Memorizing Shakespeare Is Like Learning a Foreign Language

It’s difficult to learn your lines in any of Shakespeare’s plays: Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, As You Like It, and the 30 others. His English sounds so different from our English, yet we actors are expected to speak it perfectly. It’s like learning another language, and to speak it fluently on stage.

• Have you ever been on stage and completely blanked on a line? Oh, you know it’s your line, but you can’t remember how it starts. With Shakespeare, you can’t just make it up. Improvising the language and making it sound like verse is impossible.
• Have you ever been in rehearsal and completely mispronounced something? People laugh and you try to pretend that there’s a typo in your script. How are you supposed to know all those words you’ve never said before?
• Have you ever dreaded the day your director calls “off book day”? You circle it on your calendar, and all you can do is hope you know everything by then.

Being line perfect and on cue is NOT optional in Shakespeare.

Shakespeare wrote in verse, and invented hundreds of words to fit his needs. He was a creative genius. The audience wants to see that genius expressed, and when you mess up a line or miss a cue, it can ruin the mood and flow of an entire scene.

So you try your best to read your lines every day, to repeat them until you think you have them perfectly. But at rehearsal, you find out quickly that your study didn’t get you very far.

What’s the Best Way to Learn Lines?

Ask experienced actors… Ask acting coaches… Ask any expert on performance: “What’s the most effective way to learn my lines in Shakespeare?” None of them will give you a good answer. They’ll say that it’s hard work, and you have to spend hours every day with the script, reading and reciting the lines to yourself. What is this, the Middle Ages?!?

If learning Shakespeare is like learning a foreign language, why not use the tools of language learning? Audio! ScenePartner is like those language-learning programs, except with your lines instead of phrases in French. You hear one line, then you repeat after the bell. Simple.

Getting the script out of your hands.

You’re willing to spend hours with the script, but it always feels like a struggle…

• Imagine knowing your lines perfectly, with correct pronunciation and rhythm, early in the rehearsal process, allowing you to concentrate on acting and your relationships on stage.
• Imagine reacting to cues with your lines without any hesitation.
• Imagine learning your lines without effort, without eye strain, without the script (or your Complete Works) hanging from your left hand.

Learning Lines in Verse is Like Learning Song Lyrics

Have you ever noticed that you learn other actors’ lines really easily during rehearsals? When they blank or call “line!”, are you faster than the Stage Manager in feeding them their next words? That’s because hearing Shakespeare is like hearing song lyrics (that’s why they call it verse). Learning the lyrics to a song comes naturally from hearing it repeatedly, not from reading the lyrics sheet over and over.

But you don’t want to learn other people’s lines, you want to learn your own!

ScenePartner allows you to hear your lines over and over, memorizing them as easily as lyrics.

• Learn your lines reliably, using proven tips for memorizing Shakespeare that cognitive psychology research has revealed.
• Learn your lines anywhere on your mp3 player, with no book in your hands.
• Learn the proper way to say difficult lines without the embarassment of having the director correct you.
• Never “drop character” because of a line flub: when your lines are perfect in your mind, you can fully commit to your acting choices.

Try ScenePartner for free!

Download this free sample of ScenePartner and use it to memorize Hamlet’s Soliloque.

Is There a Downside?

Sounds good, but I’m concerned about…

• Accents? We record the lines in neutral North American… this is not a BBC recording!
• Acting choices? You don’t want to copy our delivery or get locked into our way of speaking, so we deliver a “blank” reading that only includes necessary rhythms. You have the freedom to layer your acting skills on top. This is NOT a recording of our performance.
• A different version? We record the full text with all characters. If your director has cut lines, just take those lines out of your playlist (each line is a separate track) after you’ve downloaded the full text.
• Cheating? How could it be cheating to learn your lines well? In Elizabethan England, most actors were illiterate, so they HAD to learn their lines by ear. If anything, it’s cheating to use a full text with commentary instead of ScenePartner!

Actors at all levels are doing this! So can you.

Have you seen the movie “Being John Malkovich”? When we first see Mr. Malkovich, he is sitting in an easy-chair, recording lines onto a mini-tape recorder. Now you know why.

Accomplished actors everywhere know this secret to line learning, but it’s very time-intensive to record all your lines, and getting all your scene partners to record their cue lines onto your tape may be nearly impossible.

Even if you already record your lines routinely, wouldn’t you rather get started with memorization today, after an instant download? Download all your lines and all your cues from Day One and get a head-start from your very first rehearsal.

Select The Play and Character You Need to Memorize

• Hamlet
  • Free Sample
• Macbeth
  • Macbeth
  • Lady Macbeth
  • Banquo
  • Duncan
• Romeo & Juliet
  • Juliet
  • Nurse
  • Romeo
  • Mercutio: Queen Mab Speech
• As You Like It
  • Rosalind
  • Celia
  • Phebe
  • Touchstone
  • Jaques: All The World’s a Stage Speech