ELICA MIWA

Tag: phrase of the day

  • You are come to me in Happy Time

    You are come to me in Happy Time

    — Lord, The Taming Of The Shrew: Induction 1, 

    Hello, friends.  This is Elica Miwa, a theatre director/actor in Japan.  Today’s Shakespeare For You is of the Lord in Induction 1 of The Taming Of The Shrew.

    [Hakken Time!]

    When I was in Canada, as an exchange student from my university to University of Victoria in British Columbia, some friends brought me to a pub, and there was a sign board at the door, saying “Happy Hour 1700~1800”.  It was the time when you can have a drink at discounted price.  Of course you must be happy for that.

    “some sport in hand”:  sport does not mean physical activity, but some fun to do and watch at the same time.

    So the Lord is saying:

    Wow, you have just come to me at the right time for some happy fun event I am planning here in my hand.

    There is another HAKKEN: 

    the words Lord uses are quite open and wide, such as “Well, are, come, happy, time, rather, sports, hand”.  Which shows his excitement is open and bright and welcoming.

    How interesting Shakespeare is!

    If you like my cast, LIKE, SHARE, FOLLOW, and SUBSCRIBE.

    Cheers!

    #shakespeare #english #actingtips #directing #lord #tamingoftheshrew. #shrew

    ===

    If you like my cast, LIKE, SHARE, FOLLOW, and SUBSCRIBE!

    Contact me when you want to work with me.

    Details and contacts → https://elicamiwa.com

    ===

    Elica recites a phrase of the day from The Taming Of The Shrew by William Shakespeare with some acting and directing tips.

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    Shakespeare For You

  • Even as a flattering dream of worthless fancy

    Even as a flattering dream of worthless fancy

    — Lord, The Taming Of The Shrew: Induction 1, 

    Hello, friends.  This is Elica Miwa, a theatre director/actor in Japan.  Today’s Shakespeare For You is of the Lord in Induction 1 of The Taming Of The Shrew.

    [Hakken Time!]

    “Even as” means “just as.”  “Fancy” here means “imagination”.  

    A dream is made of imagination.  It is fun, but worthless because it is not a reality.

    But we know that without imagining, nothing can be realized.  I think Shakespeare uses the word “fancy” not as creative “imagination”, but rather “delusion”.

    How interesting Shakespeare is!

    If you like my cast, LIKE, SHARE, FOLLOW, and SUBSCRIBE.

    Cheers!

    #shakespeare #english #actingtips #directing #lord #tamingoftheshrew. #shrew

    ===

    If you like my cast, LIKE, SHARE, FOLLOW, and SUBSCRIBE!

    Contact me when you want to work with me.

    Details and contacts → https://elicamiwa.com

    ===

    Elica recites a phrase of the day from The Taming Of The Shrew by William Shakespeare with some acting and directing tips.

    =====

    Shakespeare For You

  • Grim death, how foul and loathsome is thine image! 

    Grim death, how foul and loathsome is thine image! 

    — Lord, The Taming Of The Shrew: Induction 1, 

    Hello, friends.  This is Elica Miwa, a theatre director/actor in Japan.  Today’s Shakespeare For You is of the Lord in Induction 1 of The Taming Of The Shrew.

    [Hakken (discovery)]

    The Lord is looking at a drunken man Sly sleeping in front of the door of an inn.

    The citizens of Shakespearean time must have had many chances to see dead bodies, and felt untouchable.  

    If I were to play the Lord, there are some choices.

    CHOICE1

    I may simply detouched from sympathetic feeling and detest it,

    CHOICE 2

    with much sympathy, just like The Duke in As YouLike It, when he sees dying old Adam in the forest of Arden.

    CHOICE 3

    with much scientific interests and even try to look closer.

    How interesting Shakespeare is!

    #shakespeare #english #actingtips #directing #lord #tamingoftheshrew. #shrew #lifeinJapan #kimono

    ===

    If you like my cast, LIKE, SHARE, FOLLOW, and SUBSCRIBE!

