of rehearsals is the moment to sort this out. As you go through the play, no one is allowed to say the overall meaning of this, or the gist of that; you precisely drill down on every line, every phrase and every word, and make sure they know its exact meaning. If we are to have any theatre of meaning, we do not need to learn how to mime bottles into babies, how to monocycle, or how to scream and shout; we need to be precise and clear about language. Language is what is remarkable about us, language is what makes us and our world, not our ability to wave our arms around in the air. Dancing is a joy, singing takes us to places we could not otherwise reach, but language and being human are an intertwined genetic code creating us and our world. When we start hearing that theatre is not about language, we are often dealing with people who secretly hate it.
To keep the room sharp, there are a few rules. First, everyone is allowed to be a fool, and no question is too stupid. If something is mysterious or unknown, no one should be frightened to admit it. We all have black holes of ignorance, and we should be open about them. But just as important, everyone should be allowed to be smart. No one should be frightened of being informative and generous with knowledge. We are plagued in our contemporary theatre with a fetishising of childishness and simplicity, a worshipping of ignorance. If someone has something of interest or value to say, all should want to hear it. Most important of all, the room needs to be relaxed, and not proud. It always helps if you have a few people who have worked together before, and their relaxed manner with each other can help others worry less about being formal. If I can call one of my old colleagues something unspeakably rude on day one, it usually relaxes the air. If they can call me the same, even better. You want a room to be kind, and to be respectful of each other’s feelings, but never, never formal.
The moment when people get up from the table can be awkward. There is no solution beyond getting on with it. If the room has the right atmosphere, and if everyone feels free to try stuff out, to make mistakes and be brave, then the awkwardness passes. Making the room feel right is axiomatic. People have to allow each other space to be human and honest and foolish. Many things can help with this: a few daft stories to start the day, an attentiveness to listening, a little clowning about. Nothing relaxes the air more than laughter, and a room full of laughter is a healthy room. Tears should be able to flow freely but not indulgently. And a room needs a powerful communal bullshit detector. This starts with how people treat each other, and extends out into the work. If people start acting untruthfully, or phonily, or ostentatiously, you want the room rather than the director to let them know that it is wrong.
There was a unique technical problem with rehearsing this Hamlet. It ended up making it one of the most exciting times I have spent in a rehearsal room.
Our challenge was to rehearse not a team but a squad. To ensure that we always had cover, we had created a system where everyone was learning two, three, four, five, six or seven parts. This was in the full expectation that not everyone would last the full two years (it is still impossible to imagine the same sixteen people that left returned). We had two people to play Hamlet at the start (three by the end), three Ophelias, three Gertrudes, three Claudiuses, three Poloniuses, and by the conclusion of the tour six people who could play Horatio. We could do the play with eight, nine, ten, eleven or twelve actors. We set this up to provide cover and to spread the load of playing, and we soon realised it would be another way of keeping the play fresh. Not only would every venue be new, but also the combination of roles would surprise. In the first year of performance, the company only performed the same combination twice.
We created a carousel system, where we would rehearse a scene with one group of people, then at the end of one iteration, ask one actor to step out to be replaced by another; at the end of the next, a different actor would step out and be replaced, and so on. The scene would spin around the room, and people would jump on and off the bobbing horses. From the first, I said that everyone should be generous and selfish. If they saw someone making a choice on a line or thought that they liked, they should steal it; if they did something new, they should be prepared to give it away. Similarly, if they wanted to do something different, everyone working with them should accommodate it. The broad structure, clean and simple and driven by storytelling, was set by its directors; the details were very much up to the cast.
The work in the room became a fertile mix of imaginative commitment and critical judgement. In the moment they were in the scene, they were in it, alive to its feelings and imaginatively responding to its possibilities. The moment they were out, they were watching the same scene and assessing the truth or life of what their colleagues offered up. There were drawbacks: it was hard for the actors to gain the sheer grinding consistency which ceaseless repetition works into their bones. But the rewards were immense: it gave them an in-depth knowledge of the whole play, it gave them a mature perspective on what they were doing, and it created an atmosphere of parity and of generosity which made them a team. No one was leading the show, everyone was sharing, and all had to look out for each other. This set them up for the challenges ahead. It was also exhilarating to watch. Always the same, and always different, just as every rehearsal should be.
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What sort of production was it to be? Hamlet is one of the most misconceived plays in performance history, its original intentions now obscured by the barnacles of 400 years of theory and presumption. How do you clean off all these misconceptions and try to return it to its original colours? When the Sistine Chapel was cleaned and revealed its primary freshness, many were upset that those nice faded colours, saturated in the smoke and dirt of history, had been lost. They found the renewed work disturbingly vibrant. Part of the Globe’s remit was to reveal Shakespeare’s plays with their original vitality, and for that it was always running into the conservatism of those who like a screen of history between themselves and a classic – just as they liked the musty grime on the Sistine Chapel.
The best way to avoid a misconception is to have no conception at all. There is such a glut of ideas about how to present particular plays, it is sometimes most radical to have no idea. This is hard for many to negotiate, since without a concept, or an argument, they have nothing to talk of afterwards but the play itself, a nudity which they find embarrassing to look at. Our job at the Globe was always to tell the story cleanly, to judge the relationships impartially, and to let the language do the work. To keep true to the modesty of nature. This approach requires oceans of technique and discipline and rigour, where most conceptual work requires puddles. Yet because the work is invisible – it chooses to be – most do not notice it. We ask hard questions about the relationships, about the world and about the language, and then we work our thoughts in discreetly, always ensuring that story and language is bright and clear.
Before becoming technical about language and the verse, it is vital to remember that this is a series of scenes that present life. Without dipping into naturalism, it is important to keep in front of us Shakespeare’s particular realism. This is not a realism based on scenery, on sofas or drinks cabinets or kitchen sinks. It is a realism based on actors coming out and establishing their own reality. They believe that this is a cold rampart of a castle in Denmark, so we can believe it too. The actor playing Hamlet has to believe he is Hamlet so we can join him in the illusion. It is bare-bones realism and has to be presented with absolute conviction. With nothing to back you up, you have to look behind you and say ‘this is a castle’, and look out beyond the audience and say ‘that is Norway’, and believe that both are true. If you can do that, and grind the everyday truth of it into yourself, you can convince an audience. Fingunt simul creduntque, said Tacitus – as soon as they imagine, they believe. This is the bedrock of Shakespeare’s theatre – believe it, say it, and with the participation of the audience it starts to come true.
The advantage here is that the scenes are written with a deft but tungsten-strength verismo. Whether it is that first scene on the battlements with its quick jerky questions and answers; or the torrid swirls of give and take between mother and son in the closet scene; or the awkwardness of the reluctant cleric officiating over Ophelia’s funeral; or the strained goodwill of the Players as they are told how to act by an amateur – in each of these moments and others, Shakespeare sketches a couple of quick lines and there is life: this is his great art. These moments are mysterious and unknowable as life is: they have all its meandering rhythms and peculiar upbeats. Like a breathing still life