. But let's just check out some of those other options. So proxemics are not small movements that communicate meaning. But proxemics is the distance between two characters, and what that distance communicates about their relationship to the audience. Whereas body language, is not the way we use our faces to communicate, but body language is the way that we hold our bodies, we use all of our bodies to communicate how our feelings are to the audience. So before I ask you to perform the monologue, I'm going to demonstrate it for you. But before I do that, I want to remind you the process that we've been through so far. So we started by identifying the motivation of the character in this monologue, which is, in part to convince herself that she's able to conceal herself as a boy, and go to work for Duke Orsino. Then we also started to identify where to take long pauses and short pauses to add meaning to what we're saying. And finally, I want us to think about gesture, and movement to be able to add meaning into it as well. So this is my interpretation of the performance, and I want you to work in a moment on yours, which might be different to mine, and that's fine. So it goes something like this. I prithee and I'll pay thee bounteously, conceal me what I am. And be my aid for such disguise as haply shall become the form of my intent. I'll serve the duke. Thou shalt present me as a eunuch to him. It may be worth thy pains, for I can sing and speak to him in many sorts of music that will allow me very worth his service. What else may hap, to time I will commit. Only shape thou thy silence to my wit. So, over to you now it's your turn to perform the monologue. I want you to act out the monologue, adding facial expressions and gestures to help communicate the meaning and the motivation of Viola. And remember that key secret about pauses. So remember to keep the pauses where you've placed them, and to take a short or a long breath, according to the pause. So use the monologue as it appears on the screen or the one on your worksheet. Rehearse and perform the monologue and press play when you're ready to carry on. Now, how did that go for you? How is your performance? Did you find that you're able to use those short pauses and long pauses to give you breath, enough to be able to deliver the lines with volume and with projection? It's not easy and it takes time to learn, especially over those longer sentences. But it's well worth doing because it will improve your performance in the long term. So before we finish up, I just want to check your understanding of some of the keywords we've used in our lesson today. So is this statement true or false? Moving across the stage is an example of a gesture. Tell me now. That's right, it's false. Moving across the stage is not an example of a gesture. Gesture, are actually just small movements that communicate something specific to the audience. Before we finish up today, I want to say well done on your performance. It can be really hard to perform, especially performing Shakespeare, cause Shakespeare can sometimes be really, really daunting. So I hope that the tips and tricks that we're exploring in these lessons are really helping you come to Shakespeare with more confidence than you did before. Well done.

The Objective for this lesson is to learn and perform an extract of Shakespeare with nuanced understanding of how to use voice and movement to communicate tragedy clearly to the audience.

