No Small Parts (Only Speechless Women)

Abstract

When it comes to acting in modern productions of Shakespeare’s plays, size is more than all talk. That is, though how much a character speaks often serves as the measure of a role’s size, “small parts” may have a lot to say—and, as it turns out, the actors playing them may have a lot (or too little) to do. Some modern approaches to dramaturgy and practice may mean that the performers playing roles not qualified as large are susceptible to isolation throughout the artistic process, possibly having reduced rehearsal time. If the number of spoken lines influences the number of rehearsal hours, an actor playing a “small part” may be at a disadvantage when it comes to opportunities for character development and the benefits of creative collaboration. (In a rehearsal process for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, for example, how active might Hippolyta’s participation be if she is not doubling as Titania?) Additionally, having fewer lines on the stage can mean inheriting more labor behind the scenes, since an available body is a valuable commodity in the economy of production (what tasks might Ursula undertake during Much Ado About Nothing?). The tension between “playing conditions” and “working conditions” in the theater is thus especially heightened for Shakespeare’s women, whose onstage existence can throw an uncanny shadow upon the offstage experiences of those who play them.

1. Introduction

In the small Texas town in which I grew up, when my mother sent us outside to play on a sluggish summer afternoon, if the heat was too suffocating for biking or freeze tag, my siblings and I pretended we were at “church”. Because that’s not suffocating at all. Especially for a young girl confined within a conservative environment in the American south of the 1980s.

Part recreation and part rehearsal, playing church was easy since we so frequently witnessed the real thing. Particularly significant—and simple enough to replicate—was that the religious tradition of my childhood prohibited women from participating in official business during the service. While men took turns doing the sanctified stuff of worship, most women kept busy managing bored children and shushing babbling babies. They removed little ones to the designated “cry room” outside the sanctuary if trouble erupted, often appearing desperate to avoid the reproachful glares of other churchgoers. A mother’s move from congregation to segregation was normalized as both natural and necessary. If this doesn’t say “fun summertime game for children”, I’m not sure what would.

Our mock congregation’s only marginalized member, I sat silent during our make-believe church services. I wore a worn-out pair of my mother’s high heels. A swift scurry off to the “cry room” with my wailing baby doll was inevitable (a little risky in those heels—but anything for the love of the craft). While my brothers dutifully mimicked the men we saw front and center every Sunday, I emulated the strong, devout women I observed playing small roles that were not actually small at all—roles in which less leading (visible) work in the communal gathering meant more behind-the-scenes (invisible) labor in isolation.

This was one of my earliest experiences of striving to perform in conditions not crafted for my inclusion. As a woman performing in Shakespeare’s plays, I have recalled the constrictions of my childhood church in ways that sometimes take my breath away. The absence of women on Shakespeare’s stage is one reason for the correlation. After all, these conditions were not crafted for my inclusion either. Moreover, it is nothing new to recognize the silencing of women in Shakespeare’s plays, and the early modern enthusiasm for speechless women can create complex dynamics in modern performance practices. Women who have been assigned no lines may have things to say, however, even as they labor silently—on the stage or behind the scenes. Any assumption that when a woman is speechless or secluded she has reconciled herself to her culturally prescribed passivity or marginalization does not align with my experience of embodying such characters (or of playing a quiet parishioner).1

Gemma Jones reveals a similar dissonance between her artistic ambition and her performance parameters while rehearsing The Winter’s Tale in 1981. The Royal Shakespeare Company veteran and famed actor of stage and screen explains that “Hermione is not a large part”, reflecting on the ramifications of the role’s size on her rehearsal experience:

Practically, this means I have to share rehearsal time and my calls for attention are sporadic. I find this very difficult. My adrenalin is often dammed; progress is halting—one step forward and two steps back; and the time between one rehearsal and the next arid and frustrating.

Ultimately, Jones concludes that “it is easier to play a large part”, clarifying that the “solitary state” in which she must craft her character hinders her “progress” with the role: “having exposed myself to my fellow actors in an open forum, the sounds I make on my own are hollow” (Jones 1985, p. 158).

In her contemplation of her specific circumstances, Jones reaches the conclusion that the perceived size of her role has limited her participation in the artistic process. What having “a large part” means in modern performance, then, may extend beyond the number of or percentage of words spoken in a play. Jones points out that the limited stage time for her character results in less rehearsal time for her as an actor, blocking off her artistic energy (“my adrenalin is often dammed”) and constraining her creative potential (“progress is halting”) in ways that presumably would not happen if she had “a large part”. She emphasizes here not how often Hermione speaks, but how often she rehearses Hermione’s speech “in a solitary state”. Between periods of isolation, she has the benefit of speaking in “an open forum” with her “fellow actors”, amplifying how “hollow” the “sounds” she makes alone seem to be.

