The Masked Actors of Shakespearean Play:
A Blog by Ned M., age 10
When I was visiting my family in New York last month, my mom took me to the theater to see Hamlet. It was great! The actors were awesome, especially the guy who played Hamlet. He wore a mask, which was weird. It was called a half-mask and it only covered his eyes and nose. I think they’re called half-masks because they make you look like half of a face. But it turns out I wasn’t the only person who thought that half-masks were weird. Shakespeare did too. In fact, he wrote about them in Hamlet! Now that’s weird. How did he know I would be born 400 years later? Maybe he is an alien with a time machine? Or maybe he used magic? His plays are called “spells,” after all…
Anyway, while I was watching Hamlet, I got to thinking about why people wore half-masks in Shakespeare’s day. They also wore them in Ancient Greece and Rome. This made me wonder: why did people wear masks when they acted on stage? And why don’t they wear them anymore? Maybe the answer is magic…
After a long time of working as an actor, I decided to make this blog about the masked actors of Shakespeare. It is not easy being a masked actor and I think that more people should know about the hard work that these actors put in.
It was always my dream to be an actor and when I was studying acting at school, no one taught us anything about playing with a mask on our face. We only learned how to act without a mask and when I started working as an actor, I was really shocked to find out that there were so many masked roles.
I find it really difficult to act with a mask on my face. If you are playing the role of a character who has emotions on their face like sad or happy, it is really hard to show that emotion through the mask. To show your emotion while wearing a mask, you have to use your body language instead of being able to use your face muscles. This means that you have to change how you move around on stage or use different hand gestures compared to if you were not wearing a mask.
The characters of the play are the basic building blocks of Shakespearean drama. Actors must understand each character’s persona in order to interpret the character effectively. On their face, Shakespearian characters can seem two-dimensional. However, understanding the characters’ motives, thoughts, and feelings is crucial to performing Shakespeare effectively.
The Globe Theatre was a large open air theatre in the Elizabethan era. Shakespearean plays were performed on an elevated stage with three levels: the main level in the center and two additional levels flanking it on either side. There were no curtains or sets; all of the action took place on one stage.
In order to help define each character’s personality and unique traits, actors wore masks during performances. These masks helped audiences identify with each character as well as differentiate them from others. For example, an actor playing Lady Macbeth would wear a mask that was painted white and had a high forehead and pointed chin to symbolize her ambition and manipulative nature.
The mask is an object that is a part of the actor’s body. It is a tool that can be used to communicate the character’s emotions. Because masks are such physical objects, they cannot be used to hide emotion or to distort reality.
As an actor, I often hear people say, “You’re just wearing a mask.” But this is not true. Masks are not disguises. They can create a character and help to tell the story of a play. They have been used by actors for centuries. Actors have said that they feel like they are in another world when they perform in full costume and mask. And the masks have become one of the most important tools in our art form.
We are taught from very early in our training that we need to be aware of what we are doing with our bodies and how it will affect others around us. When we put on a mask, we do not hide our emotions or thoughts. We reveal them through movement and gesture, as well as through our facial expressions and tone of voice.
The blog is written by a drama class at the University of California, San Diego. The blog portrays the history of Shakespeare’s theatrical company, the Globe Theatre and its actors. This blog is a safe place for actors to speak their minds about their characters and the plays they are involved in.
The Stratfordian theory of Shakespearean authorship holds that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote the plays and poems traditionally attributed to him. Anti-Stratfordians—a collective term for adherents of the various alternative-authorship theories—believe that Shakespeare of Stratford was a front to shield the identity of the real author or authors, who for some reason did not want or could not accept public credit.
Evidence against Shakespeare’s authorship was first published in 1848, when Delia Bacon published her book, The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare Unfolded, in which she put forward the idea that Shakespeare’s plays were written by a group of writers including Francis Bacon, Walter Raleigh and Edmund Spenser. In 1857, Thomas Looney published his book, “Shakespeare” Identified in Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. Looney’s claim that Oxford was the sole author is now generally regarded as extreme; however his work inspired much research into Oxford’s life and works as well as those of other possible candidates.
Conjectural candidates put forward in more recent times include Christopher Marlowe and William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby (who was once suggested by Sigmund Freud). Other candidates have been
“The Seven Ages of Man” is a monologue from William Shakespeare’s play As You Like It, spoken by the melancholy Jaques in Act II Scene VII. The monologue is often referred to as “All the world’s a stage”. It is one of Shakespeare’s most frequently quoted passages.
The monologue describes the seven stages of a man’s life, tracked with the ages of the Moon, and thus has been referenced in works of literature and art such as T. S. Eliot’s poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. The Seven Ages of Man:
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous
