In today's lesson we looked at a piece of text from Twelfth Night, by Orsino. We read the text together as a group and had to pick out 4 words from each line we found stood out and meant the most.
"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 o'er my ear like the sweet sound,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more:
'Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
O spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou,
That, notwithstanding thy capacity
Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,
Of what validity and pitch soe'er,
But falls into abatement and low price,
Even in a minute: so full of shapes is fancy
That it alone is high fantastical"
These words stood out to me as they had the most inflection when I was saying them and they are all strong words, especially love and spirit. As the whole monologue is about love. We then had to pick ONE word from our line, and say them aloud feeling the meaning of the word, so we would use the word to influence our inflection when saying it. I picked SPIRIT, and I said it very softly and quietly. We all did this together, and then we had to add a gesture when saying the word. This helped with getting into the exercise and also made the word more powerful. My gesture was taking my hand to my heart and then up to the sky, as though showing my spirit floating out of me, and I actually imagined that when I did the gesture. It was a very light and airy movement, which to me represents a spirit. I enjoyed this exercise, as it was fun to play around with the words and to also see which word everybody else picked. Most people picked the positive words, like Love, Fantastical, Violets and Fancy, but others chose more negative words like Dying, Abatement and Excess.
When we had all chosen our words, we all had to put them together in a sentence, telling a story. This was interesting and we all created a piece of text together as a team and read it together a few times. We then wrote this up on the board and created a short chorus piece using gestures and the space of the room. We would each perform our chosen gesture when our word was said, and we all said the piece in unison, but performed our gestures individually. When everyone was doing their gesture, we all radiated their movement, like when someone said LOVE, I felt myself go slightly up onto my tip toes, it was very subtle but I could definitely feel the emotions within the words, and it allowed us all to radiate with each other, but not over shadowing the person who was doing their gesture.
This exericse helped me understand Shakespeare a lot more, and the way he words his plays.
I found on Sparknotes a translation of this monologue by Orsino and it is actually pretty much what I interpreted it to mean which is a good thing as it shows I am learning to understand Shakespeare in a more advanced way.
If it’s true that music makes people more in love, keep playing.
Give me too much of it, so I’ll get sick of it and stop loving. Play that part again! It sounded sad.
Oh, it sounded like a sweet breeze blowing gently over a bank of violets, taking their scent with it.
That’s enough. Stop. It doesn’t sound as sweet as it did before.
Oh, love is so restless!
It makes you want everything, but it makes you sick of things a minute later, no matter how good they are.
Love is so vivid and fantastical that nothing compares to it.
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