Though surely not representative of all actors’ experiences, Jones’s reflection on her Hermione implies that working without words in Shakespeare might lead to working without other advantages: focused and frequent rehearsal time, collaborative contributions to and from the cast, artistic space that facilitates character development, and the opportunity for one’s “sounds” to be heard. That Jones ultimately emphasizes “sounds” over other aspects of her artistry is telling, particularly given the focus in Shakespeare training and performance on the voice. Equally revealing is the assertion that her role’s size results in her “solitary state” and renders her speech “hollow”, mirroring the circumstances of Hermione herself when—in an “open forum”, between periods of isolation—she acknowledges that “it shall scarce boot” her “to say” her truth (Shakespeare 2010, 3.2.24-25).

Jones’s story suggests that when women actors of Shakespeare play with fewer lines, they may find themselves playing alone. Were there a “cry room” in the theatre, in other words, it might be overflowing with Shakespeare’s women. Worth noting is that “cry” not only means to weep but also can refer to using the voice to express oneself (as in, “cry out”). Whether drowning in tears or dying to speak, such women—and the actors who play them—may have to do so in seclusion. Critical calculations of what are the central roles based on how much a character talks can thus lead to working conditions that are less than ideal for an actor whose lines do not add up. What can happen when a woman’s body takes up space, even if her voice does not, complicates the question of what it means to have (or to not have) “a large part”. In performance, if size matters, a measuring stick made of spoken lines will tend to favor Shakespeare’s men. It may also be used to scoot to the outskirts of the artistic process actors who are speechless or vocally restricted by “small parts”, distancing them not only from the stage but also from other facets of the production. When it comes to the relationship between “playing conditions” and “working conditions” in the theater, the onstage lives of Shakespeare’s women can cast a strange shadow upon the offstage labor of those portraying them.

2. Speaking in Shakespeare

How a modern actor navigates speaking in Shakespeare’s plays affects all involved, from scene partners on stage to spectators in the house. Delivering such language “trippingly on the tongue”, as Hamlet advises, calls for care not only to ensure poetic precision, but also to facilitate basic communication (Shakespeare 2017, 3.2.2). The way in which an actor uses the play’s words contributes to character construction, clarifies thematic concerns, and carries the plot forward. Near the beginning of the second edition of Speaking Shakespeare, renowned vocal coach Patsy Rodenburg emphasizes that when performing Shakespeare, “the action is in the word—not merely described by it, not behind it or under it” (Rodenburg [2002] 2023, p. 14). For an actor of Shakespeare, speaking is an urgent matter of survival in heightened and hazardous circumstances, as Rodenburg stresses, since “the word is the character’s way out—body, heart and mind meet in the word” (Rodenburg [2002] 2023, p. 16). Ultimately, Rodenburg says, “in Shakespeare, the word is the beginning and end. The voice serves the word and the word serves the voice. Both should be in place before you enter a rehearsal room” (Rodenburg [2002] 2023, p. 17). The scriptural parallel implies the sanctity of Shakespeare’s spoken language—as the Gospel of John declares that “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”, so Shakespeare’s works demand that “the word is the beginning and end” (King James Bible Online 2007, John 1:1).

If words represent the primary point of access to the sacredness of Shakespeare’s plays, the actors playing characters who are assigned few lines may have a problem. Rodenburg clarifies, however, that the efficacy of language is as much about listening as it is about speaking: “these plays are about survival, and in order to survive we need to listen with full presence” (Rodenburg [2002] 2023, p. 10). Listening is vital because “the world Shakespeare creates is a dangerous one”. She continues: “his characters use their language to connect to the world… to survive, to probe, to explore, to quest… They have to listen very carefully if they are to negotiate and survive the scenarios he puts them in” (Rodenburg [2002] 2023, p. 19). While Rodenburg is alert to speaking and that which is spoken—“we are what we speak”—she also stresses the importance of active listening, something inclusive of all the actors on stage at any given moment (Rodenburg [2002] 2023, p. 21). Since an actor would be hard pressed to speak and listen at the same time, it is worth considering how a speechless presence contributes to storytelling in Shakespeare, along with what value it holds (in training, in rehearsal, in performance, and in criticism).

While vocal training may address more than speaking and listening—breath and the body, mechanics and muscularity, energy and endurance, among other things—voicing words is an essential concern for performing works driven by and dependent upon poetic language. One of the aims of vocal training is “to instill into all speakers their personal and political ownership of words and ideas”; the legacy Rodenburg ascribes to colleague Cicely Berry (Berry et al. 1997, p. 49). Vocal coaches can empower actors with artistic options for communicating that ownership in compelling ways. Such conscientious and creative attention is invaluable for someone speaking Shakespeare’s words, which acclaimed actor Mariah Gale characterizes as “so exquisite” that they require the performer to “be a channel for the voice” of the playwright himself—“let him speak” (Smout 2012, p. 64). Indeed, in Freeing Shakespeare’s Voice: The Actor’s Guide to Talking the Text (Linklater 1992), Kristin Linklater attributes to Shakespeare’s language the ability to better articulate emotions about an experience than the person embodying that experience can:

Speaking Shakespeare leads us to the sources of our own power because we find a language which expresses the depths of our experience more fully, more richly, more completely than our own words can. Pain, which seemed inexpressible, can be expressed. It in its expression, feeling returns, and with feeling comes renewed life. It is a sort of alchemy. Unexpressed pain poisons the system. It congeals and turns to lead within us. It anaesthetizes. But words can begin to penetrate scar tissue and drain the poison from the wounds. And poetic words do more.

