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THESIS

TATE UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

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This is to certify that the

thesis entitled

§ Rhythm in Theatrical Art' §

presented by
Nathan Thomas

has been accepted towards fulfillment
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Masters degreein'Iheatre

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RHYTHM IN THEATRICAL ART

By

NathanThomas

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Department of Theatre

1993

ABSTRACT
RHYTHM IN THEATRICAL ART
By
Nathan Thomas

Rhythm in art is the perception of the relationship of constituent part to part and part
to whole in the work of art. Musicologists separate objective (written) rhythm from
subjective (rhythm). This study examines the three rhythmic strata of the objective rhythms
in theatrical art: the rhythms of language, character change, and episodes. The study relies
upon research and comparisons in musicology, linguistics, and experimental psychology.
Practical examples from W, Pinter's Landscape, Feydeau's War. as

well as other plays, illustrate the process of analysis.

Copyright by
NATHAN THOMAS
1993

INTRODUCTION
Chapter I:

Section 1
Section 2
Section 3

Section 4

Chapter II:

Section 1
Section 2

Section 3

Section 4

Chapter III:

Section 1
Section 2
Section 3

Section 4

Bibliography .....

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page
............................................................................ 1
Introduction To The Rhythm Of Language ......................... 1
Rhythmic Clues In Various Texts ................................. 19
Theory of Language Rhythm And Coordinate Concepts ....... 31
Conclusion
Introduction To The Rhythm Of Character Change ............. 43
Rhythmic Clues In Various Texts ................................. 48
Theory Of The Rhythm Of Character Change And Coordinate
Concepts .............................................................. 54
Conclusion ........................................................... 62
Introduction To The Rhythm Of Character Change ............. 63
Rhythmic Clues In Various Texts ................................. 65
Theory Of The Rhythm of Episodes .............................. 71
Conclusions .......................................................... 79
............................................................................. 8 1

INTRODUCTION

On a given afternoon two directors are working. One is a band director, the other is
directing a play. The band director tells a drummer, "Let's stop and work on this rhythm."
The drummer knows quite clearly what is meant. First, the drummer and band director
share a common language and understanding of rhythm. The band director may take the
tempo of the passage very slowly so that the drummer can effectively execute the
relationships between the notes and perform the pattern created by the composer. The
incorrect performance of the rhythm would lead to the ruination and possible destruction of
the structure of the piece being played.

The theatrical director tells an actor, "Let's stop and work on this rhythm." The
actor may have difficulty knowing what is meant. First, the actor and director may not
share a common language and understanding of rhythm. Does the director actually mean
pace (tempo)? Does the director mean the transition from one motivational unit or 'beat' to
another? Is the rhythm of the text, verse or prose, the purpose behind stopping? Or is
something else meant? If so, how is it identified? In the meantime the drummer has
satisfactorily mastered the rhythm of the passage in question, meanwhile the director and
actor may still be working out where to start.

This is not due to a lack of materials or understanding of what rhythm is and how it
works in art. But as musicologist Paul Creston pointed out in his book on rhythm that
while the literature about rhythm is voluminous, the materials have not been collected and
coordinated.1 In theatrical literature, the place of rhythm is reported as being important and

should not be ignored. Nevertheless actual discussion of rhythm may range from a bare

 

1Paul Creston, W (New York: Franco Colombo, 1961) iii.
1

2

mention to a chapter.2 More, there is currently only one book devoted to rhythm in
drama.3

There may be many reasons for this situation. Most theatrical writers, including
Ms. George, have largely ignored the rhythmic studies performed in the sciences, including
experimental psychology and the speech sciences as well as work in musicology.
Secondly, as linguist Richard Cureton points out, "Rhythm is not one-dimensional."4
There are many levels of rhythms that interconnect and are perceived on differing levels.
Cureton argues, "... all complex rhythms are inherently hierarchical and interactional: their
expressive power derives from the intersecting perceptual forms that they present on many
levels of structure within the expressive medium."5 The lack of recognition and
identification of the differing levels of rhythm also causes confusion.

This study proposes to identify the various rhythmic strata in theatrical art. This
introduction serves to define rhythm as a whole, in art, and as part of human experience.
The rhythmic strata in theatrical art will be defined and introduced.

Rhythm in art is the perception of the relationship of constituent part to part and part
to whole in the work of art. As will be shown, the existence of rhythm lies in its
perception. Rhythmitician Charles Elliott writes, "...recent research is showing that
rhythmicity is likely basic to human perception and that an understanding of the nature of

rhythm may be the key to an understanding of the human perceptual process."6 The

 

2Rhythm is briefly defined in John W. Kirk, and Ralph A. Bellas, The M of
Dirgting (Belmont, Ca.: Wadsworth, 1985), but receives an entire chapter in Constantin

Stanislavski, Building a Chmtgr (London: Methuen, 1950).

3Kathleen George, Rhflhm in Drama (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh Press, 1980).
4Richard D. Cureton, "Rhythm: A Multilevel Analysis," M119 (1985): 254.
5Cureton 244.

6Charles A. Elliott, "Rhythmic Phenomena- Why the Fascination?"&yth_n_r_m

,.ed JamesR. Evans, and Manfred
Clynes (Springfield, 111.: Charles C. Thompson Publishing, 1986) 5.

interrelationships of pan to part and part to whole is the basis for James J oyce's aesthetic of
rhythm at the end of WW "Rhythm [. . .] is the first
formal esthetic relation of part to part in any esthetic whole or of an esthetic whole to its
part or parts or of any part to the esthetic whole of which it is a part."7

Thus, rhythm in art is the perception of the relationship of constituent part to pan
and of part to whole. The act of perceiving rhythm means the ability to sense groups and
patterns. The relationship of constituent part to part and part to whole indicates the
structural, organizational basis of rhythm. A rhythm in art may be played at various tempi
(or at various sizes in the spatial arts), but the structural interrelationships remain intact.
Fridman establishes, "The active principle of rhythm is its organizing function, whether in
music or articulated language. . . "3

Rhythm comes from the ancient Greek word 'rhythmos,’ a word usually interpreted
as 'flow.‘ Historian Werner Jaeger points out that 'flow' is a secondary definition of
'rhythmos.‘ Jaeger notes the use of 'rhythmos' to indicate stillness, including Prometheus
being bonded in rhythm. J aeger concludes, "Rhythm then is that which imposes bonds on
movement and confines the flux of things . . ."9 By imposing a bond on movement and
confining flux, rhythm provides structure and organization to what would otherwise be
chaos. Thus, from an early date the structural basis of rhythm was recognized.

Modern definitions of rhythm can vary in wording, but they do indicate common

features:

1. "5. Mus. a. That feature of musical composition which depends on the

 

7James Joyce, AP ' f ' Y n M (New York: Penguin, 1956)
206.

8Ruth Fridman, "Proto-Rhythms: Nonverbal to Language and Musical

Acquisition," The Relationship of Verbal and Nonverbal Communication ed. Mary Ritchie
Key (Hague: Mouton Publishers, 1980) 78.

9Werner J aeger, WZM ed. (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1945) 126.

4

systematic grouping of notes according to their duration. b. Kind of
structure as determined by the arrangement of such groups.

6. Art. Due correlation and interdependence of parts, producing a
harmonious whole.

7. gen. Movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak
elements, or of opposite or different conditions." [O.E.D.] 1°

2. "Rhythm, in music, is the organization of duration in ordered movement." and
"Accent is the very life of rhythm." [Creston]ll

3’ "Rhythm is time bounded ”8°13?” [. - .1 in poetry and music it is the
regularly recurring accent." [Hallock-Greenewalt] 12

4. "Rhythm is the structure of intervals in a succession of events."[Allen]13

5. "Rhythm, which means temporal patterning, is a concept based on motor
functioning."[Martin]14

6. Rhythm is " . . .the organization of [. . .] time relationships."[Lundin]15

7. Rhythm is ". . . the organizational and dynamic force in music." [Radocy
and Boyle]16

8. ". . . rhythm thus may be defined as a response to certain properties of
the sound sequences (the music)."[Gabrielsson]17

 

10"Rhythm," saferd Englieh Dictieng, 2nd ed.
11Creston l, 28.

12Mary Hallock-Greenwalt, W (N .p.: Philadelphia, 1905) 3.

13George D. Allen, "The Location of Rhythmic Stress Beats in English: An
Experimental Study 1," WM 15 (1972): 72.

14James G. Martin "Rhythmic (Hierarchical) Versus Serial Structure in Speech and
Other Behavior," Psflhelem' a1 Review 79 (1972): 487.

15R.W. Lundin, An ' 'v P h 1 f M i (New York: Ronald Press,
1967) 111.

16RE. Radocy, and JD. Boyle, Psyehelegjeel Feengletions ef Meeicfl Behavier
(Springfield: Charles C. Thomas, 1979) 69.

l7Alf Gabrielsson, "Rhythm 1n Music," h '
Mew ed. James R. Evans, and Manfred Clynes (Springfield: Charles C.
Thomas Publishing, 1986) 139.

Theatrical practitioners have variously defined rhythm, but share many characteristics with

the definitions listed above:

1. ". . . rhythm exists as it is perceived or felt by the audience." Also, rhythm is
perceivable in various changes and that " . . .there is some order to the

changes. . ." [Kathleen George]18

2. "Rhythm is the quantitative relationship of units -- of movement, of sound --
to the unit lengths agreed upon in a given tempo and measure."
[Stanislavsld]19

3. " . . . the orderly, measurable changes of all the elements comprised in a work
of art -- provided that all those changes progressively stimulate the attention
of the spectator and lead invariably to the final aim of the artist."

[Boleslavsky]20

4. "Rhythm in anything can be defined simply as stress pattern, as organized
repetition of emphasis." [Sam Smiley]21

5. Rhythm is "regular or irregular recurrence of something in the flow of a scene
or performance." [John Kirk]22

6. ". . . rhythm is a regularly recurring accent." Also, ". . . the individual has
the tendency to collect the beats into units or groups." [Dean and Carra]”

7. Rhythm is the same thing as tempo. A person telling an excited story will
have a speedy delivery and a speedy rhythm. [Robert Cohen and John

Harrop]24

 

13George 9.

19Constantin Stanislavski, Wm (London: Methuen, 1950) 183.

20Richard Boleslavsky, Aeg'ng: The Fm 1§ix [lessens (New York: Theatre Arts
Books, 1933) 112.

21Sam Smiley P1 ' ' ° Th f A ' n (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:
Prentice-Hall, 1971) 140.

22John W. Kirk, and Ralph A. Bellas, The M ef Direeg'ng (Belmont, Ca.:
Wadsworth, 1985) 231.

23Alexander Dean, and Lawrence Carra, Fundamentals of Play me' ctm g, 4th
ed.(New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1980) 222.

24Robert Cohen, and John Harrop, Wfingkwood Cliffs,
N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974) 155-157.