Performing tragedy: Malvolio's revenge

﻿Hello there. My name is Mr. Burt and welcome to our Drama lesson. And this is the third and final Drama lesson in this unit of learning called, Acting Shakespeare: "Twelfth night". And in our first two lessons we looked at the characters of Orsino, Olivia and Viola. And we also looked at iambic pentameter and punctuation pauses. And in this lesson we're going to look at the character of Malvolio. And we're going to see if we can use iambic pentameter and punctuation pauses to help us perform his monologue at the end of the play. But before we do that, let's have a quick look at what equipment we need before we make a start. Now in this lesson we're going to need a worksheet or a piece of paper, we'll need a pen and you might want a highlighter to highlight some of your lines. So make sure you've got those pieces of equipment. And once we've got them, let's make a start. So this is the rundown of the work we're going to do today. We're going to start with a recap of the play and then we're going to explore the character of Malvolio. We're going to have a little look at what he has got to say at the end of the play and attempt to understand his motivation for what he's saying. Then we're going to act it out and we're going to finish with a quiz. But before we do that, there are some key words that we need to know in order to help us succeed in this lesson. The first word is motivation. Motivation is the term we use to describe why a character does something on stage. The second is use of voice. Now use of voice is a term we use to describe how you as actors use your voice to communicate your character to the audience. And finally use of movement. Now use of movement is a key term we use to describe how you use your body and the way you move to communicate your character to the audience. Now both of those use of voice and use of movement have other key words which are associated with them. And we'll look at those later on in the lesson. But before we go on with the lesson, let's have a quick vocal warm up. Now it's really important that we warm up our voices. Remember our vocal cords are muscles. And so just like when we do physical education we need to warm up our muscles, warm up our bodies before we do anything, otherwise we might cause damage. It's the same with our vocal cords. We need to warm up our voices to avoid long-term permanent damage to them. So we're going to start with a very quick vocal warmup in this lesson. And I'd simply like you to say this line after me. Why you have given me such clear lights of favour. I'd like you to say that word line now. Excellent. Now I'm going to demonstrate what I want you to do. And then I want you to do it after me. The first time we're going to do it, I want to just look at breathing technique. So I'm going to let all the air out. I'm going to breathe in for five seconds, I'm going to hold my breath for five seconds, and then I'm going to say the line. So , and in , hold. Why you have given me such clear lights of favour. let all the air out with the line. So over to you let all the air out and in for one, two, three, four, five hold for one, two, three, four, five, and say the line. Excellent, well done. I'm going to say it now, you know, as quickly as possible but still making sure that the line is clear. Why you have given me such clear lights of favour. I want you to say it in the same way as fast as you can, but still trying to make the words really clear. Over to you. Excellent, well done. This time I'm going to say it, and we're going to say it from fast to slow. Why you have given me such clear lights of favour. Fast to slow. Over to you. Excellent, well done. This time we're going to go slow to fast. Why you have given me such clear lights of favour? Over to you. Well done. This time we're going to emphasise some of the words. The first time we're going to emphasise all the pronouns. So I'm going to say it and I want you to copy me. Why you have given me such clear lights of favour. Say it in exactly the same way. Excellent, well done. This time we're going to highlight and emphasise the hard consonants. So I'm going to say it, I want you to say it in exactly the same way as me. Why you have given me such clear lights of favour. You say it. Excellent, well done. This time, I want you to say it in a really, really happy way. Why you have given me such clear lights of favour. Over to you. Excellent, we're going to do it in an angry way. Why you have given me such clear lights of favour. Over to you. And this time we're going to say in a really confused way. Why you have given me such clear lights of favour. Over to you. Excellent, well done. This time we're going to say it three times in a row and each time is going to get slightly louder than the last time. When you go back to the breath work, so we're going to breathe in for five seconds and say the line as loud as we can. Now I'm going to do it and then I want you to copy me. So I'm going to let all the air out and breathe in . Why you have given me such clear lights of favour. Over to you. Let all the air out and in for one, two, three, four, five, and say the line louder. Well done. We're going to say it louder this time. So I'm going to demonstrate. Let all my air out and I'm going to breathe in for... Why you have given me such clear lights of favour. Over to you. You're going to say it louder than the last time. This time, Let's say let all the air out and breathe in for one, two, three, four, five, and say the line. Excellent. This time, we're going to say it really loud using the full breath to give us