(Linklater 1992, p. 196).

If “poetic words” have the power to “drain the poison” from emotional “wounds”, some characters (and actors) have the privilege of hoping for healing, while others might be doomed to “unexpressed pain” that “congeals and turns to lead within” them. That is, even when embodied by a skilled actor, not every character in Shakespeare gets the chance to purge poisonous pain through beautiful language. In particular, speech in which seemingly “inexpressible” agony “can be expressed” is not a given among Shakespeare’s women, who, even when not speechless, are often positioned to defend themselves from, sacrifice themselves to, or in some other way elucidate the expressed pain of the men around them. So, what then…?

While some actors will have plenty of stage time to “more fully, more richly, more completely” process pain through “poetic words” and others will not, the association of acting with speaking is not surprising when it comes to Shakespeare. Robert Cohen advises actors, for instance, that “to play a Shakespearean character” they “must master a ‘large discourse’ simply to be human”. He goes on to clarify: “Being properly verbose, in Shakespeare, is not to be affected, but to be alive, to be real” (Cohen 1991, p. 133). Cohen is reassuring students who may be apprehensive about the complications of working with Shakespeare’s language, or about their own ability to make such language seem natural. Notable here is that “simply to be human” in Shakespeare’s plays requires being “verbose”—and though clearly some characters speak far less than others, it proves difficult to talk about practice without focusing on speech. As Carol Chillington Rutter notes,

‘language’, a word Shakespeare uses only forty-three times across the canon of his plays, is always subsumed in ‘speech’, the activity of speaking. ‘Speech’ and ‘speeches’ are words that appear four times as often—while ‘speak’ and its cognates occur more than 1,400 times. (It appears impossible to talk about ‘language’ in Shakespeare as a separate category from ‘speech’…)

(Rutter 2019, p. 209).

That Shakespeare dramaturgically emphasizes “the activity of speaking” is good grounds for the prioritization of speaking in discussions of modern performance. Further, according to Lois Potter, acting Shakespeare may emblematize “the history of the English-speaking professional theatre” and thus motivate “the belief that there is some reason for looking at actors specifically in their relationship to Shakespeare” (Potter 2022, p. 1). Potter goes on to describe how early twentieth-century university training stressed “the idea that verse-speaking was a complicated art needing serious study”, and how “drama schools were designed to develop the techniques—vocal, physical, and, increasingly, imaginative, to carry the student through the numerous distractions and difficulties of their work” (Potter 2022, pp. 21–22). Because classical drama even now “is likely to be performed at major theatres and at outdoor drama festivals, where visibility and audibility” are critical, Potter explains, “voice” is an “important attribute of the classical actor—the most important, some say” (Potter 2022, pp. 24–26). Ultimately, Potter identifies Shakespeare as the main reason “that drama schools focus so extensively on speech” (Potter 2022, p. 26). Acting on stage differs from acting on screen, in Potter’s view, specifically because of the movement of the voice in shared time and space: “an actor can give a brilliant performance on screen, but it will not do whatever it is that the human voice does as it travels through the airwaves to the human ear” (Potter 2022, p. 118). Though the exchange that happens through speaking and listening is a potentially powerful one, without doubt, shared time and space may allow for immediacy and intimacy in ways that do not rely on vocalization.

Wielding words in Shakespeare’s plays lends itself to privilege—in the text and in practice. As often noted by those who have played Shakespeare’s women, Potter says “the problem…is that, especially at the end of the play, they get so little chance to speak” (Potter 2022, p. 87). This is a problem indeed for actors whose training accentuates “speaking Shakespeare” and “talking the text”. Although an actor’s education may allow for working on characters who speak (and may address physical, intellectual, emotional, and ethical concerns beyond speaking), casting in the professional arena may not align with every actor’s training. As Penny Gay puts it, most “agents and casting directors will want to see a young actress’s Juliet or Viola rather than her Lancelot Gobbo or Prospero”—and, of course, not all women will get to play Juliet or Viola, regardless of the speeches they have rehearsed in school (Gay 2007, p. 322).

For actors who are women, a scarcity of speech-heavy roles may feel further fraught by the “history of feminist thought” in which, according to Gina Bloom, “scholars and activists frequently figure the voice as analogous with agency” (Bloom 2007, p. 12). The idea that “the capacity to speak out, to ‘own’ one’s voice, secures personal and political power”, coupled with the focus in actor training on the voice, may put women playing speechless women in a complicated (compromised?) position. Bloom challenges, however, a “narrow definition of the relation between voice and power”—for example, how voice “functions as a short-hand metaphor for women’s access to personal and political power”—drawing attention to “alternate forms of potent voicing” (Bloom 2007, pp. 13, 15, 185). As Rutter puts it, “there’s always ‘something in the writing’. But also, in Shakespeare, something beyond it. Another kind of language, for bodies in performance” (Rutter 2019, p. 225). Characters onstage are always speaking, if not with words, then with their “speechless dialect”, to use Claudio’s term from Measure for Measure—whether that is the feminine “youth” that “may move men” in the way he believes Isabella will or otherwise (Shakespeare 2016a, 1.2.170-72). Although vocal training aims to give speaking actors access to a specific sort of agency—to “open up the possibilities of the voice”, as Berry puts it—and, although for marginalized groups, one’s voice has been often associated with one’s autonomy, silent characters can have power (Berry 1973, p. 14). The speechless actors playing them are working theater artists, like their speech-driven counterparts, though the nature of their work may look drastically different—both in rehearsal and in performance.

