From rep to reps: can a `Shakespeare gym` solve the crisis in verse-speaking?
(The Guardian Culture News)

The Royal Shakespeare Company has vowed to drill the Bard´s rhythms into its actors - but our alienation from his language runs deeper `Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue.` So says Hamlet to the players. But has his advice gone unheeded at a time when Shakespearean verse-speaking is widely held to be in decline? The RSC clearly thinks there is an issue as it has set up a Shakespeare `gym` in Stratford upon Avon to ensure, in the words of its artistic director Gregory Doran, `Everyone has the iambic pentameter in their bloodstream.` That´s a welcome trend, but I suspect the crisis goes deeper than that - and that classic texts are often regarded as alien, hostile territory. Continue reading...