Joel Lazar writes:

>but then a psychodynamic attitude toward motivation in Shakespeare's
>characters was not exactly part of an actor's preparation 400 years back.

Footnote:  Having played a couple of the roles WS wrote for Burbage, and
a role Middleton wrote for him, I fear it must have been - not in those
terms of course, but in effect.  He couldn't have made much stage sense
of tailor-made roles like Hamlet or Govianus in Middleton's "The Tyrant"
otherwise.  The same would be true of Armin's roles - the fools in "Twelfth
Night", "All's Well ..", "King Lear" et. al. make no sense without that
focus of input.

There was a long and ongoing thread on the verbal net in Jacobean London as
to which actor was the better - the introvert, inwardly motivated Burbage
or the extrovert, showy Alleyn.  In other words, the old dichotomy never
changes, though the vocabulary might!

(And if you can really take on all those repeats in the "Haffner
Serenade" you're psychodynamically light years ahead of me!)

Christopher Webber,  Blackheath, London,  UK.
http://www.nashwan.demon.co.uk/zarzuela.htm
"ZARZUELA!"

 [I like Mozart, and I like the Haffner serenade, so I actually look forward
 to listening to all of it.  -Dave]