volume. So I'm going to demonstrate. Let all my air out and in You have given me such clear lights of favour. Over to you, as loud as you can. Make sure that the breath is giving you lots of volume. So let all the air out and in for one, two, three, four, five, go. Well done. So let's just have a quick recap of the play "Twelfth Night". Now "Twelfth Night" is a romantic comedy set on the fictional island of Illyria. Now in our last two lessons, we looked at the plot that involves the characters of Orsino, Olivia and Viola. But there's also another plot which involves another set of characters, with Sir Toby, Sir Andrew and Malvolio. And in this lesson we're going to explore what happens to them. So let's take a closer look at this character of Malvolio. Here is Malvolio. Malvolio is a servant of Olivia's household. And he's a very serious and controlling character. Now this is something is very important about Malvolio. He has ambitions to become more than he is. He wants to be a nobleman rather than a servant. And so as a result, he is rude to everyone who he thinks is beneath them even if they are not beneath them. And this is his part of the subplot from the "Twelfth Night". So as I said before, he's rude. So Malvolio is rude to everyone but especially to the characters of Sir Toby, Sir Andrew and Maria, who he doesn't like. Despite the fact that they are actually above him in society. So they decide to take revenge in a forged letter. To take revenge, Sir Toby and the rest of the gang trick Malvorio by writing a forge letter from Olivia. The letter convinces Malvolio that Olivia is in love with him and wants to marry him. In the letter, It says that Olivia's favourite item of clothing is yellow stockings with cross garters, And she'd love Malvolio even more if he were to wear them the next time they meet! This is great news to Malvolio, because he sees this is the opportunity to go beyond being a servant and to become an equal to Olivia by marrying her. So Malvolio, with the excited by the idea dresses up in his yellow stockings and cross garters. As you can see in the picture and goes to see Olivia. Of course, this is all a clever ruse and Olivia has no idea what's happening. So she is horrified and believes Malvolio to be completely mad. Olivia asks Sir Toby to lock Malvolio up in a dark room until he recovers. He is released. Malvolio is later released and he's told of the trick. And he is so upset and threatens to take revenge. And this is the monologue that he delivers at the end of the play. Lady, you have. Pray you peruse that letter that you must not now deny it is your hand. Write from it if you can, in hand or phrase why you have given me such clear lights of favour, bade me to come smiling and cross-gartered to you, to put on yellow stockings and to frown upon Sir Toby and lighter people; and acting in this obedient hope. Why have you suffered me to be imprisoned? I'll be revenged on the whole pack of you. Let's just take some time to break down the monologue. So we have a full understanding of what Malvolio is saying. And I've broken it down into thirds. The first third goes like this. Lady, you have. Pray you peruse that letter. You must not now deny it is your hand; Write from it if you can, in hand or phrase. And in this section, Malvolio is asking Olivia to take a look at this letter, that you can see that it is written in Olivia's hand and in the same writing voice that Olivia uses. Why you have given me such clear lights of favour, bade me to come smiling and cross gartered to you, to put on yellow stockings and to frown upon Sir Toby and the lighter people. And in this part of the monologue he tells the things that Olivia has written down in the letter. And says begin with that, you know, you have given me a clear indication of your liking of your love. And you've told me to smile and you've told me to dress up in yellow stockings and cross garters. And you've told me to be mean, and to be rude to people like Sir Toby. And the final third goes like this; And acting this in an obedient hope. Why have you suffered me to be imprisoned? I'll take revenge on the whole pack of you. And here he's saying, well, I have done everything you've asked me to do and I've done it because you've said that you loved me and you will love me more if I did these things. So why have you imprisoned me? Why have you locked me up? I will take revenge on all of you. As actors, when we're acting out a monologue like this, it's important for us to understand what the character is saying and why the character is saying it. So let's just take a quick moment to check on our understanding of this key word motivation. So tell me now, what does the key word motivation mean? Excellent, well done. Motivation is the term we use to describe why a character does something on stage. So we need to consider what is Malvolio's motivation in this monologue. To help us, what I'd like you to do is I'd like you to write a list on your piece of paper of all the things that Malvolio is feeling in this monologue. When he says these lines, what emotions is going through him at the time? So pause the video, write a list on your piece of paper and resume once you've done it. So I've made a quick list of the emotions that I think Malvolio is feeling. And I've written down confused, angry, hate, and embarrassed. Now I've gone a little step further here and I've annotated my monologue. And because at the beginning of the monologue I feel he's confused. He's not entirely sure. He thinks that this letter has been written by Olivia but now because he's been imprisoned and everyone's laughed at him, he's