ACT 1 PROLOGUE

This opening monologue is simply to introduce and open to play the audience and set the scene. "O, for a muse of fire that would ascend, The brightest heaven of invention! A kingdom for a stage, princes to act, And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!" The chorus are saying that if they had a stage as big as a kingdom, a wild imagination and monarchs to fill the scene - then it would be as truly as it was at the time. However as they don't, they're asking the audience to use their imagination to develop and conjure the scene as they only have the stage and the written words to aid them. "Can this cockpit hold the vastly fields of France?" Can this theatre hold the fields of France? Definitely not physically, but if the audience work with the text, then it can hold whatever it needs to. "Or may we cram, within this wooden O the very casques, that did affright the air at Agincourt?" Can the theatre - this wooden O - hold all the helmets that were so frighting in Agincourt? "O pardon!" Nope. It can't but, please work with us and imagine that it can. "Suppose within the girdle of these walls, are now confined two mighty monarchies, whose high uprearèd and abutting fronts, the perilous narrow ocean parts asunder." Imagine that in these walls, there are two mighty kingdoms, England and France, who are divided by a dangerous and risky ocean - the channel. "Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts." We're not perfect, use your imagination to make us perfect. "Into a thousand parts divide one man, and make imaginary puissance. Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them, printing their proud hoofs i' th' receiving earth, for ’tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings." Divide one actor into a thousand men and you shall have yourself an army, imaging the horses that we takl of and their hooves pounding into the ground, your imagination and thoughts will decorate and dress up our kings. "Carry them here and there, jumping o'er times, Turning th' accomplishment of many years, into an hour-glass; for the which supply." Let your mind jump between different times and take years of accomplishment and events and fit them into one hour. "Admit me chorus to this history; who, prologue-like, your humble patience pray, gently to hear, kindly to judge our play." As the chorus who reads prologue, I (we) ask you to hear and kindly judge our play.

I really like this opening prologue as I feel it definitely not only sets up the story - two mighty monarchies - but also allows the audience to transport themselves from being in a theatre - wooden O - to the fields of France. It directly asks the audience to use their imagination to create the story, that although they may be in an Elizabethan theatre, their minds can help create the journey. It's a brilliant opening to the production which really helps to kick start the slow of the show.

By understanding what I'm truly saying and the purpose behind my lines means I am able to perform the lines to the best of my ability and speak the lines with the energy Shakespeare intended for them to have. It also mean's learning the lines is easier as I am visualise what they're presenting allowing me to easily memorise them. It gives me a lot more to work on in the actual scenes once I understand what I'm saying as I have his lines and the intention behind them to work off.