Posted on by Richard La Rosa

Willy the wordsmith

Verily, on this fair day of April in the year of our Lord 1564, within the walls of the house in Henley Street where I first drew breath, I take betwixt clumsy fingers this quill fashioned from a goose’s plumage, and inscribe my musings with iron gall ink upon parchment made of calveskins—or perhaps fashioned from a lamb my father skinned to make his finest gloves.

‘Twas but three days since I emerged mewling and puking into this realm, a babe of lamentations and expulsion of bodily humors upon my sire’s attire. Oh, the ignominy of befouling my father’s raiment with my infantile regurgitation on the very day of my christening at the hallowed abode known as the Holy Trinity Church.

My father, John by name, is a man of enigmatic beliefs—whether Papist or Protestant, it remains a mystery to my understanding. A craftsman in leather and trafficker of wool, he harbors aspirations of ascending to the dignified offices of alderman and high bailiff of our plague ridden hamlet.

Mary, the gentle mother who bore me in her womb, hails from a lineage of distinction in Wilmcote. Her gaze is suffused with a love so pure as she cradles me in her embrace. Yet, a dread seizes my heart when I raise my voice in ‘plaint, fearing my mother’s affections may turn to ire and my days be cut short by her swift retribution.

John and Mary Shakespear, the names of my forebears from the heart of the Midlands, a narrative so commonplace as to border on the mundane. Yet, they bestowed upon me the name of William, a name destined to echo through the corridors of time. O, how the threads of fate intertwine, guiding my course upon this mortal stage.

As I set down these words, a sense of preordained purpose stirs within me. What lies ahead for this babe of Stratford-upon-Avon, this William Shakespeare? Only the passage of time shall unveil, as I embark upon this journey of existence and eloquence.

Posted on by Richard La Rosa

Alec Guinness on getting a laugh…

Theatrical audiences are fickle beasts and each audience is prone to its own sort of reactions and mood swings with regard to play performances; no two audiences are alike. So, it’s best to think of audience reactions as gestalt expressions of the moment and to not take them personally. Especially when you speak a line in a Saturday night performance that gets a huge laugh from the audience—and the same line spoken to a Sunday afternoon audience the next day lands like a sour note sung to a cricket symphony.

Sir Alec Guiness, writing in My Name Escapes Me: The Diary of a Retiring Actor, gives the following example of the fickle beast’s inconstancy, and sometime mystifying immunity to laughter, as a cautionary tale for the fragile actor ego:

“In 1937 [Sir Tyrone] Guthrie directed Twelfth Night at the Old Vic with Larry Olivier as Toby Belch, his then wife, Jill Esmond, as Olivia, and the adorable Jessica Tandy as Viola. Marius Goring was Feste and I was Aguecheek; for some odd quirky reason of my own I played him as if he were Stan Laurel. It was a very undisciplined affair, not good at all, but I was thrilled to be acting my first important part. Also, I learned a thing or two while doing it. Like every Aguecheek that has ever been I got a laugh on the line, ‘I was adored once too.’ One midweek matinee, with a sparse audience, no laugh came although I undoubtedly sought it. Larry hissed in my ear, “Fool! You should know a matinee audience would never laugh at that.’”

Occasionally, a schizophrenic quality in the audience will present itself in the traitorous bark of laughter from a single audience member. In cases like this, while I reject the belief some actors have that sometimes they “are performing for the wrong audience,” I fully believe that when a single audience member laughs when no one else is laughing that person is definately sitting in the wrong audience.

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Richard La Rosa is an American writer that once played Sir Toby Belch in William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.