6

The various definitions from the O.E.D. point to the structural interrelationships of
rhythm in talking about "systematic groupings" and the structure created by the
arrangement of those groups. In Creston's definition (#2), 'organization' only makes
sense in that one perceives the interrelationships of part to part. Further, Creston points out
that the agent of the perception is the use of stress or accents. There again, accents may
only be perceived relative to unaccented or unstressed parts and to other accents and
stresses. Allen and Martin (#4 and #5) both point to structure and patterns (which indicate
structure) as features of rhythm. Finally, Lundin, Radocy, and Boyle agree on the
organizational elements of rhythm. Organization is recognized through relationships
inherent in the structure.

The definitions from the theatrical practitioners contain many fine elements
(although Cohen is unhelpful in #7 by confusing rhythm with tempo). It will be shown
below how rhythm exists in its perception, thus needing a perceptor. George (#1)
mistakenly necessitates the audience for the perceptor. forgetting that at some level the
actor, director, designer, and playwright himself is also an audience for the script. She
does recognize the organizing, structural element of rhythm. And although Stanislavski's
work deals more with the performance-sided question of tempo, his definition of rhythm
points to the relationship of part to part and part to whole, as does Boleslavsky's definition.
However, to say rhythm is simply a stress pattern is simplistic and incomplete.

Often rhythm is confused with other terms because of the irresistable human desire
to perceive rhythms. Such confusion leads to imprecision. Historically, as our word
'rhythm' comes from the Greek 'rhythmos,‘ likewise our words 'cycle' comes from the
Greek word for 'circle.’ Thus, historically, rhythm should not be confused with an on-
going cycle.25 A pioneer in the discovery of what rhythm is in terms of human psychology

and perception, R.H. Stetson notes that rhythm is much different from the regularity

 

25Elliott 8.

7

associated with pulse, cycles, and periodicity. Stetson writes, "It is sheer assumption that
regularity is characteristic of 'pure' rhythm . . ."25 Stetson also proved through
experimentation (despite the mythic belief otherwise) that heartbeat and neural discharges
are not in any way connected to rhythmic perception.27 In esthetics, Carl Seashore agreed
that there is a fundamental difference between rhythm and periodicity. Seashore argues, "It
is the internal organization of the pattern that makes rhythm in the rhythmic arts . . ."
Periodic events, like a clock ticking and a heart beating, are not organized. Therefore, they
are not inherently rhythmic.28 Science has turned from looking for a 'biological clock' to
discovering the 'oscillator,’ which emphasizes embracing the difference between rhythm
and periodicity.29 As Elcanon Isaacs points out, "Rhythm takes place in time, but time is
not rhythm."30

The difference between rhythm and periodicity also points to the fact that rhythm is
not only an object that provides stimulus. Rhythm exists as the response of an organism
through the act of perception.31 A major component of rhythm is the act of perception.
Linguist William Morrison Patterson argues, "All the phenomena of rhythm can be

explained by the facts of perception."32 Above, Gabrielsson defines rhythm in terms of

 

26RH. Stetson, "A Motor Theory of Rhythm and Discrete Succession I,"

W 12 (1905): 252.
2"Stetson 258.

28Carl E. Seashore, Psyhelegy ef Musie (New York: McGraw- Hill, 1938) 147.

29Fredrick M. Brown, "Emerging Variable," Rhythmie Amt; of Behavier ed.
Fredrick M. Brown, and R. Curtis Graeber (Hillsdales, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum

Associates, 1982) 10.

30Elcanon Isaacs, "The Nature of the Rhythmic Experience," Psyehelegieal Review
27(1920): 276.

31Lundin 93.
. 32William Morrison Pattersonn

f (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1916) 29.

response, which is possible only in terms of rhythm being perceived. Evidently the
perception of rhythm in humans is almost constant. Rhythm plays a large role in directing
the brain's attention efficiently and hierarchically. Rhythm does this by providing a
combination of continuity and framework in which to perceive and organize stimuli.”
Elliott sums up the near-constancy of rhythmic perception with this note, "Apparently, the
human mind assumes that a rhythmic principle operates in the whole of man's
environment."34

Another pioneer in rhythm perception, Thaddeus L. Bolton discovered that the
perception of simple rhythms demands a sequence of impressions in which the impressions
occur between 1.0 seconds and .1 seconds. At the faster tempo, events seem to become a
long, continuous event. (The transmission of films takes advantage of this.) At the slower
tempo, events are too dis-connected to seem patterned, and thus, rhythmic.35 The near-
constancy of rhythmic perception allows for the perception of rhythms where none truly
exist. Stetson, working with early telephonic technology, had subjects listen to electrically
controlled equi-distant sounds at objectively equal volume. Nevertheless, subjects quickly
heard iambs, trochees, and other stress patterns. Stetson, among other observations,
concluded, "Because of the influence of the rhythm process, the observer does not actually
hear the beats where they actually occur."36 Bolton, in similar work, notes that it takes
conscious effort on the part of the subjects ueLto hear rhythm in objectively identical

sounds.37

 

33Hilary Buxton, "Auditory Lateralization: An Effect of Rhythm," Beam and
Luuguage 18 (1983): 254.

34Elliott 5.

35Thaddeus L. Bolton, "Rhythm," American Jeurnal ef Psycholegy 6 (1894):
237.

36Stetson 308.

37Bolton 206-7.

9

Patterson theorizes that since there is no absolute or objective time, observers
necessarily have illusions in regard to temporal size or duration, and thus rhythm.38 An
effect of this process is that the mind will re-arrange actually heard events into sensible
patterns. In a musical concert ". . .all the notes will be more or less out of time, but the
listener must build a conceptual structure which adequately represents the rhythmic
relationships between them."39

Thus the process of rhythmic perception is two-fold. First, observers tend to
perceive rhythm in periodic sounds, thus lending rhythmic grouping to that which is not
rhythmic. Secondly, observers tend to "help" non-periodic events into a sensible structure,
as at a musical performance. Observers need to consciously work not to perform these
mental tasks. Such is the near-constancy of rhythmic perception.

The perceptual center for language seems to be neurologically tied to the center for
rhythm perception.40 The ability to perceive simple rhythms seems fundamental to human
experience. Entrainment, the ability to act in behavioral rhythms with others, has been
observed in infants within twenty minutes of birth.41 A child's ability to perceive rhythm
is limited and develops as the child matures. Charles Sears discovered in experimentation
that children needed simple, pronounced time divisions at a lively tempo. Longer, more
complex rhythms were difficult for children to understand and reproduce.42 In more recent

years, Payne and Holzman have discovered that children need rhythmic processing to

 

38Patterson 33.

39H. Christopher Longuet-Higgins, and Christopher S. Lee, The Perception of
Musical Rhythms," Bereepmn 11(1982): 115.

“Charles E. Hoequist, Jr., "The Perceptual Center and Rhythm Categories,"
W26 (1983): 375.

“William S. Condon, "Communication: Rhythm and Structure," Rhmm in

Peychologjeal, Linguisu'e ad Musical Prgesses ed. James R. Evans, and Manfred Clynes
(Springfield: Charles C. Thomas Publisher, 1986) 68.

42Charles H. Sears, W, diss., Clark University, 1902
(Worcester,Mass.: Clark University, 1902) 5.

10

comprehend speech. Their findings ". . . suggest that memory for rhythm per se, at least
in regards to accent or stress, is a major factor in memory for speech."43 Moreover,
children with problems of rhythm perception, but not mentally retarded, hearing impaired
or emotionally disturbed exhibit reading impairment. Possibly this is because of "deficits
in basic perceptual processing" in temporal pattern recognition.44

In regularly functioning adults, rhythmic perception regularly assists in the simple
comprehension of language. Studies show the rhythm of language exists at the perceptual
level and not at the acoustic level. As an acoustical event, most speakers "warp time" at the
end of a "breath group." Consequently at the perceptual level, the mind "dc-warps" the
acoustical signal.45 Kelly likens this process of mental "sharpening" in maximizing stress
differences and groupings to the visual "sharpening" the brain performs when engaged in
seeing.46

In theatrical art there are three basic rhythmic strata. These rhythmic strata have
analogs in music and these analogs will be used to introduce each stratum. Music is a
helpful comparative because of the clarity it provides in rhythmic discussions. Music is the
only realm of behavior in which a regular, quantitative system of rhythm has been

developed.47 Also useful is the methodology developed in musicology that separates the

 

43M. Carr Payne, Jr., and Thomas G. Holzman, "Rhythm as a Factor in Memory,"
Rhym in Psyehelegieal, Linglu’su'e and Musieal meesses ed. James R. Evans, and
Mansfield Clynes (Springfield: Charles C. Thomas Publisher, 1986) 45.

44Robert F. McGivem, Chris Berka, Martin L. Languis, and Stephen Chapman,
"Detection of Deficits in Temporal Pattern Discrimination Using the Seashore Rhythm Test
in Young Children with Reading Impairments," .19qu ef M'ng Disuuflitiee 24 (1991):
61, 58.

45Andre'-Pierre Bengueral, and Janet D'Arcy, "Time Warping and the Perception
of Rhythm in Speech," Journal of Phenetice 14 (1986): 244, 245.

46Michael Kelly, "Rhythm and Language Change in English," Jeurng of Memgy
and nguage 28 (1989): 703-706.

47Stetson 253.

ll

subjective rhythm observed by one listening to a performance and the objective rhythm
notated by a composer.48

This study will examine the objective rhythms - the rhythms notated by the
playwright and indicated in the published text - not subjective rhythm of performance. As
there are possibilities of interpretation of harmonies and rhythms in music, so is it also in
theatrical art. The purpose of this study is to identify basic principles and how those
principles act in theatrical art. The examples are to aid identification and understanding.

The three basic rhythmic strata in theatrical art are the rhythm of language, the
rhythm of character change, and the rhythm of episodes. These rhythms roughly compare
to basic/simple rhythm, harmonic rhythm, and phrasal rhythm in music.

The basic/simple rhythm of music is simply the rhythm of the notes as sounded.
Sometimes this is known as the "beat." Thisclassification can confuse. Take for example

this brief musical example:49

 

The "beat" might be perceived as the quarter-note(J), but the sounded notes provide the
flow of sixteenth-notes (mj ). This compares to the basic rhythmic unit of theatrical

art -- the word. As Wenk notes, ". . . rhythm is a natural (and necessary ?) feature of

speech . . ."50

 

43Seashore 138.
49Kent Wheeler Kennan, Counterpoint example Chap. 6, #32d.

50B.J. Wenk, "Speech Rhythms in Second Language Acquisition," Lauguageaud
mm 28 (1985):]70.

12

Rhythm exists in language hierarchically from syllables into words into phrases into
clauses into sentences into paragraphs, etc.51 In poetic metrics, the basic "beat" is the foot
which is made of two syllables, usually a combination of stressed and unstressed syllables.
Studies indicate that this alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables may be a human
preference.52 Even in prose rhythm strong syllables appear in the speech stream at even
intervals creating the possibility of rhythmic perception.53

The study of poetic metrics, prose rhythm, and the rhythm of language has a long
history. The rhythm of language, the rhythm of the word in theatrical art will be the first
rhythmic stratum to be identified and discussed in this study.

