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Cardenio (U.S.), Script |
by Stephen Greenblatt and Charles Mee
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Click here for the complete script.
| ALFRED |
Now, then, people,
what are we doing here?
What has brought us together?
Why are we here today?
We are making art.
A place to live
where we have never had the occasion to live before
and with people whose acquaintance we have not previously made.
And why?
So we can see
what it is to be a human being.
That's all.
Nothing more.
But, certainly, nothing less. |
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LUISA |
And so, as actors,
we won't want you to be just
wallowing in your own private worlds
your own childhoods and first loves
and experiences of daily life today
thinking that it is not your job to become the character you portray
but rather to make that character become who you are
to have your manners
your turns of phrase and gesture
your feelings about life and love
no, no, no
you are not film actors
this is not about you
Cardenio is not you
Luscinda is not you
Don Fernando is not you
rather you will become Cardenio, Luscinda, Don Fernando
and we
in the audience
will be the witness to a miracle.
Now then
speak the speeches simply
as the playwright wrote them |
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ALFRED [very grandly] |
trippingly on the tongue:
but if you mouth it, as many of your players do,
I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines.
Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus,
but use all gently;
for in the very torrent, tempest,
and, as I may say, the whirlwind of passion,
you must acquire and beget a temperance
that may give it smoothness.
Oooooooooooooooooo,
it offends me to the soul.... |
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[Luisa "shushes" him with a hand gesture, and goes on.] |
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LUISA |
speak the speeches
so that you can be heard in the last row of the audience
that's all
never mind the posturing
the getting ready to begin to consider thinking about the possibility of starting almost to feel something
no
speak the speech
the feeling will follow.
Questions? |
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SALLY |
Will we need to memorize all the lines? |
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EDMUND |
I don't think I can memorize all the lines. |
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