    Contact me when you want to work with me.

    Details and contacts → https://elicamiwa.com

    ===

    ELICA recites a phrase of the day from The Taming Of The Shrew by William Shakespeare with some acting and directing tips.

    =====

    [Shakespeare For You]

  • Shakespeare Insults: The Taming Of The Shrew

    Shakespeare Insults: The Taming Of The Shrew

    The Taming Of The Shrew is full of extraordinary insults.  They are really funny and so good.  Let’s hear it.

    🎭 A pair of stocks, you rogue!

    A stock is a kind of ankle cuff of the time, a wooden bar with a hole and you put the criminal’s ankle in it to hold him.  It must have been used as a pair, so that both ankles were kept locked.  

    The hostess of the inn says, literally like “I’ll lock you at the gate, ankle cuffed, to humiliate in front of everybody, you rogue!

    The second one is:

    🎭 Y’ are a baggage.

    Sly the drunken man answers the Hostess.  A baggage meant a woman who takes in anything, which means a whore.  Hilarious

    The third one is:

    🎭 Let the world slide.

    Sly says “I don’t care”.  If the world slides, let it.  Hmm, some people may think like that to see our world of politics and wars.

    The last one for today is:

    🎭 Go to thy cold bed and warm thee.

    Well, I am not allowed to say or write in this public space.  Your bed is cold.  That means you don’t have a company to sleep with.  Thee means you, which means you must warm yourself.  Yes, this literally means “Go Four-Letter-Word yourself”.

    Would you like to use some of them in quarrel?

    Thank you for warching, from ELICA MIWA.

  • New Series Shakespeare For You: The Taming Of The Shrew

    New Series Shakespeare For You: The Taming Of The Shrew

    Hi, folks!  This is ELICA Miwa, Theatre director, actor, writer in Japan.  I am going to start a new series of One Phrase Shakespeare.  The first season was on The Two Gentlemen of Verona.  We still don’t know which one is Will’s first play.  But we surely know The Taming Of The Shrew is one of the earliest plays he wrote.  Yes, it is a problematic play in this age when many of we women think we should not be suppressed by men.  How can we read the play now?  Is the play still relevant to our age?  Let us think about it together.

    This play has a peculiar form.

    Many of you know Romeo & Juliet has a prologue; it gives us a form of a story-teller telling a story of another time and place.

    The Taming Of The Shrew starts with a drunken man called Sly.　　He falls asleep and tricked by his Lord to believe he is the Lord now, and actors give a play for him:  it is a play about a shrew’s marriage.

    So, the character Sly becomes the audience to watch a play The Taming Of The Shrew, with us the real audience.  Quite strange style to give a play.  I also need to think why Shakespeare needed this structure.

    Anyway, the first word of the play is this:

    I’ll pheeze you, in faith.

    Being kicked out of an inn by the hostess, heavily drunk, and without a penny.

    The hostess left him outside.

    And Sly falls asleep.

    And there comes…  That I will tell you next cast.  See you, Bye!

  • One Feast, One House, One Mutual Happiness [Shakespeare For You]

    One Feast, One House, One Mutual Happiness [Shakespeare For You]

    🎭That done, our day of marriage shall be yours; 
    One feast, one house, one mutual happiness.

    —Valentine, Two Gentlemen of Verona 5-4

    [ACTING TIPS]

    This is the closing line of the entire play.

    What a happy celebrating phrase. We can use it on any wedding day!

    The meaning of “that” in “That done” is “Proteus should hear the story of Julia on the way home (Milan).

    The gentlemen of Verona and Duke of Milan are happy.

    For Turio, we may pot his shoulders and say “be a better man”.

    But what about the girls?

    I learned in the 90s, that Shakespeare’s later comedies didn’t feel comedies, for one or two main characters didn’t get their happy ending, and we called them as “Problem comedies”.