The next stratum of rhythm in music is harmonic rhythm. The brief examples
below all posses identical harmonic rhythm despite obvious differences in the basic/simple
rhythm notated:54

‘5 ‘n

 

51Cureton 245.

52Michael H. Kelly, and David C. Rubin, "Natural Rhythmic Patterns in English

Verse: Evidence from Child Counting-Out Rhymes," 19mm; of Memog and Lau guege
27(1988): 726.

53Fredrick Erickson, "Timin g and Context in Everyday Discourse: Implications for
the Study of Referential and Social Meaning," thlfin's Oral Communicatien Skille, ed.
W. Patrick Dickson (New York: Academic Press, 1981) 257.

54Kennan, Chap 6, Ex. 32 a-d.

:- Tn“

l3

 

The harmomc rhythm for each example rs thus: itémuiJ; :g’ % {3; %

The comparable rhythmic stratum in theatrical art is the rhythm of character change.
Through the course of speaking dialogue (the rhythmic stratum of language), a character
may shift the topic, change methods of trying to achieve some goal, make a discovery, or
consciously not change (which may be considered a discovery of sorts). Each type of
character change provides another type of rhythmic perception. Like harmonic rhythm, it
can be subtle and disputable in its particulars, but its workings are clear. Such changes in
conversation have been observed scientifically. Different durational structures in
conversation in moving from 'sub«goal' to 'sub-goal' create a larger rhythmic structure
than the words used themselves. The 'moves' or transitions from sub-goal to sub- goal are
observable and become the markers by which rhythm may be perceived. The rhythm
created by these transitions depends on the structure of the plan or 'goal.’55

The study of the rhythm of character change has a shorter history than the rhythm,
yet it has become the hallmark of the Stanislavski system and used to create the pieces
which connect to become the through-line of a character. The discussion of the rhythm of
character change will be the second part of this study.

The third rhythmic stratum in music is phrasal rhythm. Phrasal rhythm leads to the
larger structural considerations of a piece of music. Phrasal rhythm encompasses the
interrelationships of notes to create phrases, the interrelationships of phrases, and the
hierarchy of phrases into motives into themes into sections into movements into the larger
work. Creston argues this occurs because the perception of rhythm of a group of pulses is

not limited by each measure, but by combinations of measures.“ Cureton uses the first

 

55John O. Greene, and Joseph N. Cappella, "Cognition and Talk: The Relationship
of Semantic Units to Temporal Patterns of Fluency in Spontaneous Speech, " Language

and Smeeh 29 (1986): 155.

56Creston 4-5.

l4

few measures of "The Star Spangled Banner" to illustrate how smaller groups combine to

create larger groups or phrases:57

11““Q'ZTJ": JJ {31. - 131 J J l

 

 

 

L___l
‘ V
17- v

 

 

V *

1P.

 

‘_ 1L. L-FL—

Thus the opening of the song has various levels of perceptual shapes.

Musicologist Joseph Machlis describes at length the phrasal rhythm of Beethoven's
Fifth Symphony.58 The basic rhythm of "three shorts and a long" is the essential tool used
to tie the symphony into a cohesive rhythmic whole. The basic sequence is repeated in
many melodic forms and at many tempi, but the structural integrity of the basic rhythm is
recognizable throughout.

The theatrical rhythmic analog is the rhythm of episodes. The various units that
make up a play have been variously identified. Yet character changes make up episodes in
the characters' lives. These episodes join together into dramatic sequences and/or scenes.
These notated scenes may have numerous "French" scenes within them. The various
scenes/sequences of a play combine into an act, the acts into a play. Literary critics Charles
and Elaine Hallett argue that a scene is usually a temporal/spatial unit of action "in which
tensions build toward a significant moment and then taper off."59 Ignoring the published

scene markings in Shakespeare's work, the Halletts examine the plays in terms of

 

57Cureton 244.

58Joesph Machlis, The Enjoyment ef Music, 4th ed. (New York: W.W. Norton,
1977) 276-281.

”Charles A. Hallett, and Elaine S. Hallett, ..'n '
W (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) 1.

15

sequences which they define as ". . .that unit of action in which Shakespeare raises a single
dramatic question and answers it."‘50

The third section of this study will examine the rhythm of episodes, using a study
of Shakespeare's structure as well as Harold Pinter‘s Landseape and George Feydeau's
Efrain Helm, among others.

Rhythm in art is the perception of the relationship of constituent part to part and part
to whole. These relationships are inherent in the structure of the art work. The perception
of rhythm is near-constant. The perception of rhythm works on various levels or strata. In
theatrical art those rhythmic strata are the rhythm of language, the rhythm of character
change, and the rhythm of episodes. Each of these strata of rhythm will be discussed more
fully in the study to follow.

 

60Hallett 3, 7.

CHAPTERI

SECTION 1
INTRODUCTION TO THE RHYTHM OF LANGUAGE

Above we gave an example of a director working with an actor on a given
afternoon. The actor stops the scene and asks to work on the rhythm of the language of the
scene. As Charles Sears noted, "Everyone can express rhythm in some form, but not
everyone can express it in all forms."61 The actor feels that the rhythm of the language
should be important because he guesses that the playwright chooses to write a speech or
scene in a particular prose or verse style to establish the intended point at that moment of
the play.‘52 What will the actor and the director do to determine the rhythm of the language?
What is it? How does it work? This chapter will define the rhythm of language, discuss
coordinate terms like meter and tempo, and discuss the workings of verse and prose
rhythm and how objective analysis may reveal possible meanings.

As noted earlier, rhythm in art is the perception of the relationship of constituent
part to part and part to whole in the work of art. Rhythm exists in the cognition of patterns
and groups. Experimental psychologists M. Carr Payne, Jr. and Thomas G. Holzman
write, "Psychologically, rhythm represents perception of a series of stimuli not as
individual items but a group of stimuli." Also as noted earlier, this depends on the relative

intensity of specific elements of the stimuli group (accent), the absolute and relative

 

61Sears 18.

62George T. Wright, WQerkeleyz University of
California Press, 1980) 285.

16

 

l7

durations of the members, and the temporal spacing between elements.63 Spain says more
simply that rhythm exists in the perception of proportion.“ This ability to perceive rhythm
is irresistible. "No series of impressions is possible that cannot in some way be
comprehended as rhythmic."65 Language instructor K. H. Albrow defines the rhythm of
language more specifically in writing:
The features of greater and lesser prominence, together with features of duration,
which have been referred to in Section I [discussion of pitch, prominence, duration,
etc.], are organised into patterns which constitute the RHYTHM of English. The
UNIT of rhythm consists of one prominent syllable, or more than one syllable
grouped in such a way that there is always a syllable of greater prominence to be
apprehended initially in the group, plus a further syllable or syllables of lesser
prominence.66
The notions of greater and lesser duration and of greater and lesser prominence necessarily
depend on apprehension of the relationships of the constituent parts of the word and the
relationships of the parts to the whole. Thus the rhythm of language is the basic stratum in
the hierarchy of rhythm in theatrical art.
Evidence indicates that rhythm perception and language skills are intimately

connected in the brain. This seems to be true even from birth. An infant's fu'st sounds are

rhythmic and may be notated as such:

 

63Payne, and Holzman 42.

“Delbert Spain, WM): (Santa Barbara: Capra Press,
1988) 27.

65Patterson 33.
66K.H. Albrow. WWW Programme in

Linguistics and English Teaching Paper 9 (London: University College London and
Longmans Green and Co., 1968) 8.

 

18

1) g | |' [iambic?] 2) U [if

an ether

5) U, r (”U [iambic?]
”LU! r at I U .7

Some considered that rhythm might be tied to right and left brain phenomena and
tested rhythm in relation to handedness. Again it was discovered that rhythm is tied to
language centers in the brain.68 Studies with retarded readers show that the inability to
remember auditory rhythm was connected to the inability to read well.‘59 Experiments also
show rhythm contributes to the identification of unseen speakers.70

The connection of rhythm and language in the brain has provided one of the
stumbling blocks to researchers working to implement 'automatic speech recognition' in
computers. An illiterate child can listen to a sentence and repeat it aloud without
understanding what was said. A phonetician can transcribe an utterance in an unknown
language. However attempts at automatic speech recognition have largely failed due to the
lack of specific knowledge of the coordination of speech and rhythm information by the
brain.71 Recent work suggests one of the reasons for the difficulty is the ability of the
brain to anticipate language information based on the brain's ability to apprehend language
rhythms.

 

67 Fridman 80-81.

53N. R. Ibbotson, and John Morton, "Rhythm and Dominance," Qeguiu'um
9(1981):134-135.

69Payne, and Holzman 48-49.

70Wim A. Van Dommelen, "The Contribution of Speech Rhythm and Pitch to
Speaker Recognition," W30 (1987) 325.

71James G. Martin, "Aspects of Rhythmic Structure in Speech Perception,"

 

Manfred Clynes (Springfield Charles c. Thomas Publishing, 1986) 79. '

19

A single syllable spoken as one syllable is self-sufficient in the language
information it carries. However, the syllable as part of a continuous utterance contains its
own information as well as information from other syllables, both spoken and yet-to-be-
spoken. Also the information of the one syllable is also contained in past and future
syllables. Thus listeners do not perceive segments individually, and speakers do not
produce segments that way. Both language production and perception depend on the
ability to perceive rhythmic patterns to coordinate rhythmic information and thus achieve
communication.72

Experimental psychologist and linguist James Martin notes that syllabic accent is
one of the tools of communicating rhythmic information in syllables. This tool seems to
depend in English on the alternation of relatively strong and weak accents. Martin writes
this sentence, "The window the ball the boy threw hit broke." Then he comments:

Possibly sentences like this are rarely spoken because they are syntactically

difficult, but another reason might be that they are rhythmically awkward and hence

harder to pronounce in a natural way. In this case the last four words provide four
stressed syllables in a row, a rare sequence in natural speech.73
Martin hints, but does not mention that one possibility for the rarity of a string of stressed

syllables is that such an utterance would thwart the anticipatory by-product of rhythmic

perception. Stress, then, is a tool to aid communication.

SECTION 2
RHYTHMIC CLUES IN VARIOUS TEXTS

The question of finding meaning inherent in the rhythm of a text -- verse and prose
alike -- will be considered in this section. English scholar Marina Tarlinskaja argues the

very structure of verse lends itself to giving meaning. Verse either reaffirms anticipation or

 

72Martin, "Aspects" 96.

73Martin, "Aspects" 83.

 

20

circumvents anticipation. A fine poet exploits anticipation to convey meaning.74 She states
explicitly in another article:
There is nothing mysterious in such a direct correlation between verse rhythm and
the character of a personage. To make an active, dynamic person speak in
correspondence with his nature, the poet builds his speech syntactically and
rhythmically in such a way that it has a potential to move quickly and energetically
in a single stream.75
For Tarlinskaja poets have two chief means to provide semantic function through line
rhythm. The first is to place usually stressed words on metrically weak positions. The
second is to place usually unstressed words on metrically strong positions.76 To prove her
thesis Tarlinskaja made "stress profiles" (a percentage of the occurrence of preferentially
stressed syllables in the metrically strong position) of 26 characters from a wide range of
Shakespeare's plays. In strictly metered ("canonized") verse the stress profile is as high as
85%. In less strictly metered ("decanonized") verse the profile may be somewhat lower
than 75%. Generally in the plays the heroes tend to have more canonized verse and villains
more decanonized verse. As an example, Tarlinskaja provides the stress profiles for

Brutus and Cassius from W (with a percentage for each of the five strong

positions in an iambic line):

Brutus 61.7 / 80.9 / 67.7 / 72 / 86
Cassius 58.6 / 78.7 / 70.2 / 69.5 / 87.9.77

Tarlinskaja concludes Cassius tends to have more decanonized verse. This reflects his

impulsive temper. She also notes that the two men are rhythmically polarized.

 

74Marina Tarlinskaja, "Rhythm and Meaning: Rhythmical Figures in English
Iambic Pentameter, their Grammar, and their Links with Semantics," Style 21 (1987):1.

75Marina Tarlinskaja, "Rhythmical Differentiation of Shakespeare's Dramatic
Personae," Leuguuge uugLStyle 17 (1984): 294.

76Tarlinskaja, "Rhythm and Meaning" 2.
”Tarlinskaja, "Rhythmical Differentiation" 293 -294.

 

21

Tarlinskaja also argues that a character's rhythm may develop and evolve over the
course of the play. She notes that Othello's verse becomes increasingly decanonized as the
play continues. Tarlinskaja concludes the downward spiral of Othello's passion is matched
by and communicated through the rhythm of his verse.78

There are numerous works that explain clearly and thoroughly Shakespeare's
verse.79 However, it would be useful to show some rhythmic variations within the iambic
meter. There are numerous rhythmic possibilities tied to the free use of the construction of
the verse line from two half-lines. These include the epic caesura, the introduction of
midline pauses, shared lines. Another simple variation of the verse line is the so-called
'headless' line.

Shakespeare uses the epic caesura to develop the traditional pentameter line
constructed from the joining of two half-lines. An example is "Lag of [21’ brcfthiei'? /Why
bastard? Wherefore base?" [Kim 1.2.6.]80 Shakespeare uses this construction on an
average of once every 38 lines throughout his known plays and once every 20 lines from
W through Tempest. The epic caesura here allows a feminine ending at the half
line. Shakespeare maintains the meter, but also adds variety.

The use of epic caesura leads to the possibility of pauses at the mid-line break,
particularly in cases where a sentence ends in the mid-line as often occurs in late plays. It
might be thought that the addition of a pause will affect the rhythm of a line. This is not
necessarily the case. Wright notes:

one or more pauses may occur in midline, but to the trained ear what counts is that

the pattern of alternation which is structurally essential to the line will be resumed
after each pause [ . . . ] [An] actor may make a pause of some length after the fourth

 

78Tarlinskaja, "Rhythmical Differentiation" 298 - 299.
79Spain, Wright, et al.
3°Wright 165 - 166.

.M': . . ...

22

syllable, but the iambic pattern of the line is not disturbed, only suspended. This
capacity for internal delay distinguishes poetic form. . .31

Shared lines are another form of the epic caesura. Instead of a pause taken by a
speaker, the single line is split by the jump in speakers. Often the shared line indicates the
completion of a natural line by two speakers, working as a "hinge" between two speakers.

Wright uses the following:

Laertes. It may be death
King. Let's further think of this. [Hamlet 4.7.148]82

Unrelated to these variations of epic caesura is Shakespeare's use of the 'headless'
line which omits the first 'weak' syllable. Often this line variation is used to indicate

impatience or a preemptory tone, thus:

"" Where the devil should this Romeo be?" [39mm 2.4.1.]
"" Jailer, take him to thy custody." We 1.1.155.]83

Shakespeare also exploited the developing nature of his language and its variable

pronunciation of words. Thus a single word may be used differently in a single line:
V ’ v . / u / . . .
"As fi / re dnves / out fire, / so prty prty" [luhuefleaser 31171.]84

It might be thought that syllabic ambiguity might equal rhythmic ambiguity.
Actually, this is analogous to the dotted-eighth note/sixteenth note pattern in music. This
rhythmic figure may be played in a variety of ways dependent upon where it's placed, the

genre of the music, and how it's used. This makes the actual figure no less rhythmic than

 

81Wright 3 -4.
”Wright 102.
83Wright 175.
84Wright 156.

23

any other. Syllabic ambiguity seems to assist the expressive nature of the verse. For
Wright, Shakespeare's tendency to write ten syllable lines with eleven or twelve syllables
that might be elided " . . . is to crowd the air with meanings only half-spoken, partly
concealed The hypermetrical half-syllables imply that, just as the line contains more in the
way of syllables than the meter promises, so too in the meanings conveyed by the words
there is more than meets the ear."85 Likewise Attridge feels the use of indeterminate and
ambiguous syllables provides meaning.86

The meter of prose may also found to be complex, but its rhythms can also provide
clues to meaning. In English, prose rhythm developed from the literary traditions
stemming from Anglo-Saxon prose and poetry, genres that closely resembled each other.87
In Old English, the rhythmic tendency was trochaic. For example in the account of the
murder of King Cynewulf, the thanes "ofslaegen" ("off slain") the King. By contrast we
now tend toward iambic phrasing ("killed off"). This change in rhythm was likely due to
the influence of the addition of words from the romance languages into English which led
to the rhythmic tension in the language caused by the mutual existence of trochaic Anglo-
Saxon words admixed with Romance-derived words.88 Saintsbury describes English
prose thus:

Thus rhythmical prose, in its perfection, is distinguished from poetry by subtle but

easily recognisable differences of diction, arrangement, and the like. . .[ . . .] It is

separated from the various hybrids of the Ossianic, Blakite, or Whitrnanian kind in

the same way, though not to the same degree, in more respects than one --

especially in the absence of even irregular stichic division. It obeys to the full that

universal law of prose which dictates continuous and uninterrupted flow, not
merely to the close of the sentence, but (with a difference of course) to the close of

 

85Wright 158.

86Derek Attridge, "Rhythm in English Poe try," Wm 21(1990):
1023- 1026.

87George Saintsbury, A Higtpg ef En glieh _P_reee Rhme (London: Macmillan
and Co., 1922) 13.

88Saintsbury l9.

24

the paragraph. Yet it retains, in a greater degree perhaps than some at least of these
hybrids, the rhythmical valuation of every word and syllable . . .39

Patterson agrees that to discover the rhythm of prose, one should not merely mark stresses,
but to search for relationships which give " . . . a sense of organized time." "Prose thus
becomes for some observers a sort of music, built upon elastic unitary pulses, sometimes
grouped and always syncopating freely . . ."90

Saintsbury lists some factors in the rhythmic composition of prose. For Saintsbury
the composition of rhythmic prose depends on the variety of unmetricized sounds and
possibilities. Second, in a prose sentence of length, the rhythm arises from the
interrelationships of the smaller parts and how those parts relate to the whole. Finally, the
rhythm of several sentences arises from the relationships of the component sentences and
how those sentences interrelate within their component parts.91 The best and most
attractive rhythm groups are those in which the writer extends and retracts the foot relative
to other feet in the composition or cadence.92 Also, mono-syllabic feet tend to be used as
important pivots from foot type to foot type as well as "stepping stones" that move a
sentence through its component sequences.93

As examples, Saintsbury analyzes a number of prose selections to show how these
elements work. One example also shows the use of verbal antithesis that adds to the

rhythmic relationships of the words:

 

89Saintsbury 345 - 346.
90Patterson 13 - 14.
91Saintsbury 246 -247.
92Saintsbury 450 - 451.
938aintsbury 479.

25

Such/are their/ide sis/such meir/P’ehgie’nJand such/their/law. Butas/
_ .... u
t6 our country/airJd our race,/as long as/the well compacted/structure/

u
of our church / and state . . . .94

There is no meter, per se, but the rhythm can be seen with clarity.

The rhythm of prose and verse provides clues to possible meanings to the actor and
director. The structural nature of rhythm might lead to the conclusion that adherence to
rhythm will bind the actor and director. Instead, it should be pointed out that even given
the same direction and identical clues; two actors will likely give two very different
performances.95

Wright uses a short sequence from Kim to illustrate how rhythm can help

illuminate even an obvious situation:

Oswald. Good dawning to thee, friend. Art of this house? [An iambic 1ine.]
Kent. Ay.

Oswald. Where may we set our horses?

Kent. I' th' mire. WZJJ-S]

"Oswald's polite [verse] beginning is refused by Kent in line 2. When in line 3, Oswald

courteously provides a potentially iambic half-line for Kent to complete [as noted about

shared lines above], Kent's two syllable reply rudely thwarts this metrical gesture."96
Wright also shows the anomalous omission of a weak syllable may be used for

emotional effect:

 

“Saintsbury 278.
95John Barton, Pleju‘ng Shakesmare (London: Methuen, 1984) 32 & 180.
96Wright 11 l.

26

"Blow winds, and crack your cheeks; A Rage, " blow. . ." W 3.2.1]97

Also a short line may provide finality to a speech, ". . .a tense moment may gain force and

crispness from a decisive closing line that is shorter than the norm:

I can be patient, I can stay with Regan,
I and my hundred knights." [Kim 2.4.230-1]98

Wright re-iterates that the rhythm is guided by the meter of the verse form. He
scans a line from Maebeth thus:

/ U \ / U / \J / \ /
Af ter / life's fit / ful fe / ver, he / sleeps well [Maeheth 3.2.23]

Wright recognizes that if read as prose, the line might be scanned like this:
UV / / g /u

After life' s fitful fever, he sleeps well.
However, Wright rightly argues, "But when it appears as verse, we cannot give it such a
reading; we must be guided by the meter, too, to find a reading that is faithful to both
meter and rhetoric."99

The use of rhythm and meter in verse plays is not limited to Shakespeare.
Archibald MacLeish uses a much freer meter in LB” yet the offered clues are there. For
example, the opening of the play is a quick exchange between Mr. Zuss and Nickles,
whom later assume the roles of God and Satan:

./ v ./
Mr. Zuss. Tins / rs 1t.

 

97Wright 178.
93Wright 122.
99Wright 245.