3. Playing Speechless

To be clear, women in Shakespeare’s plays do speak—some more than others, just like Shakespeare’s men. Among those whose speech is limited are many women whose stage time far outweighs their dialogue (Hippolyta, Hero, Lady Capulet, and so on). Unlike Jones, whose intermittent calls to rehearsal register as impediments to her creativity—“the time between one rehearsal and the next” she calls “arid and frustrating”—an actor today playing a role requiring presence without speech could be called to rehearsal rather frequently. Ideally, she would be empowered to participate fully in the construction of the scenes she inhabits; conversely, she could be viewed by her colleagues in a way that parallels how the character is viewed by her counterparts (as a catalyst or witness for whoever is speaking, a prop that facilitates another actor’s emotional journey, or a scene partner whose neglect is normalized by text and context).

Characters who speak little could have varied justifications for doing so. Even in a play grounded in “the profoundly patriarchal world of early modern England”, as Dympna Callaghan explains, where “to be silenced was surely, if problematically, a condition of feminization and disempowerment”, a woman might elect to abstain from speaking. That is, Callaghan goes on to explain, “the choice, especially a woman’s choice to exercise silence is very different from being forbidden to speak or prevented from doing so, or conversely, being so traumatized that speech is impossible” (Callaghan 2023, p. 5). A modern actor playing an early modern character might then discover in “a woman’s choice to exercise silence” any number of valid and viable acting choices. Sometimes when playing a speechless character, an actor will be empowered to explore such choices. At other times, however, portraying a character with fewer lines may lead to less creative liberty. That is, when it comes to shaping a story for the stage, embodying a character that is silent (and thus deemed to have limited agency) may seem to mean that the actor should also be silent (and thus destined to have limited agency).

Determining how much artistic authority an actor merits based on the percentage of text they speak, as Jones’s experience underscores, is a choice but not a foregone conclusion. When I played Hippolyta, for example, the attention of Theseus to my silence was powerful; since the role was not doubled with Titania in this production, my silence was also considerable. The actor playing opposite me responded with specificity to my speechlessness—checking in with me before speaking himself or considering the possible meanings when I did not respond—which made for an experience in rehearsal and performance that was more inclusive than it might have been otherwise. This Hippolyta held some sway partly because her scene partner believed it was so (and behaved accordingly). Such dynamics necessitate a reading of the play and of the characters that will not fit with every production concept. Still, the number of lines a character speaks need not indicate the measure of influence that character has on the narrative. Importantly, my “speechless” performance as Hippolyta developed alongside the wordier performances of others through a rehearsal process in which the size of my role did not undermine my access to directorial attention or opportunities for collaborative exploration. Though certainly there were plenty of rehearsals to which I was not called (the same as Theseus), my time in the rehearsal room confirmed that my role—and particularly my perspective about it—made significant contributions to the production (the same as Theseus).

A rehearsal for the play’s first scene exemplified the director’s mindful approach. He guided us through “a listening impulse exercise” during which all the actors in the scene, seated in a circle, ran through the dialogue. Whenever an actor felt an impulse of any kind while listening, that actor stood and repeated the line that prompted their reaction. The exercise, director Robert Quinlan explains, “helps everyone in the room pay attention to responses from all characters, even if there are not lines expressing their opinions. It also helps see where certain characters may be aligned or in conflict”.2 I was perhaps more surprised than anyone by how many times my Hippolyta stood and spoke during this exercise, well beyond her initial exchange with Theseus. Among the actors who have studied this scene, it will not be revolutionary to recognize that Hermia’s plight might palpably affect Hippolyta. A performer playing Hippolyta might easily reach this conclusion on her own and internalize her response accordingly. Though actors routinely perform this sort of work through their independent preparation, those playing small parts may seldom receive rehearsal time to collaboratively explore the dynamics created by the conclusions they reach in isolation. Since Shakespeare’s women consistently take up less textual space than Shakespeare’s men, women working in Shakespeare may then frequently work alone. The Midsummer rehearsal exercise insisted that the conflicts made possible by Hippolyta’s circumstances were a communal concern. This foundational exploration of the play’s start freed me from having to fight for or defend my character’s significance from the get-go, while also giving all the actors involved a visual representation of the potential connections among and consequences for each character in the scene, whether speaking or silent.

