You Say Potato by Ben Crystal & David Crystal

Author:Ben Crystal & David Crystal [Crystal, Ben Crystal and David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781447276661
Publisher: Macmillan

A SCOTTISH PLAYER

BEN

Hilton – Yeah, that’s a good question . . . When I was at university, [assumes RP] the George Square University, in the summer holiday, we did, err . . . The Flies – Les Mouches – in which Ian Charleson and I were both up to play the lead, Orestes. And they cast me, which was sensational, and Ian played Zeus. I had no idea what I was doing. Absolutely no idea. Seriously, I really was learning how to act, live on stage. A friend came to see it, and said, ‘All I can see you doing is listening to the sound of your voice.’ Because I was trying so hard to get rid of my Scots.

Hilton McRae and I were sitting outside a cafe in north London, drinking coffee. We’d been friends and colleagues for years, and I’d never asked him about his accent and his career before.

– Why get rid of it?

H – Because I thought that was what I had to do, to do classical theatre. I was only twenty, twenty-one.

– So what did you do?

H – I was so . . . I really didn’t know what I was doing. I don’t think I did anything. But then jump to a few years later, and I was doing a workshop on King Lear. I was playing Edmund. In the middle of it all, I auditioned for Trevor Nunn at the Royal Shakespeare Company. So I did the Bastard speech [from the opening of Act 1, Scene 2] in RP.

Why bastard? wherefore base?

When my dimensions are as well compact,

My mind as generous, and my shape as true,

As honest madam’s issue? Why brand they us

With base? With baseness? Bastardy? Base, base?

Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take

More composition and fierce quality

Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed,

Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops,

Got ’tween asleep and wake? Well, then,

Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land:

Our father’s love is to the bastard Edmund

As to the legitimate: fine word, – legitimate!

Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed,

And my invention thrive, Edmund the base

Shall top the legitimate. I grow; I prosper:

Now, gods, stand up for bastards!

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