27
/ u /
Nickles. This /is what?100 LLB, p.3]

In this exchange MacLeish rhythmically sets up the relationship between these two
characters. Nickles completes the verse line started by Mr. Zuss and matches Zuss syllable
for syllable. Also, later in the text, after J .B. begins to experience disaster, Mr. Zuss

explains to Nickles that J .B.'s continuing praise of his God is to be expected:

\J / v / \ / .U /
Mr. Zuss. It's from / the ash / heap God /1s seen
/ / / U /
Always! Always/ham the/ash‘é’s. 101 [1.11. p.50]

Rhythmically, the meter guides extra emphasis to the first 'always' through either a trochaic
or 'headless' start to the line. The 'always' also gains emphasis by completing an
enj ambed line. MacLeish also provides emphatic punctuation. Whether the second line is a
trochaic line and inversely reflects the preceding line, or a headless iambic line providing
stress to the first word; the effect provides rhythmic support to the irony of the words
(seeing God from an ash heap).

These rhythmic factors also betray meaning in prose plays. Various plays provide
witness to clues of possible meanings through rhythm. Robert Bolt suggests Sir Thomas
More's actual speech at the end of We. After receiving a verdict of
guilty, More speaks his heart:

U / u ./ \J /,\J J / U ./ u /
More. lam/the lung's/true subject/and pray/for him/and all/

u /
the realm . . ./
u /
I do/none harm,/
u u
I say / none harm,/

u / u /
I think / none harm./

 

100Archibald MacLeish, fl, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1956).

. . / u / u / V / u
101The 2nd hne might also be scanned: A A1 / ways! All ways from / the ashes.

28

AirJd E this/be n6t/er’rorigh/i6 kegp/‘a’ mgn/ri’liéJiir gB’od farfh/
ilorfg/no/r/r‘c’r 562.102 W p.93]
In More's description of his life ("I do none harm . . ."), Bolt establishes a repetitive
pattern in which each phrase twins the other phrases in the sequence. This repetition may
be used by More to drive home his point. Very telling is the last line. Bolt could have
written a much more regular line, "\II d6 / riot lohg / t6 liar." Instead, Bolt chose a
rhythmic construction that, in a series of alternating stresses, suddenly provides two
consecutive strong stresses. There is a rhythmic support for More to assert he longs "not
to live."

Thornton Wilder exploits rhythm throughout Wu. In Act I the Stage
Manager explains a copy of the play being performed will be placed in a time capsule to

show the people of the future an example of early 20th century life.

Stage manager: . . . So, -- people a thousand years from now,
-- this is the way we were
in the provinces North of New York
at the beginning of the Twentieth Century,

-- this is the way we were

.\ u / u, /
-- 1n our / growrng up land

.\ \J /\J /
1n our/marryrngJand/

\ U l

in our / livin‘g’, / and/

.‘ U ’ .u . . .

in our / dyrng. (Chorr, 1n orchestra prt, start "Blessed Be

the Tie That Binds."')103 [Quzlmn p. 25]

 

102Robert Bolt, A Mg fer All Seesens (New York: Vintage Books, 1960). The
adaptation of the lay-out of this speech is not to suggest some sort of free verse form.
Rather, this helps to graphically illustrate the rhythmic construction more clearly.

 

103Thornton Wilder, mmew York: Coward-McCann and Samuel French,
1938) . Once again the format of the quote is to aid the graphic illustration of the rhythm.

29

Leading into the end of the speech Wilder builds a repetitive rhythmic pattern in which the
interior 'foot' shrinks for the words 'living' and 'dying.’ More, he ends on a trochaic
'foot' with weak stress, rhythmically signaling the drifting away ("weaned away") of death
later in the play.

Neil Simon relies on rhythm to aid in signaling punch lines. Simon also uses
obviously rhythmic constructions because they tend to sound clever. More than audience
'flags,‘ these signals may also provide clues about the character. A number of examples
can be found in the argument that ends Act II of W. Corrie complains
that Paul is dull.

Corrie: . . . There are Watchers in this world and
there are Do—ers. And
the Watchers sit around watching
the Do-ers do. Well, tonight
you watched and
I Did.104 lBgefmt in the ng p. 61]

Simon's use of repetition and antithesis is quite clear in this speech. The final touch is
Corrie's shift from a trochee (do-ers) to an iamb at the end of the speech which

rhythmically supports her thesis.

As Paul and Corrie argue, other rhythmic effects appear.
/ ,u / y \J
Paul. You're 1mposs1b1e.
, / u / u u ,
Come. You're unbearable [She matches hrs rhythm.]
Paul. You / belong / m a nursery / school. [He tops hen]

. / s) / \ / U s.) / U U
Corrre. It's / a lot / more fun / than the Home / for the/

 

104Neil Simon,_Ba;efmtju_theEark (New York: Samuel French, 1964).

30

/ / u
Fudd’y Duddies. [She tops him, leaving him with no recourse but to

attempt to touch her.] [harem p. 65]
[Not much later, they match each other again while arguing about going to bed]

v / v
Paul. You can't. / Not now.

\J / /
Corrie. You did / b‘éforc. [She matches him. At this point Paul works to

maintainthefight]
/ V ./ V / U uu /
Paul. That/ was m/the mrddle / of a/ fight.
./.v ./u {u v~»./
Thrs / rs 1n / the mrddle/ of a divorce. [Ends on a strong anapest.

'Divorce' scans as one

syllable (d'vorce).]
[Again Corrie must top Paul.]
\ / U / u / /
Corrie. Six days / does not/ a week make. WP. 66]

Corrie's last line not only tops Paul, but also convinces him to say, "You know, I

think you really mean it." As with Bolt, Simon might use another option, "Six days does

not make a week." But that rhythm would not create the unusual emphasis of two

consecutive strong stresses at the climax of Corrie's line.

Allison and Wellbom posit that playwright Harold Pinter is a "prose poet" with his

own distinctive grammar and punctuation. Pinter establishes prose rhythm through the use

of short, abrupt sentences (many of which are two syllables), periods indicating thought

separation, and commas beyond simple grammatical practice to further interrupt the thought

process. They point to Beth's line from Landseaue:

"He touched the back of my neck. His fingers, lightly, touching, lightly, touching,

the back, of my neck." [Landseape p. 13]105

 

105Ralph Allison, and Charles Wellbom, "Rhapsody in an Anechoic Chamber:

Pinter' s Landmps" W 25 (1973): 219- 220

31

Another rhythmic tool used by Pinter is a varying elision -- the "Pinter Pause." In
Laudseam, "Some elisions are two dots long, some three, and one is five dots." These are
combined with various pauses and silences. Allison and Wellbom point that the pauses are
rhythmic, but unmetric -- very much like the use of silence and rests in the music of
Pinter's contemporary John Cage.106

The rhythm of language in each instance provides clues to the actor and director of
possible meanings. The rhythm of language is founded on the patterns created by
syllables, discussed in the next section. The character's language is the basis of the rhythm

of character change, discussed in the next chapter.

SECTION 3
THEORY OF LANGUAGE RHYTHM AND COORDINATE CONCEPTS

The basic or "atomic" level of the rhythm of language is the actual rhythm of
syllables. This compares to the rhythm of individual notes in music. This comparison is
apt despite the superficial differences in notation. It might be thought that music's long
history of a clear, quantitative rhythmic language notation is more exact than the rhythm of
syllables in words. This thinking provides too much exactitude to musical notation and
performance and too much latitude in syllabic rhythm. As to the former, rhythmitician

Charles Sears writes:
When the musician begins his studies certain statements are made to him with
regard to the relative values of notes. He is told that a half note should be given
half the time of a whole note, a quarter note half the time of a half note, an eighth
note half as much time as a quarter, and so on, and that a dot placed after a note
adds one half to its length. It is implied that all notes of the same kind should
receive equal amounts of time unless a change of tempo is indicated, that a triplet
should divide into three equal parts the time usually given to two like notes, that,
except for purposes of expression, all measures are of the same length, etc.
Toward fulfilling these requirements he strives with the metronome as his assistant.

 

 

All quotes from the play come from Harold Pinter, Landscape flu Silence (New
York: Grove Press, 1970).

10‘SAllison, and Wellbom 220.

32

How far the trained musician accomplishes what the notes set before him indicate
and what he sets out to do is an interesting question . . .107

Sears answers the question by experimenting on experienced pianists and finding that
". . . subjects skilled in piano playing [. . .] showed that even good musicians were liable
to considerable errors."108 Noted rhythmic musicologist Carl Seashore also found that
irregularity and license in rhythmic production are the rule among the best musicians,
indeed, that artistry is not in producing even time, but in deviating from it.109 Donnington
agrees that, "Every performer modifies the written rhythms to some extent, sharpening the
dots in march-like music, softening them for lilting music, and so forth."110 Moreover
discoveries show that even computer controlled rhythmic performances must be slightly
altered on a repetition of a phrase to ". . . escape an impression of a certain deadness
(dullness)."111

Frankly, opposite to what might be thought superficially obvious, temporal equality
and inequality are not parts of rhythm. Nor are heartbeat and neural discharges linked to
the brain's ability to perceive rhythm.112 Despite the temporal inequality of music, it is
perceived to be evenly rhythmic. As will be shown below this is also true of language
production.

Above it was said that too much latitude is given to the parameters of rhythm in

language production. These parameters are not as wide as might be thought. Linguist

 

107Sears 44.
108Sears 45.

109Seashore 146-147.

110Robert Donnington, The Integpreteu'on of Ely Mueic (London: Faber and
Faber, 1963) 369.

lllManfred Clynes, "When Time Is Music," Rhythm in Psychological, Linguistic
and Musical Prgesses ed. James R. Evans, and Manfred Clynes (Springfield: Charles C.
Thomas Publisher, 1986) 183.

112Stetson 258.

33

Andre' Classe discovered that "emotional or affective" speech does not influence language
rhythms. It is nonsense to speak of emotionally neutral speech since all speech is
connected to some frame of mind. This fact has not prevented the long history of study
and discussion of language rhythm. Moreover, scientific studies do not support the theory
that stress is shifted in the syllable or in the word under the influence of emotion.113

Neither does intonation change rhythm of language. Phonologist David Brazil
acknowledges the common observation that no two readers can make identical intonation
choices in speech. Nevertheless, there are some constraints on the supposed infinite
choices. Brazil observes, "A reader cannot do just anything if he is to produce an
intelligible spoken realization of the text: we all recognize an 'inappropriate' intonation
which makesnonsense of what is being read; indeed we often claim that it shows in some
way the reader has not grasped its import."114

Neither does tempo or pausing change rhythm, nor is there infinite choice in tempo
choice. Hallock-Greenewalt found that 50 spoken quantities in a minute were too slow to
be well apprehended (too much like a drone). Likewise 120 quantities spoken in a minute
were unnaturally fast and too difficult to be apprehended. The average tempo rests between
60 and 100 quantities per minute.115 The addition of pauses is commonplace. Spain
shows that we could tape, "Put it on the table" and insert blank tape between any two
words without disturbing meaning.116 The important tool in language rhythm is accent or
stress:

A listener hearing a sentence finds it important to identify the location of accent and
uses all available cues to assist him in his search; and the reason why accent is so

 

113Andre' Classe, The Rhme of Englieh Reese (Oxford: Kemp Hall Press, 1939)
36.

