Freeing Shakespeare’s Voice

Preeminent voice teacher, actor and director Kristin Linklater goes beyond the techniques in her classic text, Freeing the Natural Voice, to a passionate exploration of the words of William Shakespeare. Beginning with exercises designed to break long-held habits and allow the development of a visceral, Elizabethan relationship to the language — one that literally embodies the word — she analyzes Shakespeare’s strategies for creating character, story and meaning through figures of speech, iambic pentameter, rhyme and alternations of verse and prose. Using copious examples from the cannon, and including chapters on Shakespeare’s relevance in today’s world, Linklater gives us the tools to increase understanding and to make Shakespeare’s words our own.

My intention is to awaken the dormant power that brings breath into every cell of the body, welcomes the most tempestuous emotions, permits the brilliance of the intellect, frees the body, stretches the imagination and restores largesse of expression and stature to the human-actor-being.

This is a textbook for anyone who might spend years of study on speaking Shakespeare’s words. If you’ve taken one year of Shakespearean acting, and think you know it all, read this book and discover all the things you’ve been missing. It does start with proper breathing and speaking technique, a foundation for new actors and a fundamental that veteran actors should refresh. Then proceeds to the specific concerns of acting in Shakespeare, including lots of exercises and examples from diverse scenes. Although there is some technical language, this guide is very readable.

Contents

The Content: Language
1. Vowels and Consonants
2. Words and Images
3. Words into Phrases
4. Organically, Cosmically and Etymologically Speaking
5. Figures of Speech

   Interlude:

   • Stage Directions
   • Double Meanings
   • Bawdry
   • Thee’s Thou’s and You’s

   The Form: Verse and Prose

6. Iambic Pentameter
7. Rhyme
8. Line-Endings
9. Verse and Prose Alternation
   The Contexture

10. Today’s Actor in Shakespeare’s World
11. Shakespeare’s Voice in Today’s World
12. Which Voice? The Texts
13. Whose Voice? The Man

About the Author

Kristin Linklater’s influential career has included sustained relationships with the original theatre at Lincoln Center, the Guthrie Theater, the Negro Ensemble Company, the Open Theater and Shakespeare & Company.

She is currently director of actor training at Emerson College, Boston, and artistic director of the Company of Women and Girls.

Click here to buy Freeing Shakespeare’s Voice: The Actor’s Guide to Talking the Text