I was looking over my notes from the staged reading of Bound. There was one place where I had made an acting note (never actually transmitted to the actor in question) that the passage was something the character had never said to anyone before. And it occurred to me that, although I didn’t think about it whilst writing the play, there was a good deal in the script having to do with Things You Say a Lot and Things You Have Never Said. That made me wonder how much that idea is threaded through literature generally, or if it’s just me.
Gentle Readers may be noting that those two categories of speech are not the only categories there are, and in fact comprise only a small amount of all the stuff people say. That’s true. But I think the stuff that falls into either of those two categories is important, and perhaps paying attention to it is one way to make some key decisions as an actor.
Look, here are some specific examples from Enchanted April. When I am closing the deal on the castle, I say that It’s a small castle, but of course it has most of the “modern improvements”, as an estate agent would say. That pretty obviously falls into the category of Things I Say a Lot. A bit later, addressing one of the women renting the place, out of the blue comes I like your face, Mrs. Arnott. Is that a Thing I Say a Lot? If it is, that’s an important thing about my character. Is it, perhaps, a Thing I Have Never Said? Again, that’s important. I suspect it should feel like one or the other, and it’ll be largely up to the director which kind of character I’ll be.
Now, I don’t think Matthew Barber (who adapted the play of Enchanted April) thought about the lines in those terms. And I certainly didn’t when I was writing Bound. But if I went through the script with a highlighter and made notes of things that fell into those categories, I suspect I would find some very interesting things. I think each of my characters has some moment in the play when they say a Thing They Have Never Said. And perhaps just as important, some other moments when they repeat Things They Say a Lot.
I should be clear—the category is not for Things You Have Never Had Occasion to Say, such as Cheese sandwiches are tasty, Mr. President or This is my first time in Seattle. It’s perhaps more accurately Things You Have Never Said Aloud. If I tell you that when I was a kid I wanted to be a doctor, and it’s a Thing I have Never Said Aloud, then it’s probably pretty important, and there’s a story behind it. If it’s a Thing I Say a Lot, then it’s probably pretty important as well, and there’s a story behind that.
Just thinking about plays, there’s a lot of stuff about those categories in Death of a Salesman, and in all of Beckett, or all of Beckett with words, anyway, and in Streetcar… I don’t think that there’s a lot of it in Shakespeare, although I could be persuaded otherwise. I’m not claiming it as the Universal Key to anything, just that it happens to be pretty important in some pretty good plays.
And in other things? In movies? In books? I don’t know. It’s obviously a dialogue-based concept, so I wouldn’t necessarily expect it to turn up in less dialogue-based forms. On the other hand, in addition to being part of Drama, it’s part of actual life—my life, anyway, as I certainly have a lot of Things I Say a Lot and a fair number of Things I Have Never Said Aloud, and I remember moments when I said a Thing I Had Never Said Before, and moments when I say some of the Things I Say a Lot, and some of those moments are the most vivid memories I have.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.
I am trying to come up with a phrase that I’ve never said before that nevertheless sounds like a spambot trying to sneak a link onto your blog, and I just can’t do it. That said, I think this is a valuable way to look at dialog, and now I fear I must go back and analyze my writing, because I am compulsive.
peace
Matt
This is certainly a useful way of looking at dramatic language!
I would agree that it isn’t all that much of this sort of thing in Shakespeare. I would hazard a guess, in fact, that there is little of it in drama before the later nineteenth century, when repression began to be uncovered (in drama and in psychology) as a major psychological phenomenon. Without a theory of repression and a society that makes such a theory pertinent, one may not identify “things I think a lot but am never able to say” as a category.
I’d guess that the first playwright whose scripts an actor could meaningfully mark up in these terms would be Ibsen. It would be huge for late O’Neill, of course.
Hm. Now that I think about it, there is much in Shakespeare that would respond well to that way of thinking. What comes to mind is the beginning of Richard III, particularly the film with Sir Ian McKellen. He begins the speech as a public, rehearsed oratory before it suddenly switches to a very private muttering. And indeed, is this the first time he has said aloud (for whatever definition of aloud a soliloquy meets) that he is not shaped for sportive tricks, or is it the sort of thing he says all the time, either to himself or his reflection? What about his determination to prove a villain–is he at last announcing a decision many times rehearsed in his head, or is he deciding just at the moment of speech?
And again, in King Lear, is “Nothing will come from nothing” a Thing He Says a Lot? I think it might be. And in Hamlet, when he breaks forth with his suicidal to be or not to be, is it an argument he is rehashing, or one new to him? When, earlier, he cries out “but two months dead!”, is it the first time he has brought the words actually out of his mouth?
The categories, as applied to Shakespeare, have to be held pretty broadly, though, since not only is Shakespeare unaware of the theory of repression, he uses speech very differently from a modern playwright, and so people do not generally repeat themselves in the same words. Compared to Harold Pinter, who hadn’t occurred to me before but is another example, where he is focused on how people say the same things in the same way over and over, until they say something new, Shakespeare’s dialogue doesn’t easily leap into the categories. But I think that as an actor’s tool, it would still be useful, albeit more indirectly.
Thanks,
-V.
it takes a lot of conventional wisdom to build an equilibrium. conflicts between sets of CW can be the whole story. personalizing it a little, maybe,
* things i never told anyone
* things i never guessed
* things i never needed to tell you
* things i thought were secrets
* things i forgot
* jokes and truisms
* things my people say all the time that i’m shocked you’ve never heard
* games and new useful tricks
* things that sound stupid when i say them out loud
* things that help me control you
* things that help us distinguish our group
one can really go to town on this… but i think there’s another wall in theater, blocking off the characters’ other relationships. a controlled experiment.
Isn’t Polonius’ speech — neither a borrower nor a lender be — the canonical example of Things I Say a Lot?
I would think the canonical example would be either Willy Loman’s twenty-thousand dollar proposition or “We’re waiting for Godot.” But Polonius may be an excellent example of the actor’s-end question, as all three characters need to know whether this is new advice that Polonius held in check for the right moment or whether it is a Thing He Says a Lot.
… and can I add August Wilson to the list of people who make powerful use of the two categories? Particularly hapa’s things my people say all the time that i’m shocked you’ve never heard.
Thanks,
-V.
Interesting ideas.
I think there’s another vaguely related category: Things You’re About To Say But Don’t.
This may not be a useful category for looking at scripts per se (since it involves words that aren’t written), but I think it’s a useful category when looking at characters — especially if you’re looking at them as a writer rather than as an actor, but I imagine it could be useful for actors too.
I think that if the writer, the actor (if the work is being performed), and the audience all know (at least in general terms) what it is that the character thought about saying but didn’t, that can be a really powerful moment.
Of course, when you overuse this kind of thing, you get scripts that are full of “Pause.” “Silence.” “Lacuna.” “Rest.” “–[He breaks off.]” “Rest, followed by a pause, and then a break, and another pause, and a moment of silence.” and so on, and pretty soon you’re Pinter. Or Cage.