Speaking the Speech by Giles Block Mark Rylance

Author:Giles Block, Mark Rylance [Block Giles]
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781780012254
Publisher: Nick Hern

1.

Beatrice also has ten lines of rhymed verse when she is alone at the end of Act 3, Scene 1, after overhearing that Benedick loves her.

2.

Most editions remove the full stop after ‘Claudio’ and substitute a comma, but this is a highly difficult and emotionally fraught moment for Benedick, and the full stop could indicate that he breaks off in midsentence – which is how the full stop is sometimes used in the Folio – before regaining his composure and completing his speech.

3.

This line of Benedick’s is printed as verse in the Quarto, but as prose in the Folio. Either might have been Shakespeare’s intention. If it is prose (as here) then Benedick I suppose becomes unnerved by what Beatrice is saying, and in throwing the verse rhythm attempts to cover his anxiety with a somewhat panicked attempt at wit. Also, maybe oddly, both Quarto and Folio print ‘deceived’ – though most modern editions print ‘deceiv’d’ indicating that these editors feel it should be pronounced as two syllables rather than three. However, if the Quarto is right and the line should continue as verse, it’s a verse line with only four stresses in it. If it is prose then maybe ‘deceived’ should be pronounced rather pedantically with three syllables. For I believe, though I think many don’t, that in prose these words printed with an ‘ed’ ending should on occasions be pronounced with an extra syllable. When Lady Macbeth is sleepwalking and speaking prose (see Chapter 15) the Folio gives her, ‘Fie, my lord, fie, a soldier, and affear’d?’, though at the top of this same speech her famous phrase ‘Out damned spot:’, it is not printed damn’d, but damned – and I think in performance ‘damned’ with two syllables might sound better.

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