114David Brazil, "The Intonation of Sentences Read Aloud, " Ingenutien, Aeeent
gud Rhythm: Studies in Digeguee Phenology ed. Dafydd Gibbon, and Helmut Richter
(Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1984) 46.

115Hallock-Greenewalt 2.

116Spain 109.

34

keenly sought appears to be precisely because it expresses focus -- thus the
perception of accent is as intimately connected with the information structure of the

sentence as is accent production.117
Accent or stress is the basis of language rhythm. A guide to expressing the possibilities of
a rhythm is the meter in which it exists.

One of the tools that facilitates the understanding of rhythm in both analysis and
execution is meter. Meter is both the map and flame to rhythm. Meter and rhythm are

coordinate concepts and phenomena, but they are not one thing. To illustrate the function

of meter, here is the first few measures of a "Prelude in D minor" by Bach:118

 

This brief example shows the purpose behind meter. The time signature and the bar lines
are the clues to the meter. This same rhythm could easily exist in a 6/8 meter, but the
sound would be quite different. The rhythm would remain the same, but the sound would
be different because the meter provides information about placement of accent that Bach
wants us to hear in a certain way. Likewise, the string of notes below could be played both
in duple and triple meters. The change of meter affects the sound and "feel," but not the

rhythm:

 

117Anne Cutler, "Stress and Accent in Language Production and understanding,"
Intoneuen, Agent and thuhm; Stuguee in Digeugse Phenelegy ed. Dafydd Gibbon, and
Helmut Richter (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1984) 89.

118Johann Sebastian Bach, Prelude in D minor.

35

 

This is how one rhythm may exist within the structure of different meters. This

becomes important when considering the affect of meter in Shakespearean verse, as well as

prose rhythms, as was illustrated in the previous section.

Even as one rhythm may exist in different meters to variable effect, different

rhythms may co-exist within one meter as happened regularly in the music of the Middle

Ages as well as more modern music:

    

This combination of various rhythms co-existing in one meter also comes to play in
Shakespeare's and others' scripts. Shapiro and Beum point out that the meter of a
Shakespearean speech, say, is iambic, but a given line's rhythm may be something else.119

The building block of language rhythm is the syllable and its relative stress or

accent The English language arises out of the co-existence of two energies in its speech --

 

119Karl Shapiro, and Robert Beum, WWew York: Harper and
Row, 1965) 60.

36

the production of syllables and the augmentation of some syllables with stress. Stress
demarcates patterns which are not periodic, but rhythmic!20 Edgar Allen Poe argues
rhythmic stress in language is not the same thing as word emphasis because " . . . men
emphasize in the most singularly arbitrary manner." Despite arbitrary emphasis the relative
rhythmic stress remains unchanged!21

To be sure, some have argued stress is not important to rhythmic understanding.
These arguments tend to be ineffective. Experimental psychologist Stephen Handel argues
there is no connection between the acoustical signal of language and its meaning. He
states, "The structure -- not syllable features -- determines the perceptual clues."122 Of the
former idea, it is difficult to understand a total separation between acoustical event and
meaning in speech without positing some kind of telepathy. As to the latter idea, a
structure may only exist if there are constituent parts of some kind. In language those
constituent parts seem to be syllables that create rhythm through varying amounts of stress.

Classe poses a stronger argument. Classe argues stress exists merely as the
outward sign of a psychological phenomenon. Classe finds that the position of expected
stress may fall on a rest in music as in language. Shifting stress in words doesn't affect
comprehension and speakers can believe stress occurs where it doesn't truly exist!23

Writing in 1939, Classe did not possess knowledge of discoveries made in the
second half of this century. The intimate tie of rhythm and language in the brain is such a
discovery that affects his primary argument. The shared use of rhythm by speaker and

listener to comprehend speech has been shown in many studies. Also studies show that

 

120Attridge 1023.

121Edgar Allen Poe, "Readings of Pope, Coleridge, Byron, and Longfellow,"
Dieeuseiens ef Peeu'y: Rhythm fig Seund ed. George Hemphill (Boston: D.C. Heath
and Company, 1961) 37.

122Stephen Handel, Li nin : An In ’ n the P rc
Evente (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1989) 423.

123Classe 17-19.

37

speakers are able to correctly stress new words like 'splendidify' and 'porpitude' by
analogy to pre-existing words. The existence of malaprops shows that people know
rhythm patterns, but insert incorrect phonemes into syllabic positions. Indeed, stress
patterns determine what we think we hear!24 Important to the process of communication,
accented syllables increase the predictability of speech!” This will be discussed more
fully in the next chapter.

As mentioned above, various studies agree that accents in language tend to occur at
roughly equal intervals regardless of the tempo of the speaker. This is also true of syllabic
'feet.‘ Despite the number of syllables in the 'foot,’ they occur at regular intervals. These
stress patterns are hierarchically structured and if changed, listeners may have difficulty
understanding the speech at all!”

Rhythmic beats in spoken English arise out of the "ballistic" pulse created by
respiratory, articulatory and related muscles on the initial consonant going into a nuclear
vowel sound. These pulses are the basis on which a speaker organizes the rhythm of his
speech. The listener then uses these beats to decode the rhythmic structure!” '

In examining stress in multi-syllabic words and their shifting stress patterns (like
'record'), psychologist Michael Kelly illuminates tendencies in those patterns. Disyllabic

nouns tend to have the stress on the first syllable, verbs on the second. This seems to

 

l”Cutler 78 -79.

1”Payne, and Holzman 45. see also Mark A. Pitt, and Arthur G. Samuel, "The

Use of Rhythm in Attending to Speech," Juumal ef Exmrimental Peyehelegy; Huuuur
W 16 (1990): 572.

125These studies range over a period of time under varying conditions. See Handel
449. Wayne B. Dickerson, Sueeg in the Speeeh Sgeem: The thuum ef Speken Englieh
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989) 59. Albrow 13. D. James

, "Rhythm and Syntax in Sentence Perception. "WM
13 (1974): 262.

1”George D. Allen, "The Location of Rhythmic Stress Beats in English: An
Experimental Study II," W 15 (1972): 190.

38

occur because language users prefer rhythmic patterns of alternating strong and weak beats.
Long words tend to have alternating stresses. This tendency allows hearers to hear
alternation where none exists. Speakers tend to adjust stresses to create alternation. The
placement of verbs in context in a sentence creates a bias toward an iambic stress
pattem!28 Also iambic nouns are likely to develop uses as verbs and trochaic verbs are
likely to develop uses as nouns!”

Finally, Wright asserts, "Syllables are not stressed or unstressed in an absolute
sense, but only in relation to the essentially dual level of stress established in each word-
string."130 The determination of the relationships between stressed and unstressed
syllables establishes the rhythm of language. This is the basis of verse and prose analysis.

Verse analysis may seem like simple "bean counting," but this is not the case.
Cureton complains that even among literary professionals work in prosody is ignored, and
thus perpetuates myths about rhythm and meter!31 For example, Thomas Jefferson
believed, "It is the business of the poet so to arrange his words as that, repeated in their
accustomed measures, they shall strike the ear with that regular rhythm which constitutes
verse."132

First, determining the rhythm and meter of verse does not entirely rely on counting
ten syllables a line. Instead scansion relies upon the comparison (recognizing the
relationships) between foot meter and line syntax!33 Saintsbury discusses prose rhythm

and writes, "But as everybody 'speaks prose without knowing it,’ so, without being quite

 

123Kelly 691-692.
129Kelly 709.
130Wright 2.
131Cureton 242.

132Thomas Jefferson, "Thoughts on Enghsh Prosody," Discussiens ef Peeg:
thytm mguru Sound ed. George Hemphill (Boston: D. C. Heath and Company, 1961) 20.

133Spain 106-107.

 

39

a fool or at all a genius, he may hold that there is nothing much to know about it. . ." He
then shows that the difference between Thomas Browne and Conyers Middleton, between
the Authorized Version and the Revised Version of the Bible depends not on expression
particularly, but rhythm!34

This raises the question of determining the validity and difference between 'good'
and 'bad' rhythm. Experimental psychologist Dirk-J an Povel sought to discover how
tension is created in rhythmic patterns to determine if patterns are more or less rhythmic.
Povel found that rhythmic patterns are judged against an unlocated internal clock or sense
of equilibrium. Tension is produced by the act of up-dating the internal sense ("clock")
against "displaced beats" occurring as incoming events. He concludes the more rhythmic
phrases are those that produce tension by creating patterns and then deviating from them to
create new patterns!” This question of patterns and where shifts occur, leads to the
notion of rhythmic sensitivity promoted by Spain. The establishment of, and deviation
from patterns is the heart of good verse.

English scholar Marlina Tarlinskaja argues the presence of meter indicates a self-
imposed restriction and deliberate choice of possible word patterns built into the sequence
of a verse line!” Thus the possible rhythms of the line are finite. The basis of verse

theory is ". . . the appearance of equal time intervals" between important syllables. "The
linguistic stress is analogous to the musical meter [. . .] strong and weak beats roughly

alternate."137 The proportional relationships are most important. "The proportion must

 

l”Saintsbury 444 - 445.

l”Dirk-J an Povel, "Time, Rhythms and Tension: In Search of the Determinants of
Rhythmicity," Time, Mind, and Behavior ed. John A. Michon, and Janet L. Jackson
(Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1985) 224.

1”Marina G. Tarlinskaja, and L.M. Terterina, "Verse-Prose Meter," W
129 (1974): 63.

l37Handel 429.

 

40

consist in a relationship of the foot to the line, or in these and an additional relationship of
one of these, presumably the foot, to time."138
Thus there may be many ways to look at a line. Cureton scans line 47 of Robert

Frost's "Two Tramps in Mud Time" to illustrate the possibilities:

v / v / v / u /
Metrical Rhythm: The life / of mus / cles rock ling soft

v / v / u / .u /
Word Rhythm: The / life / of / muscles / rockrng/ soft

v / u / V / L) /
Phrasal Rhythm: The life / of muscles / rocking / soft”9

It must be noted, the rhythm of the line remains the same in each examination, despite
Cureton's confusing labels. The relationship of strong to weak is identical each time.
However, this example illustrates how, as shown above, meters can affect the sound.
Wright asserts a series of ten alternating syllables may be iambic, but it is not a line of verse
until it appears among other lines of verse. That line of verse, then, may be part of a
rhymed stanza, part of a couplet, part of a passage of blank verse, part of an enjambed
passage or simply end stopped!40 The relationships between syllable and foot and
between foot and line are inter-connected and provide information about each other.

The most commonly used verse form in theater is the iambic pentameter line, used
and developed by Shakespeare. The iambic line developed over time. In Tudor poetry the
line consisted of two phrases, one of four syllables and a second phrase of six syllables.
Consequently, early users of the line found phrases to fill the measure. Thus the phrase
was subordinate to the line. This usage evolved for various reasons. Poets discovered that

in English, unlike Latin, stresses are variable. Because of this a satisfying verse line only

 

1”Spain 26.
139Cureton 249.