    Well, this play has problems!!

    Two ladies witnessed with their own eyes that their boyfriends barter their girlfriends like their property!

    And this is one of his very first plays.  I am going to do “The Taming of th Shrew” next.  It is a problem comedy, too.

    Male audience might have not seen these female characters’ “not truly happy ending” as a problem.  But in this age of 21st century, we know girls also think, feel, and frustrated and have rights to question the male-oriented social system.

    Wow, that’s it!

    The Two Gentlemen of Verona.

    I hope you enjoyed each short beautiful, funny, deep words.

    I enjoyed making the series sooooo much!

    Thank you for your encouragement!

    #shakespeare #english #actingtips #directing #valentine #twogentlemenofverona #lifeinJapan #kimono

  • I Hold Him But A Fool [Shakespeare For You]

    I Hold Him But A Fool [Shakespeare For You]

    🎭 I hold him but a fool that will endanger 
    His body for a girl that loves him not.

    — Turio, Two Gentlemen of Verona 5-4

    [ACTING TIPS]

    Turio was just told from Valentine that if he were to claim Silvia, he would be seen as an enemy of Verona.

    Thus he immediately changed his mind and said this.

    He is a petty, trivial man, whom you may know so many of such kind near you.  You know how to play him.

    We also know that he is not in love with Silvia any way, but with the future position of Duke of Milan, by marrying her.

    #shakespeare #english #actingtips #directing #turio #twogentlemenofverona #lifeinJapan #kimono

  • That One Error Fills Him With Faults [Shakespeare For You]

    That One Error Fills Him With Faults [Shakespeare For You]

    🎭 That one error 
    Fills him with faults; makes him run through all the sins.
    — Proteus, Two Gentlemen of Verona 5-4

    [ACTING TIPS]

    There is a Japanese proverb; Ichi-ji ga Ban-ji, meaning:  one thing leads to all.
    Proteus realizes the same.

    To play the words, I would say Proteus must be filled with remorse.

    I am not yet quite sure what, for Proteus, is the first “that one error”.

    When I don’t yet know the answer, I try acting all the possibilities.

    Was the first error to leave Verona?
    Or to obey his father?
    Remember the first lines of Act 2, Scene 6, when he counterbalanced the weight of the sins he was about to commit.  

    “O sweet-suggesting Love, if thou hast sinned,
    Teach me, thy tempted subject, to excuse it!”

    #shakespeare #english #actingtips #directing #proteus #twogentlemenofverona #lifeinJapan

  • Were Men But Constant [Shakespeare For You]

    🎭 O heaven, were man
    But constant, he were perfect.

    — Proteus, Two Gentlemen of Verona 5-4

    [ACTING TIPS]

    Finally!!  Proteus clearly sees his fault and is really sorry.

    But this line also sounds like a joke.

    I would think Shakespeare intends the audience laugh, after succession of harsh, rather dark, tensed scenes.

    Proteus isn’t joking, of course.

    Being serious and funny at the same time acting is quite tricky!

    #shakespeare #english #actingtips #directing #proteus #twogentlemenofverona #lifeinJapan

  • Women To Change Their Shapes [Shakespeare For You]

    Women To Change Their Shapes [Shakespeare For You]

    🎭. It is the lesser blot, modesty finds,
    Women to change their shapes than men their minds.

    — Julia, Two Gentlemen of Verona 5-4

    [ACTING TIPS]

    Finally Proteus has found out this young boy named Sebastian is Julia in disguise.

    Julia strongly blames how cruel Proteus has been, and says this.q

    Remember, Julia has been acted as a boy.

    Through that, she must have found strength and straightforwardness in her.

    I would perform the scene with my heart hurt, broken, sad, losing hope, and with direct, strong, honesty.

    I may be crying or shedding tears, but never pity-forcing.

    #shakespeare #english #actingtips #directing #julia #twogentlemenofverona #lifeinJapan