4. Serving in Silence

In contrast to a speechless presence, some characters experience long stage absences—Hermione, Lady Anne, Lady Macbeth, to name a few—during which they, naturally, have no lines. In cases like these, a character’s absence can speak volumes, though such a hiatus does not give the actor much to do, as Jones laments. Occasionally, though, having less to say means having more to do. Occupying a smaller part might afford the actor the chance to play doubled (or tripled) roles, which would expand their rehearsal time, increase collaborative opportunities, and provide artistic challenges. Alternatively, actors playing parts considered smaller could be utilized in labor of a different kind—for example, as set changers (which can involve a significant amount of cue memorization and require precise timing, keeping a supporting actor busy). In this way, a character’s onstage life may cast a shadow that dictates the actor’s offstage experience. That is, while a “large part” that takes up significant vocal and physical space onstage might produce a shortened shadow offstage, a “small part” with limited onstage presence and speech (particularly when the role is not doubled) could cast a longer offstage shadow. For the women I imitated while playing church as a child, to relocate this image to the “cry room”, the shadow seemed all-consuming. An actor’s “shadow work” may take a variety of forms, regardless of gender, but having less onstage work makes possible more offstage labor.

Since Shakespeare’s women often have less to do onstage, they may end up doing more offstage (unless they end up, like Jones indicates, doing nothing). I have been in Much Ado About Nothing twice, several years apart and in different locations—both times as Ursula. The second production was outdoors, and most of the entrances happened through a massive gate positioned upstage center. Ursula has a lot of free time, so I was one of two assigned gate-openers/closers. Sometimes a character would enter and the gate was to be closed right away; sometimes the gate was to stay open for an extended length of time but needed to be closed precisely at the appointed moment. The gate was tall and unwieldy—or perhaps felt so mostly because I was wearing a vintage dress and heels—with a latch on each side that was far out of reach, requiring the use of a long implement for locking and unlocking. This is less to suggest that my support of the production in this regard was particularly impressive or oppressive (it was neither) than to explain why I spent the show’s run anxious that a choreography miscalculation or gate malfunction might interfere with someone else’s work onstage. Unlike Jones’s “solitary state”, my participation during rehearsal was crucial, though in a way that mirrored Ursula’s functional status in the play more than it reflected any training with the text.

Sometimes, as this example demonstrates, a smaller onstage part means a bigger offstage part. Precisely because her role is limited, the actor playing Ursula can be available for additional labor—and not the kind that happens through speech. Such conditions are not exclusive to actors who are women (indeed, my fellow gate-attendant was a man), and putting on a production frequently demands available bodies to move things. In Shakespeare’s plays, however, women often have smaller parts. If they do not end up off stage working less than they want to (as when playing Hermione, whose isolation and inactivity in the narrative are reproduced during rehearsal and performance), they might end up onstage working more than they expected to (as when playing Ursula, whose silence and service can be replicated through the actor’s theatrical labor).

Much can be said about speech, silence, and gender in Much Ado, certainly, but such conversations do not typically revolve around Ursula (gate or no gate). Rather, discussions about women and speech often highlight the contrast between Hero and Beatrice, the latter of whom, in the words of Kate Aughterson and Alisa Grant Ferguson, proves “a fascinating model of female verbosity from an age when many texts have it that the unequivocal ideal of womanhood was located in silent acquiescence” (Aughterson and Ferguson 2020, pp. 17–18). Aughterson and Ferguson explain that Beatrice subverts “literary presentations of the desirability of self-enforced female silence”, unsettling those “poetic expressions of female perfection” that insist that, when it comes to women, “the less speech, the better” (Aughterson and Ferguson 2020, pp. 19–20). As common early modern attitudes connected women’s speech to women’s sexuality—“an open mouth and immodest speech are tantamount to open genitals and immodest acts”, in the words of Karen Newman—it makes sense to center a woman like Beatrice in a play that challenges the precarious project of overseeing female chastity (Newman 1991, p. 11). Indeed, in a moment revealing frustration and fear, as Aughterson and Ferguson point out, Benedick “identifies Beatrice metonymically as her voice”: “I cannot endure my Lady Tongue” (2.1.251-52; Aughterson and Ferguson 2020, p. 23). The association of speech with sex makes the tongue an especially fraught body part. While his phrasing contextualizes Beatrice’s speech as potentially dangerous (or, at least, difficult to “endure”), Benedick reveals that it is precisely because of her speech that Beatrice has a powerful effect on him. Identifying a similar tension in Robert Tofte’s poem on the subject of “Woman’s Tongue”, Roger Holdsworth points to its crude conclusion: “Queanes of their Tongue, are (most) Queanes of their Taile”. Holdsworth asserts that this line “contrives, consciously or not, to expose the muddle at the heart of early modern responses to the idea of the powerful woman”. That is, while Tofte sexualizes women’s speech by connecting “tongue” and “taile”, Holdsworth shows that the use of “Queanes” accentuates “the very ideas of female autonomy and self-command” the poem attempts to undermine. The pun, so readily available in a term Holdsworth describes as “second only to whore” as a “standard insult in popular speech” (quean/queen), destabilizes the poem’s derision of a “Woman’s Tongue”. As Holdsworth notes, “Tofte seems to want to say that women who speak like queans, that is coarsely and aggressively, will also behave like queans when it comes to sex”; however, “what the phrasing more naturally suggests is ‘Queens of…’ meaning ‘those women with power over…’” (Holdsworth 2022, p. 14). Similarly, when Benedick explains his panicked avoidance of Beatrice as an escape from “my Lady Tongue”, he (knowingly or not) situates her in a position of power.