140Wright 15.

 

41

requires alternating stresses, not exact measures. This discovery allowed poets to develop
the line to accommodate English's ability to have successive peaks of intensity!41

For example, in Shakespeare the phrase can run over the fine, because the mid-line
break is variable or absent and Shakespeare thus has more choices of phrases and sentences
to employ. Also, variability of pronunciation allowed for greater word choice and usage.
Wright provides an example of variations on a single phrase. Each is allowed within the
blank verse form in use by Shakespeare:

v / U /
The night is dark (and)
/ u / u
The night 1s dark and still (but also)
Dark is the night

UV

In the dark night
u / . /
The dark, still night

/ u \ /
Now the dark night142

This is an example of how each phrase has a different rhythm within what might be
supposed to be an iambic meter. Not all of the words are iambic or placed to work as
iambs, metrically. But they are rhythms chosen to exist within an iambic framework.
Syllables are the basic units of the rhythm of language. The rhythm of language
can be guided by being placed within a metrical structure. However, as has been shown,
the change of the metrical structure does not change the rhythm. Also, intonation and
pause do not affect the rhythm of language. Surely changes in intonation and pause might

affect the sound of a piece, but that is not a change in the rhythm.

 

141W1ight 49-52.
142wnght 208-210.

42

SECTION 4
CONCLUSION

The basic rhythmic stratum of theatrical art is the rhythm of language. The syllable
is the building block used to construct the rhythm of language. In English, syllables are
stressed or unstressed relative to each other. The perception of the relation of comparative
stress to comparative unstress allows for communication through rhythm. Playwrights use
this experience of rhythm perception in writing plays in both verse and prose. Rhythm
may exist in various meters and with various intonations and remain structurally
unchanged. The manipulation of rhythm in combination with varying meters provides
clues to actors and directors.

Despite the structural invariability of a given written rhythm, it should be
remembered this discussion centers on the study of objective (unperformed) rhythms. It
has been seen that the clues of the rhythm of language might be exploited in performance.
Yet, Wright reminds:

A particular version of a dramatic text can therefore be only tentative; it represents

the hypostasis of a perpetually changing entity, and even the way it represents that

entity falsifies to some extent the nature of dramatic production. It pretends that this
version of the play is the version, is the play, when in fact we all know that every

future production of the text will change some word, some line, some scene, that
every representation will misrepresent "the text" in some way."

CHAPTER2

SECTION 1
INTRODUCTION TO THE RHYTHM OF CHARACTER CHANGE

As before, suppose a play rehearsal is stopped because of a question about rhythm.
Another avenue of examination would be the stratum of the rhythm of character change.
This stratum of rhythm has been familiar to actors and directors through the wide use of
Stanislavski's system, in which the actor and director divide a character's actions and/or
activities into units. The shift from unit to unit creates a pattern. This pattern allows the
perception of various parts with each other and with the whole of the character's role.
Musicologist Anna Pierce notes, "That which articulates the compositional flow is
change...[. . .] Change results in a stress, or accent."143 This relates to the rhythm of
language that was explained above. The alternation of stress provides a means to perceive
rhythm. However, in the rhythm of character change, duration also plays a part, as will be
shown below.

In writing about Stanislavski's exploration of character action, Jean Benedetti
explains, "The analytic process, however, whether physical or intellectual, needs to be
counterbalanced by a sense of the whole."144 Stanislavski suggested testing the definition
of various character units against the larger definition of the role so that the actor would not

get lost in minutiae of the role. This relies on the rhythmic perception of the

 

l43Anna Alexandra Pierce, The Angyeie of Rhythm in Tonal Music , diss.,
Brandeis U., 1968, Dissertations International 69-5449 (Ann Arbor: UMI, 1980) 25.

1““Jean Benedetti, W (New York: Theatre Arts Books,
1982) 70.

43

44

interrelationships between the constituent parts of the role and between the parts and the
whole.

The effect of the rhythm of character change is summed up by actors David Suchet
and Patrick Stewart in a program about acting the role of Shylock and using the changes, or
inconsistencies. Stewart concludes:

. . .With the belief that, if you played all the inconsistencies, when the final

inconsistency slotted into place like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle, then you would no

longer have an inconsistency, but a complete and wonderquy colorful and complex
whole. [ . . .] Instead of getting all the consistencies, putting them in a pot, stirring
them up, making a blend of them and playing the blend, and playing the blend,

from the beginning to the end . . .145
Thus the effect of the rhythm of character change is to aid the actor in presenting a rich,
complex portrayal!46

The rhythm of character change in theatrical art effectively compares to harmonic
rhythm in music. In his text on music theory, Robert Ottrnan defines harmonic rhythm,
"Harmonic rhythm. The rhythmic pattern created by the frequency of chord change . .

."147 Harmonic rhythm can appear through having a chord change on every beat as in a

Chorale:148

 

1”Barton 174.

146This compares to harmonic rhythm below. Other than under specific
circumstances, the playing of one blend for a performance tends to be boring. This
happens when actor "rush" and fail to complete units and change between them. This is
analogous to repeatedly playing one chord for a long length of time. The length of time
will seem longer because of the lack of change.

147Robert W. Ottman, Advanced Harmony: Theory and Practice. 2nd ed.
(Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentic-Hall, 1972) 273.

148By the author.

45

a (”C

       

i 1 $10 U13;

   

.. :2: . '- {311;
117

Or there may be many beats (here an entire piece) with only one chord: 149

 

 

149 Couperin, "Carnival" in: Thomas Benjamin, Michael Horvitz, and Robert
Nelson, Music for Analysis (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978) 6.

46

 

In the discussion of simple rhythm, it was shown that there are certain variables in
the perception and execution of a pattern. This is also true of harmonic rhythm and the
rhythm of character change. In the opening measure of a little march by Bach, harmonic

possibilities are seen:150

 

The second bass note of the first measure can be looked at in different ways harmonically.

The note may be the 7‘11 of a V7 chord. However, it could also be seen merely as a non-

chord tone (a "neighbor tone approached by a jump"). Likewise the fourth beat of the first

 

150Johann Sebastian Bach, March in D Major.

47

measure might be a vii°6 chord or it may be an open fifth of a ii chord!51 While it's not the
point of this study to examine the fine points of music theory, this does illustrate some of
the options available in the perception of harmonic rhythm patterns. The same is true in the
rhythm of character change. Yet, these options exist within the parameters of the rhythmic
structure. All choices are not equally valid!52

There are two other factors that can affect or enhance harmonic rhythm. One factor
is the use of a "pedal tone." This is a single tone sounded, usually in the bass voice,
regardless of the various chords sounded above it. An example of this is the bass G“ in
Mussorgsky's "Troubadour" from W and Chopin's G"/Ab in the
"Raindrop Prelude."

The other basic factor involved in harmonic rhythm is modulation. In tonal music,
modulation is the shift from one tonal center to another. A simple way of doing this is
using a "pivot "chord. This is a chord that serves two harmonic functions simultaneously.
For example, in the key of G (major or minor), a tonic chord is exactly the same as a sub-
dominant chord in the key of D (major or minor)!53 Another possibility of modulation that
also applies to the rhythm of character change is the use of "false" modulation. In this
instance, a major shift is hinted at and prepared for, but never actually executed. This
feature compares to theatrical art in situations where a character change is hinted and
prepared, but not executed. These functions will be discussed at more length below.

Another reason that the rhythm of character change is familiar to actors and

directors, is that this rhythmic stratum conforms to the experience of everyday life. In the

 

151Ralph Turek, Elemente ef Music: Volume II (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1988)

1”Robert W. Ottrnan, Elementegy Harmeny: Theery uud Prgtice, 2nd ed.
(Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970) 178. An example of this is the opening of
Beethoven's 5th Symphony. It might be possible to make the argument that the opening
harmony is, in fact, the tonic and third of an Eb chord. But that would be difficult to
support in terms of the music that follows the opening.

 

153Ottrrran, "Advanced" 2-3.

48

chapter above, the link between rhythm and language was demonstrated. The rhythm of
character change is like the rhythms created in the process of human communication -- as in
a scene in a play. As harmony and harmonic rhythm arises from the interaction of multiple
tones, the rhythm of character change arises out of the interaction of people.
Communication specialist Paul Byers stresses, "We cannot understand human
communication, or tennis, or ping-pong, or chess, or lovemaking by looking separately at

the participants."154

SECTION 2
RHYTHMIC CLUES IN VARIOUS TEXTS

Actors and directors commonly work with the rhythm of character change, yet a
few examples can help illustrate the process. For example, Shakespeare uses many
contrastive techniques to establish character changes. In speeches, characters can change
the subject on their own, as Hamlet does in the "Rogue and peasant slave" speech.
Character change may be illustrative of characters that speak differently in public and in
private, like Richard III, Iago, and Lady Macbeth. Another typical type of character change
in Shakespeare is his use of characters in disguise who ring changes with people who do
and do not know about the disguise, such as Rosalind, Kent, and Portia. An interesting
example of this type of change is when Edgar changes one disguise for another on the
heath after convincing Gloucester the heath is a great height!”

A specific example of a character change is King Lear's change in the opening
scene of the play. Lear's relationship with Cordelia turns from love to hate or hateful ire.

However, Lear's change comes slowly.

 

154Paul Byers, "Discussion," Interaction Rhythms ed. Martha Davis (New York:
Human Scientific Press, 1982) 136.

155Wright 250.

49

........

........

How, how Cordelia? Mend your speech a little,
Lest you may mar your fortunes.

........
........

Let it be so, thy truth then be thy dower" W1J88-108fl55

This slow change with Cordelia contrasts with the more rapid character change Lear
undergoes with Cordelia's older sisters. Once again rhythm provides clues.
Grote uses Nora from Dullfisjluuse to illustrate this process:

After Nora, by means of her dance, secures Helmer's promise not to open any mail
until after the party, she can begin to look for other solutions to her problems. If,
however, the other characters refuse to respond as the objective demands, a
character has several options: (1) to abandon the objective and drop out of the action
(in which case an unstated goal will have been reached and accepted); (2) to select
another, different objective -- should Helmer refuse to help Nora with her tarantella,
she might have to steal the letter from the box and destroy it; (3) to break the
current objective into smaller, more manageable parts. (Note that Nora in fact does
this just before her dance: When it becomes clear that Helmer will eventually read
the letter, no matter what she says, then she seeks a more manageable objective -- to
delay the reading as long as possible!57

This explanation demonstrates a number of factors. First, as with harmonic rhythm,
character change arises out of interaction. Secondly, the character changes in the play are
particular in nature. The dramatist chose events to occur as they do. For example, in Kjug
Q3; Cordelia might tell Lear she loves him in the opening scene. The play would take a

sharply different turn. Thus, the character changes are deliberate.

 

156Wright 243.
157Grote 77.

