Alternative Shakespeare Auditions for Men

Simon Dunmore

• Verlag: Routledge
• Jahr: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135859817
• Auflage: 1
• Thema: Littérature
• Thema: Théâtre

Dunmore brings together fifty speeches for men from plays frequently ignored such as Titus Andronicus, Pericles, and Love's Labours Lost. It also includes good, but over-looked speeches from the more popular plays such as Octavius Caesar from Antony and Cleopatra, Leontes from The Winter's Tale and Buckingham from Richard III. With character descriptions, brief explanations of the context, and notes on obscure words, phrases and references, it is the perfect source for a unique audition.

The Speeches

All’s Well that Ends Well

Parolles

Parolles is a follower of Bertram, the son of the Countess of Rossillion. He is variously described as a ‘coward’, a ‘blusterer’ and a ‘very tainted fellow, and full of wickedness’. However, after his exposure as a charlatan later in the play, he shows a strong pragmatism; his self-promoted career as a noble soldier is finished, but he makes the most of his new situation and resolves to become a jester (‘There’s place and means for every man alive’). He is here talking with Helena, an orphan adopted by the Countess, and secretly in love with Bertram. Parolles arrives and asks her point-blank, ‘Are you meditating on virginity?’; she asks him how she might defend hers: ‘Unfold to us some warlike resistance’. This is his advice.

Although we are given many guidelines to his character, his age is not really indicated.

I have cut a few lines of Helena’s to construct this speech.

Act 1, Scene 1

Parolles –

1 5 10 15 20 22

Man, setting down before you, will undermine and blow you up. Virginity being blown down, man will quicklier be blown up. Marry, in blowing him down again, with the breach yourselves made, you lose your city. It is not politic in the commonwealth of nature to preserve virginity. Loss of virginity is rational increase, and there was never virgin got till virginity was first lost. That you were made of is mettle to make virgins. Virginity, by being once lost, may be ten times found; by being ever kept, it is ever lost. ‘Tis too cold a companion; away with ‘t! There’s little can be said in ‘t; ‘tis against the rule of nature. To speak on the part of virginity is to accuse your mothers, which is most infallible disobedience. He that hangs himself is a virgin: virginity murders itself, and should be buried in highways out of all sanctified limit, as a desperate offendress against nature. Virginity breeds mites, much like a cheese; consumes itself to the very paring, and so dies with feeding his own stomach. Besides, virginity is peevish, proud, idle, made of self-love – which is the most inhibited sin in the canon. Keep it not; you cannot choose but lose by ‘t. Out with’t! Within t’ one year it will make itself two, which is a goodly increase; and the principal itself not much the worse. Away with ‘t.

1 setting down before laying siege to

1–2 blow you up make you pregnant (literally, explode semen into)

2–3 be blown up reach orgasm

3 Marry Why, to be sure (a mild swear-word literally meaning, ‘by the Virgin Mary’)

4 city virginity

6 rational increase (1) sensible benefit, (2) leads to the increase of (‘rational’) human beings virgin got child conceived

7 That That which mettle temperament (This is ‘metal’ in some editions.)

10 in ‘t for it

13 virginity murders itself for virginity prevents future children (‘virgins’)

14 sanctified limit consecrated ground

16 to the very paring to the last sliver

17 feeding his own stomach living (‘feeding’) on its own pride (at maintaining virginity)

19 inhibited sin in the canon prohibited sin in the Scriptures

19–20 Keep it not; you cannot choose but lose by ‘t. Out with ‘t! Don’t hoard your capital (or ‘principal’); for you can only lose it. Invest it to earn interest! (He is punning on keeping the ‘principle’ of ‘virginity’ or earning interest, by investing in children – this continues to the end of the speech.)

20 t’ one (This is ‘ten’ or ‘the’ in other editions.)

Antony and Cleopatra

Octavius Caesar

Octavius Caesar (Octavian) (63 B. C.–A. D. 14) was the adopted son of Julius Caesar – in fact he was the grandson of Julius’ sister. Octavius was a 19-year-old student in Athens when Caesar was assassinated; he immediately asserted himself politically and was soon at the head of an army of pro-Caesar forces – with Antony and Lepidus – that eventually defeated the assassins. The three victors formed the ‘Triumvirate’ to rule the Roman Empire. Within a few years Antony had started his affair with Cleopatra, queen of Egypt (a Roman conquest), and reports started to reach Octavius that Antony had been neglecting his duties. At this point Octavius is about twenty-three and is talking with Lepidus, very much the weakest of the triumvirs. A messenger has just brought news that a rebel force led by Pompey is massing against the triumvirate. He appeals to the absent Antony.

Antony was very much the mastermind of their military successes and was nearly twenty years older than Octavius.

Octavius became the first emperor of Rome, with the name Augustus, in 27 B. C.

Act 1, Scene 4

Caesar –

You are too indulgent. Let’s grant it is not 1

Amiss to tumble on the bed of Ptolemy

To give a kingdom for a mirth, to sit

And keep the turn of tippling with a slave

To reel the streets at noon, and stand the buffet 5

With knaves that smells of sweat. Say this becomes him –

As his composure must be rare indeed

Whom these things cannot blemish – yet must Antony

No way excuse his foils when we do bear

So great weight in his lightness. If he filled 10

His vacancy with his voluptuousness

Full surfeits and the dryness of his bones

Call on him for ‘t. But to confound such time

That drums him from his sport, and speaks as loud

As his own state and ours – ‘tis to be chid 15

As we rate boy...