That Beatrice speaks with frequency and force is an important feature of the play. Despite Ursula’s remove from such conversations, she participates extensively in acts of “noting”, clearly a key aspect of this play’s dramaturgy. Especially relevant to all the play’s women, Ursula included, is what Holly Dugan calls the “double-edged notion of chastity at work in the play”. Dugan explains that “if…chastity is rendered visible on the body, then it can also be performed and manipulated through optical illusions”, a condition of the play’s world that makes for “an obsessive structure of ‘noting’ women’s bodies in Leonato’s household even as they seem to be interchangeable and replaceable for one another” (Dugan 2023, p. 244). While it is true that the play’s “investment in marriage” and the “misogyny at the heart of the play” mean that the play “spotlights some women characters more than others, including Hero and Beatrice”, a character like Ursula—a servant beholden to “Leonato’s household”—cannot not watch it all unfold, even if she wants to (Dugan 2023, p. 245). That is, in addition to facilitating the work of others onstage (through a gate, in my case), something Ursula and the actor playing her must do is bear silent witness to the suffering of another woman—in front of those who have the authority to help but refuse to do so.

If she is present in 4.1, witnessing Claudio’s violent accusation of Hero would be, arguably, a weighty experience for Ursula, even though she has nothing to say.3 While Claudio uses language to catastrophic effect, Ursula is one of many who “have to listen carefully”, as Rodenburg advises actors to do, “if they are to negotiate and survive scenarios” like this one. Claudio’s harsh “catechizing” of Hero makes clear that what women think or feel—or even know for certain to be true—is irrelevant (Shakespeare 2016b, 4.1.78). In a scene that creates suspicion around the “sign and semblance” of Hero’s chastity, as Paul Innes points out, what Hero “might mean, as with so much else in this play, depends on which character is speaking” (Innes 2014, p. 2). And some characters do not speak much on this (or any other) matter.

The vulnerability of Ursula’s fellow servant, Margaret, is obvious by the play’s end; as Dugan puts it, “if Hero’s reputation emerges intact…it is because Margaret’s does not: chastity is a zero-sum game in Messina” (Dugan 2023, p. 245). Surely, though, these circumstances have potentially life-changing consequences for Ursula as well. After all, while “a woman’s shame”, in cases like Hero’s, meant trouble for the men in her life, it also “constituted household shame”, as Stephanie Chamberlain explains. Such shame could endanger “the economic viability of the household as a whole” since “reputation” would have been an important basis for credibility in “the marketplace” (Chamberlain 2009, p. 5). Economic collapse would be a concern for all members of the household. Moreover, observing the ease with which a family could go from respectability to ruin—and how that might hinge “upon surmises”, to borrow Hermione’s words from The Winter’s Tale—would be enough to put the women closest to Hero on edge (Shakespeare 2010, 3.2.110).

Along with her conversation with Antonio in disguise in 2.1 and her conspiring with Hero to trick Beatrice in 3.1, Ursula’s talkative moments in the play include her announcement that “Hero hath been falsely accused” in 5.2 (lines 87–88). Even as she delivers the news of Hero’s vindication, however, Ursula acquits her lady’s accusers: “the prince and Claudio mightily abused” (Shakespeare 2016b, 5.2.89-90). Leonato will echo this statement in front of Ursula two scenes later, offering this reply to the Friar’s affirmation that Hero is “innocent”: “So are the prince and Claudio who accused her” (Shakespeare 2016b, 5.4.2). If Hero’s sudden and inevitable disgrace has taught the women watching anything, it may be that contradicting the play’s powerful men will always be dangerous, even when evidence of their culpability comes to light.

By the play’s resolution, Ursula’s position as a frequently speechless observer is emphasized as she, like her fellow servant Margaret, remains “masked…silently witnessing Hero and Beatrice’s coupling with Claudio and Benedick”, newly alert to what Dugan calls “the ever-present male scrutiny that defines Messina” (Dugan 2023, pp. 244–45, 251). Now not only unheard but also unseen, both Ursula and Margaret may emblematize what seems the only form of safety for women in the world of the play. And it does not involve words. If in Shakespeare, as Rodenburg claims, “we are what we speak”, there is more “nothing” happening in this play than may meet the eye (or ear). Among other possibilities is the graphic reminder of Ursula’s own vulnerability inherent in the disaster she watches unfold—even as she serves those who use Shakespeare’s language to generate it.

