Shakespeare on Toast: Getting a Taste for the Bard (11 page)

When going through a play, you’ll find
thou
and
you
in various different forms, depending on how they’re being used:

The
thou
-forms are
thou, thee, thy, thine
, and
thyself
.

You
-forms are
you, your, yours
, and
yourself/yourselves
.

In a scene, when someone changes from using
thou
to using
you
, or the other way round,
it always means something
– Shakespeare consciously chose when to switch between them – and it usually implies a change of attitude, or a new emotion or mood.

It could be anything: a sign of extra affection or of anger; an insult or a compliment; a piece of playfulness or an indication that the speaker is adopting a more businesslike or professional attitude, distancing themselves socially or physically; or trying to become more formal or informal.

A modern-day equivalent might be how you choose to address your boss, when you’re already on first-name terms. If I walk into work and say
Hi John
to my boss and he replies
Hello Mr Crystal
, I sure as hell will address him more formally next time we encounter each other. I’d have to be either very confident in myself or very foolhardy to keep calling him
John
once he’s established that formality between us. Likewise, if the next day my boss calls me
Ben
, then I’ve got a pretty good chance of calling him by his first
name again, and it wouldn’t be considered too informal.

That said, if the Queen were to call me
Ben
I’m fairly sure she wouldn’t be very happy if I called her
Liz
. The rules of formality and social hierarchy that we follow today apply in a very similar way to how
thou
and
you
is used in Shakespeare.

As well as the sociological aspect, the intimacy that is implied when saying
thou
to someone is a good indicator to an actor to be physically close to the person they’re talking to on stage.

A good starting point when acting or reading Shakespeare for the first time is to always be aware of whether the characters are using
thou
or
you
to each other.

If they’re using
thou
to each other, and there are other people not involved in the dialogue, can those other people hear what’s being said? If they’ve been using
thou
to each other, but then one character switches to
you
, what made that character switch? Do they feel insulted? What might have made their attitude change?

There are hundreds of examples of this happening scattered throughout the plays, and either as an actor, a reader, or simply a watcher of Shakespeare, not to be aware of the changes is to ignore a great part of his intention when he was writing.

A couple, like Beatrice and Benedick in
Much Ado About Nothing
, starting to use
thou
to each other when they
haven’t before, is a little like when you start a relationship with someone nowadays, and begin to call them
honey
or
darling, sweetheart
or
love
.

Conversely, when two characters stop using it to each other, it equally means a great deal. Using this writing technique, something of great import can be subtly conveyed without anything more direct being said out loud.

There’s a great and often-missed moment right at the beginning of
Hamlet
– considering it’s the opening ten lines, Shakespeare packs an awful lot of back-story into very few words. Looking at the second-person pronouns and their variant forms, you can gather a lot of information about what’s happening (the italics aren’t there to show stress, only to point out pronouns):

Two men encounter each other. Francisco, a guard on duty hearing someone call to him, assumes his authority and demands the other man show himself, and he uses the formal
yourself
to do it. Because both men have asked the other for identification, and particularly as Francisco is being formal, we can assume that either it’s too dark or Barnardo is too far away for Francisco to see clearly, or both.

Barnardo gives the password, an affirmation of Friend rather than Foe, with ‘Long live the King’ – a formal greeting that would imply they’re at a more heightened state of watch than normal.

Once identity is established, Francisco responds formally, courteously, with
you
, one professional talking to another: ‘
You
come most carefully upon
your
hour.’

By the time they seem to physically meet, Barnardo becomes more informal and chatty: he uses ’
Tis
instead of ‘it is’, and he switches to the more friendly
thee
when he sends Francisco off to bed:

So we find out it’s twelve o’clock, and cold, Francisco’s being sent off to bed, so it
is
most likely night-time; Barnardo is
the relieving guard, and we find out a little later that they’ve been on guard like this for a few days now … But why?

Thank goodness for that
, says Francisco,
it’s bloody cold and I’m not happy about any of this
.

For some reason, in response to what Francisco has just said, Barnardo immediately switches from using the
thou
form of ‘Get
thee
to bed’ back to the
you
form:

Now why would he do that? There must be more to ‘I am sick at heart’ than
I’m ill
or
I’m tired
, to provoke a change of formality from Barnardo.

As we later find out, they’re on guard because a ghost has been seen walking the battlements, so they must be pretty on edge (thus the formal ‘Friend or Foe’ opening). Perhaps Barnardo thinks Francisco saw the ghost while he was on duty. ‘Have
you
had quiet guard?’, asks Barnardo, switching to the
you
of professional soldier and boss that he used when he entered, rather than the
thee
of a friend and colleague that came a little later.

To the relief of both, Francisco gives a curious, and
probably pointed but welcome reply: ‘Not a Mouse stirring …’

An incredible amount of subtext and back-story, all glaringly obvious once you know what you’re looking for, and most of it simply conveyed with a couple of pronouns.