not sure, he's confused. And then I feel like he's been angry because he was told to do these things. And he did them because he thought he was helping Olivia to love him. But then he's embarrassed because of the things that he's done. And because he was imprisoned for something that he felt he's been tricked into he's full of hate, and he wants his revenge. So what I'd like you to do either on the screen or on the worksheet is I'd like you to annotate the monologue. Indicating whereabouts in the monologue you feel he is feeling the emotions, which you've written in your list. Pause the video now and resume once you've finished. Now, we're going to use those words as a set of instructions to help us act out the monologue. But before we do that, let's just have a quick check on some of our understanding of the terminology. So tell me now, what does the key words use of voice and use of movement mean? Excellent. Well, let's start with use of voice. So use of voice is a term we use to describe how you use your voice to communicate your character to an audience. And of course there are lots of other key words that make up use of voice. And I've written some of them down here. These are the ones that we've come across so far. So we've got pace, which is the speed of your voice. Pause, which is adding moments of silence into your speech to add emphasis. We've got volume, which is about how loud or how quiet your voice is. We've got emphasis, which is placing particular emphasis on words or entire sentence to add meaning to what you're saying. And then we've got tone, which is the emotional quality of a voice. Whether you're angry or whether you're happy. Let's move on to use of movement. Now use of movement is a term we use to describe how you use your body and the way in which you move to communicate your character to the audience. And likewise, there are several key words, which we've come across already, which work with the idea of use of movement. The first one is movement. Now movement is how you move across the stage and the way in which you move. Whether you go quickly or whether you go slowly. Eye contact is the way in which you make eye contact with the characters you're speaking to or deliberately not making eye contact and looking away from them to suggest something else. Gestures are small movements, made with your hands or any part of your body which communicates something to an audience. And facial expressions is everything in which you do with your face to communicate an emotion to an audience. Now, before I ask you to perform it I'm going to demonstrate it for you. Now, remember, I'm trying to communicate to the audience that list of adjectives that I came up with which describe my character at this point and how the character is feeling. So I've got the fact that they were confused. they were angry, they were embarrassed and that they really were fueled with hate by the end of the speech. And I going to try to change my voice and my movement to be able to communicate those things to you. So here guys. Lady, you have. pray you peruse the letter you must not now deny it is your hand, write from it if you can, in hand or phrase why have you given me such clear lights of favour bade me to come smiling and cross gartered to you. To put on yellow stockings, and to frown upon Sir Toby and lighter people and acting in this an obedient hope. Why have you suffered me to be imprisoned? I'll be revenged on the whole pack of you. So this brings us up to our main task which is to perform the monologue. And what I'd like you to do is I'd like you to act out the monologue using the annotations you wrote as a set of instructions on how to use your voice and movement to act out your character. So use the monologue on the screen or the one on your worksheet. Rehearse, act out, and perform your monologue and then press play when you're ready to carry on. Now, how did that go for you? How was your performance? Did it help by writing down as a set of instructions the emotions that the character was feeling so that you could adjust your use of voice on your use of movement to help you communicate that to the audience. It's a nice little way of reminding you as an actor what you need to do in your performance. So before we finish up today I just want to do a quick check of your understanding of some of the keywords we've used today. So which of these statements are correct? Option one, volume describes how loud your voice is. Option two, volume is the speed of your voice. Option three, volume describes the emotion in your voice. Option four ,volume is adding a moment of silence to your speech. Tell me now, which one of those options is correct. That's right. Option one; volume describes how loud your voice is but let's just go through and make sure that we know what the answers to options two, three, and four is as well. So pace is the speed of your voice. Tone describes the emotion in your voice. And finally, pause is adding a moment of silence to your speech. Before we go today I just want to say, well done. Performing like this can be really, really hard and you've done it. And you've got something to be proud of. So well done. Why not share your work with Oak National? If you'd like to share any of the work that you've done from this lesson or the previous two lessons in the unit of learning, please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Twitter tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak.

Unit Overview: Acting Shakespeare: Twelfth Night

Lessons:

Shakespeare's use of language

How to speak Shakespeare

Performing tragedy: Malvolio's revenge