5. Performing the Unspeakable

Shakespeare’s women may speak, may be present but speechless, or may be absent for long stretches of stage time. Other women characters may, like Ursula, witness atrocities as they happen to other women (like the Gentlewoman who watches Lady Macbeth and the women who accompany Hermione to prison) while supporting the work of others onstage through their own physical, dramaturgical, and emotional labor. Still other characters have moments without words, but during which they are under physical duress: receiving devastating news (Hermione), experiencing the effects of poison (Regan and Gertrude), being attacked (Desdemona and Lady Macduff), or playing dead (Ophelia, Desdemona, and Juliet). Likely “so traumatized that speech is impossible”, in Callaghan’s words, a character in these circumstances must express that which is unspeakable, compelling the actor to embody an experience that is, in some way, beyond words (Callaghan 2023, p. 5).

Such examples emphasize that silent does not mean inactive; indeed, a lack of lines does not even mean silent. As her character begins to feel the physical effects of the poison (and register cognitively that she has been poisoned), for example, an actor playing Regan or Gertrude might groan in pain, shriek in shock, whimper in despair, have loud and labored breathing, or try to speak but find herself unable to do so. Precisely what happens to (and with) her body may depend upon the staging directives, but inevitably, her body will be storytelling. She may have access to a voice and/or movement coach who can guide her toward safe, sustainable, and effective vocal and physical choices; she may be given rehearsal time to test out her options with the director and other cast members; or she may have to remove herself to some “cry room” equivalent to strategize her approach in isolation. Such choices are not scripted, happening somewhere between the “beginning and the end” in Shakespeare that Rodenburg identifies as “the word”—this is a different “kind of language”, one “for bodies in performance”, as Rutter says.

Perhaps palpable struggles like these—located in and expressed through the body, evoking memory and fear, among many other things—could be present even for characters whose physical and emotional condition is not routinely a matter of concern (for anyone not portraying them, anyway). The Weird Sisters from Macbeth offer a case study in the potentialities of performance when it comes to such characters. The words of the witches loom large in Macbeth, of course. Famously, they utter the phrase that, as Frank McGuiness observes, “will reverberate through every incident” of the play: “Fair is foul, and foul is fair” (McGuiness 2015, p. 70). Also fair is the expectation that the Weird Sisters might represent something foul (or appear to).

Neither punished nor rewarded by the narrative’s outcome, the witches of Macbeth may represent something strictly symbolic, spiritual, or supernatural. This might be straightforward in a production in which Macbeth is also portrayed as representative—that is, not played as a believable human with motivations, fantasies, failures, and an emotional arc. Because this is not how actors typically portray Macbeth (or Macduff or Malcolm), playing a witch in a modern production of Macbeth could feel tricky. The version of Macbeth in which the witches signify wickedness (or temptation or moral ambiguity) can be effective. As an actor who enjoys playing action that involves risk and personal stakes, however, I considered it an advantage that the director of the production in which I was a Weird Sister wanted them to embody more than unmotivated evil.

Beginning with a silent staging of the battle in which Macbeth killed members of their families, the production explored what might happen if the Weird Sisters were women (as they were in this case) who were managing their own misfortune. In this staging, shock, trauma, grief, and anger prompted the first witch’s “when shall we three meet again?” (1.1.1). In an expression of the unspeakable, prior to this line, each woman smeared the blood of her fallen loved one on her face, informing her subsequent words and actions. That is, the production took a stand on the perspective of these characters that humanized them. Their actions throughout the play represented an obsession with the figure they held responsible for the deaths of those they loved. Driven by the devastation of their personal worlds, these women sought agency in any way they could find it. Since they were already marginalized and vulnerable (like most women accused of witchcraft), they had little left to lose. Whether the director had this in mind or not, the tone of the production’s extratextual prologue resonates with Caryl Churchill’s more modern connection to early modern England’s witchcraft trials. At the end of Churchill’s Vinegar Tom (Churchill 1978), Alice, a young woman accused and convicted of witchcraft, reflects

I’m not a witch. But I wish I was. If I could live I’d be a witch now after what they’ve done. I’d make wax men and melt them on a slow fire. I’d kill their animals and blast their crops and make such storms, I’d wreck their ships all over the world… If I only did have magic, I’d make them feel it.

(Churchill 1978, p. 59)

Unlike Churchill’s Alice, Shakespeare’s Weird Sisters can manifest such fantasies. Indeed, by their second appearance, the Weird Sisters are full-blown witch material, as if having intentionally embraced and internalized the specific stereotypes associated with witchcraft: anticipating Alice’s impossible revenge, they boast of “killing swine” as well as plotting to cause a sailor to “dwindle, peak, and pine” while commanding the “wind” to ensure that his ship is “tempest-tossed” (1.3.2, 23, 11, 25). Ultimately, the play needs for them to conjure apparitions in act 4, scene 1—or to drug Macbeth so that he hallucinates such things. Either way, a production can choose to grant the Weird Sisters a reason for performing “witch”, whether for the audience in general or for Macbeth in particular.