There are some great
thou/you
instances in Shakespeare, which can lead to intense discussions in a rehearsal room.

In
Othello
, both Desdemona and Othello always use
thou
to Iago, and
you
to Cassio. Is that a sign of great respect and intimacy to Iago, or is it a great affront, seeing that the
you
form is technically more formal (and so more respectful)?

It’s hard to say, but saying
thou
to someone could sometimes be taken as an insult – in
Twelfth Night
, Sir Toby Belch advises Andrew Aguecheek to insult his enemy by calling him
thou
.

Particularly interesting for us, in anticipation of the final Act of this book, is what Shakespeare does in
Macbeth
.

The relationship between Macbeth and his wife is one of many fascinating relationships that Shakespeare scripted, and the complexity of the relationship is reflected in the way they refer to each other.

To begin with, the forms they use suggest a great closeness (take a look at Act 1, Scene 5 – the letter scene – to see her changing use of
thou
and
you
), but very quickly we
find a relationship that shifts in respect, formality, and intimacy. After Act 1, Scene 7 – once Macbeth has tried to convince his wife that they shouldn’t kill Duncan – Lady Macbeth never uses
thou
to her husband again.

It’s a subtle change in the use of pronouns that would seem to imply she’s lost a certain degree of love and respect for her husband …

All of these things – the pronouns, the need for the original phrasing and the particular words he chose to use – are ingredients to the big birthday cake that is the poetry Shakespeare wrote. But before I cut a big slice for you, there’s a main course to take care of …

Scene 4

A Christmas tree, Liverpool

W
hen I started writing this book, I found a report in a newspaper that described new research by a scientist in Liverpool. The scientist said that when you read Shakespeare, the extra work that the poetry and the unfamiliar words require makes a part of the temporal lobe of your brain known as the
Sylvian Fissure
light up like a Christmas tree.

Basically, he said, reading Shakespeare, and taking the time to work through the hard words and the poetry, makes you smarter.

I’m not going to pretend that everyone loves poetry. Personally speaking, I used to despise it.

But a Shakespeare director, a very nice bearded chap called Patrick Tucker, told me once that Shakespeare’s poetry has a system to it; that it’s full of hidden clues from Shakespeare telling his actors how to deliver his lines; and that once you know how, the poetry is practically colour-coded, virtually letting you read it by numbers. Alan Turing and Dan Brown eat your heart out.

Before I’d learnt this system in Shakespeare, it seemed like poetry was surrounded by a vast amount of technical
terminology used by very flouncy people, and so either required too much work that I didn’t want to do, or a goatee and a hat, neither of which I had. I had an overall sense that I just really didn’t get it, that poetry was a club I wanted to join but which didn’t want me as a member.

It felt a bit like when I wanted to get into jazz, but knew nothing about the music: I knew only that there were hundreds of artists waiting to be discovered, that it was generally thought of as being inaccessible unless you understood it (which just seemed ridiculous), and I had been told by others that it was a chaotic, disorganised sort of music … I had no idea where and how to begin, really only knowing that if I did find a way in, I’d probably be hooked forever.

Thank you, Miles Davis. When I listened to his record
Kind of Blue
, it seemed so simple to begin with. The repetitive themes sounded basic, and the other instruments seemed disjointed, completely separate from each other. But Davis was a genius too, and listening again, I realised the themes were actually quite beautifully complicated, the instruments were in a sort of a-rhythmic harmony. My ears just weren’t used to what was going on. The way Davis played jazz, he led you into his world, and taught you how to listen to his music. Shakespeare did the same for me with poetry.

With poetry, though, I had already been struggling for
some time to understand it technically, having learnt a rather stringent set of rules on How To Take A Poem Apart … though the word
deconstruct
was more than likely used instead. And this is part of the problem when looking at poetry: a lot of fancy names are given to what are essentially very simple ideas.

One simple idea, in particular, causes a lot of trouble. Specifically, a type of poetry that was incredibly popular while Shakespeare was an up-and-coming writer, looking for a nice cash bunny to set him up.

So popular was this particular type of poetry, and so varied were the ways of using it, that he dedicated most of his writing career to mastering, playing with, and perfecting the style. Indeed, ‘it’ remained the popular style of poetry for the rest of his life, and for quite a time beyond, partly due to his own success in writing it. What is this particular, popular, money-spinning style of writing poetry called?

You’ve probably heard its name.

Take a deep breath, and say it with me. Whisper it …

… iambic pentameter …

Good. I’m glad we got through that together, so now let’s deal with it. Like a sticking plaster, let’s get it over and done with, and rip it off quick.

Why do we have to deal with it in the first place? Why
can’t we get away with ignoring it and pretending it isn’t there? Because to do so would be to ignore the bulk of what Shakespeare is. Shakespeare saw potential in iambic pentameter, in a similar way to the programmers who saw the basic search engines, and invented Google.