As with other roles not deemed large, the sporadic onstage presence of the witches in Macbeth may throw a spacious shadow onto the actors’ offstage existence. If the role of Hermione can cast a sizeable shadow in which the actor’s rehearsal experience becomes, bizarrely, the absence of rehearsal experience (reproducing the character’s separation and solitude), and the role of Ursula can produce a shadow in which the actor’s lack of lines amounts to additional labor (reproducing the character’s speechless service), a person playing a Weird Sister may be in for a surreal ride. Though they are marginalized, the Weird Sisters are never alone; the characters, as the plural identifier clarifies, are perceived as a collective rather than as individuals. The text differentiates them not by names, but by numbers: first, second, and third. Though they function on the fringes of the narrative’s community (such as it is)—strange “inhabitants” of the world of the play—they are isolated together (Shakespeare 2015, 1.3.41). In other words, a rehearsal call for Witch 1 that did not include the other two would be… well, weird. So, the offstage shadow of one witch will not be hers alone. What happened before our witches met Macbeth and Banquo every night, for example, was the shared urgency to remove the stage blood covering our hands from the opening effect. An eerie offstage foreshadowing of the Macbeths’ forthcoming predicament, the episode of frantic backstage blood-washing was something we did together, lending help to one another as needed. Anticipating a synchronized entrance ensured that we matched one another’s efficiency and timing.

Famously, the way in which these characters speak stands out against and apart from the play’s other verse. The difference in the rhythm and dissonance in the content aligns the Weird Sisters with other characters whose grief materializes in atypical speech, like Ophelia. In both cases, it seems that unspeakable pain can make itself known precisely by sounding out of tune with those who dominate the play’s melody. By embodying and voicing the subversive—through songs or through spells—such characters defy the rejected stereotypes they reference. A moment early in Macbeth suggests that the sisters may also be intentionally stingy with their speech, as Banquo observes how “each at once her choppy finger” places “upon her skinny lips” (1.3.44-45). The scene’s dialogue makes clear that if there is something Banquo and Macbeth want from these mysterious beings, it is more talk: “Speak if you can” (line 47); “To me you speak not” (line 57); “Speak then to me” (line 60); “Stay, you imperfect speakers, tell me more” (line 70); “Say from whence / You owe this strange intelligence” (lines 75-6); and “Speak, I charge you” (line 78). In this scenario, withholding speech is more potent than speaking—and the Weird Sisters seem to know it. This is an example of what Callaghan identifies as “a woman’s choice to exercise silence” as opposed to “being forbidden to speak” (Callaghan 2023, p. 5). How much their own circumstances drive their behavior forward is a matter of conjecture and creative liberty, of course, but considering a version of the Weird Sisters that makes available to the actors portraying them as much human emotion as their scene partners is one way to stir the proverbial pot (or cauldron).

Strong physical choices are important for characters who speak frequently; however, perhaps physicalizing characters whose speech is minimal matters in a different way. In the other two productions of Macbeth in which I have performed (once as Lady Macbeth and once as Banquo), for example, dancers were cast as the Weird Sisters, their movement speaking loudly even when assigned no lines. Clare McManus and Lucy Munro show how “the activities of women and gender non-conforming individuals inside and outside the playhouse buildings are part of a broad, varied landscape of early modern performance” (McManus and Munro 2023, p. 182). In addition to their discussion of women’s contributions as theatrical laborers, patrons, and dramatists, McManus and Munro take into account how scholars have shown that “early modern plays were… cut across by feats of activity, prefaced, followed and punctuated by clowning, acrobatics, rope-dancing, audience interactions and routines of dance, music and physical ability”, stressing that “women were a part of this varied theatrical landscape” (McManus and Munro 2023, p. 182). This is less to suggest that Shakespeare’s stressed-out women should also be rope-dancing—although the symbolic implications may be fitting—than to affirm how much can happen with, to, and through the nonspeaking bodies onstage (in Shakespeare’s day as well as now). While the activities described above refer to those that “prefaced, followed, and punctuated” the play itself in the early modern theater, similar sorts of physical choices can work well in productions today, constructing characters and creating vision in ways that support the textual concerns.

6. Working Without Words

The story Gemma Jones told about playing Hermione demonstrates the potential deprivations and disappointments of playing “small parts”, which may have more to do with an actor’s sense of alienation from the apparatus of production than with the number of lines her character gets to say. What makes it “easier to play a large part”, according to Jones, is evident enough: a part that occupies more space onstage guarantees the actor a voice in the rehearsal room. Like the women whose journey from community to “cry room”—and the invisible, isolated labor involved—became the centerpiece of my childhood performance at pretend church, actors playing “small parts” may feel more outcast than cast. Such actors, particularly when not doubling roles, might end up working (or waiting… or waning) at a remove from the collaborative creativity of shared rehearsal time and the privilege of artistic autonomy available through character development. Alternatively, an actor speaking less may end up working more; the more diminished the actor’s presence, the longer the shadow it can cast, sometimes replicating the character’s onstage life in the actor’s offstage labor. A persistent concern for women playing speechless or playing the unspeakable in Shakespeare, working without words can mean working without some of the privileges, provisions, and people to which an actor hopes to have access. As practitioners navigate (and interrogate) Shakespeare’s world—“a dangerous one”, in Rodenburg’s words—they should not have to go it alone.