50

In his acting text, Charles McGaw outlines the character changes for Lomov in the
opening of Chekhov's play W:

1) He [Lomov] greets Chubukov, Natalya's father. His action here is to get
the father’s approval for his proposal.

2) Left alone, he wonders about the wisdom of making such a proposal. His
action here is to rationalize what he is doing.

3) Natalya enters, and his action is to get her to consent to many him.

4) Before he can satisfy his desire, Natalya challenges his ownership of Oxen
Meadows. His new action is to stand up for his rights!58

Harold Pinter's Laudseepe provides an excellent illustration of the rhythm of
character change. In this play the two characters, Duff and Beth, do not engage in
dialogue. However, their changes arise out of their relationship. In terms of harmonic
rhythm, the changes are comparable to a Chopin prelude where a small change of one note
may indicate a much different sound and feeling. Also in this play are numerous examples
of modulations through the use of pivot phrases that function equally well in an old and
new unit. This play also contains examples of one character maintaining a "pedal tone,"
sounding a continuous note while changes occur above or around it.

Beth opens the play:159
[1] I would like to stand by the sea. It is there.
Pause

I have. Many times. It's something I cared for. I've done it.
Pause
I'll stand on the beach. On the beach. Well . . . it was very fresh. But it was
hot, in the dunes. But it was so fresh, on the shore. I loved it very much.
Pause
[2] Lots of people . ..

 

158Charles McGaw, Acting I§ Believing (New York: Rinehart and Company,
1955), 81.

159Numbers in brackets indicate location of new unit. Number with fraction (4.1)
indicates small shifts within a unit.

51

Pause [A pivot or modulation. The beach is nearly empty. The object of
her upcoming speech is her man. This small unit is the pivot
that proceeds from talking about the beach to talking about her
man.]
People move so easily. Men. Men move.
Pause
[3] I walked from the dune to the shore. My man slept in the dune. He turned over
as I stood. His eyelids. Belly button. Snoozing how lovely.
Pause
[4] Would you hke a baby? I said. Children Babies? Of our own? Would be
mce.

Pause
[4.1] Women turn, look at me.
Pause
[4.2] Our own child? Would you like that?
Pause
[4.3] Two women looked at me, turned and stared. No. I was walking, they were
still. I turned. [Throughout this beat is a shift between the conversation
Beth tries to have with her man and the intrusion of
other women (women who may not be physically
at the beach).]
Pause
[4.4] Why do you look?
Pause
I didn't say that, I stared. Then I was looking at them.
Pause
[5] I am beautiful. [This beat will recur throughout the play, providing
stress through repetition]
Pause

[6] I walked back over the sand. He had turned. Toes under sand, head buried
in his arms.
Duff
[1] The dog's gone. I didn't tell you.
Pause
[2] I had to shelter under a tree for twenty minutes yesterday. Because of the rain.
I meant to tell you. With some youngsters. I don't know them.

 

52

Pause
Then it eased A downfall. I walked up as far as the pond. Then I felt a
couple of big drops. Luckily I was only a few yards from the shelter. I sat
down in there. I meant to tell you.

Pause

Do you remember the rain yesterday? That downfall?
Beth

[Still 6] He felt my shadow. He looked up at me standing above him.
Duff

[1.5] I should have had some bread with me. I could have fed the birds.
Beth

[6] Sand on his arms.
Duff

They were hopping about. Making a racket.
Beth

[6.1] I lay down by him, not touching. [landscape PP. 9-11]

Beth talks about the beach, people, her man, her offer of carrying his baby, the
staring women, her staring at them, and about being beautiful. Duff says the dog is gone
and then sticks solely to being in the park during the rain. In the opening section Beth has
had about six changes while Duff has had little more than one. Also Beth's changes tend to
stray farther away from the main topic than Duff's changes, as witnessed in her deliberate
announcement that she is beautiful.

Another element illustrated by this selection is the effect of character rhythm on the
over-all tone or feel of the piece. The extreme genres of tragedy and farce have much
stronger and obviously evident character changes than witnessed here. This may lead to
the feeling that those plays are more rhythmic, and that the Pinter play's rhythm is
somewhat indeterminate. One play is not necessarily more rhythmic than another.
However the stresses of a particular rhythmic pattern may be stronger or more obvious than

another pattern.

 

53

Another section of the play illustrates a "pedal tone" with one character staying on

one note while seemingly unrelated harmonies change above it:

Beth
[11.4] Snoozing how lovely I said to him. But I wasn't a fool, on that occasion.
I lay quiet, by his side.
Silence
Duff
[2] Anyway . . . . [A modulation. Duff's first shift
away from the park.]
Beth
[12] My skin . . ..
Duff
[3] I'm sleeping ahight these days.
Beth
Was stinging.
Duff
Right through the night every night.
Beth
I'd been in the sea.
Duff

[4] Maybe it's something to do with the fishing. Getting to learn more about fish.
[He changes. She stays with her skin.]
Beth
Stinging in the sea by myself.
Duff
They're very shy creatures. You've got to woo them. You must never get excited
with them. Or flurried. Never. [This may be or not be a change. Is he truly

talking about fish?] [Laudseaue p.14]

This illustrates the major types of character change. By not being engaged in
regular dialogue, the process is thrown in relief. Changes are caused by the interaction of
others. An example of this is the women on the beach that cause Beth to turn and stare at
them. Changes may encompass a single line ("I am beautiful") or many lines (Duff in the
first three pages). Lines or line sequences may serve as pivots by functioning

 

54

simultaneously as the end of one unit and the beginning of another. Characters may have
"pedal tones" and ring out one note while other changes go on around them.

SECTION 3
THEORY OF THE RHYTHM OF CHARACTER CHANGE
AND COORDINATE CONCEPTS

Albert Scheflen reviews history and shows the individual has been the main focus
of scientific inquiry since the Renaissance. Only in the past 40 years have communication
scientists started looking at the participants in the communication process as an integrated
concept. (Despite this, one still reads of "turn taking" in communication studies.) Scheflen
continues, "If we observe only one person or one person at a time, there is no way we will
observe synchrony or co-action or interactional rhythm."15°

It might be thought in the theater that the solo actor might provide a contradiction to
this notion. Yet Eliot Chapple uses such an example in his discussion of interaction
rhythms and points out that ". . . out there, as every performer knows, is that multi headed
creature, the audience. . ."151 Also, most one character plays include off-stage characters
and invisible on-stage characters to assist in providing a springboard to interactive rhythm.

Alf Gabrielsson lists a number of possible aspects of human response to interactive
rhythms. The first aspect is the rhythm as experienced in perceived groupings that
provides a feeling of excitement, tension, and release. The second aspect includes overt

behavior in movement of head, hands, feet, and limbs. The final aspect includes a slight

 

1(’OAlbert E. Scheflen, "Comments on the Significance of Interaction Rhythms,"
Integection thuhms ed. Martha Davis (New York: Human Science Press, 1982) 15.

161Eliot D. Chapple, "Movement and Sound. The Musical Language of Body
Rhythms 1n Interaction," W ed. Martha Davis (New York: Human
Science Press, 1982) 44- 45.

 

55

psychophysical response of changes in breathing and heart rate!62 These phenomena are
rhythmic and exist within certain limits of tempo. Daniel Stern states, "Much of human
behavior has this characteristic of unfolding at rates that fluctuate, but only within certain
limits at a predictable tempo."163

As stated in the introduction, in unplanned talk scientists have found clear rhythmic
clues in the move from sub-goal to sub-goal as the conversants accomplish some desired
end!“ J affe and Feldman assert, "The temporal patterns of conversation have a formal
structure, unambiguously definable . . ."165 These findings are confirmed by
psychologists Rebecca Warner and Kim Mooney, as well as Fredrick Erickson!66 Warner
and Mooney note the large body of research under varying conditions, using different
statistical analyses and sampling methods, all show this rhythmic tendency in
communication!“

In another article, Warner relates finding cycles of three to six minutes in length,
depending on the participants and the subject of the conversation. Warner lists three
important conclusions. Warner's first conclusion is, ". . .speech activity is temporally

organized at several levels. . . The second conclusion is an analogy between the

interlocking rhythms of speech behavior and the interlocking rhythms of coordinate

 

162Alf Gabrielsson, "Rhythmin Music," ' ' '
We ed. James R. Evans and Manfred Clynes (Springfield: Charles C.
Thomas Publishing, 1986) 140.

1”Daniel Stern, The First Relationship: Mother and Infant (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1977) 80.

1“Greene and Cappella 155.

165Joseph J affe, and Stanley Feldstein, Rhmms of Dialogue (New York:
Academic Press, 1970) 3.

166Rebecca M. Warner, and Kim Mooney, "Individual Differences in Vocal
Activity: Fourier Analysis of Cyclicity in Amount of Talk," Journal of Psycholinguisu'c
Research 17 (1988): 108. also Erickson, "Timing and Context" 258.

167Warner and Mooney 99.

 

56

physiological behavior. "Rhythms may provide the same benefits for social interaction that
they provide for biological systems, where they provide a dynamic form of stability and
facilitate the coordination of activities within an organism and between organisms. . ." The
third conclusion is the suggestion that rhythmic coordination is involved in many behaviors
simultaneously!“

The effect of this rhythmicity in communication is to provide a necessary level of
predictability. Predictability provides the participants a common field of experience,
"Predictability implies some sort of regularity, and communication would be hard to
imagine without it."159 This common field of experience, or regularity, is common to all
human interaction and its pervasiveness renders this predictability almost invisible.

Stern uses a film of a Muhammed Ali fight in 1966 to illustrate the interactive
rhythms between two pe0ple. Ali's left took 1/24 sec. to throw. Study of the film showed
that a full 53% of Ali's left jabs were faster than the fastest recorded visual reaction time of
180 milliseconds. Therefore, while at least 53% of Ali's lefts should have connected,
actually very few did. Thus, the punch is not the stimulus to which the response would be
to dodge or block. Instead predictive patterns of behavior allow opponents to block or
dodge unthrown punches. These predictive patterns allow people to do everything from
dance a waltz to hold a conversation!”

Jeremy Campbell compares the predictive patterns of people in conversation to
dancers:

Two people having a conversation guide each other along like a couple of ballroom

dancers who regulate the movements of their partner as they glide across the floor

in a waltz. Rhythm rs one of the main organizing principles of conversation, as it is
in ballroom dancing. It rs a social steering mechanism by means of which people

 

1“Rebecca M. Warner, "Periodic Rhythms in Conversational Speech," Language
and Speech 22 (1979):394.

l6S’Bengueral and D'Arcy 231.
1”Stern 86 - 88.

 

57

are able to communicate information about the moment now, the next moment and
the moment past. 171

Erickson confirms that in a conversation, "The partners must be able to anticipate
that functionally significant slot is about to be arrived at in the next moment. . ." These
points of change are "almost metronomic."172 Thus, as Martin sums up, the perceiver of
speech expects an intact utterance and has a shared sense of the shared rhythm that is a type
of temporal redundancy that aids perception!73

Condon shows the way in which participants can share rhythmicity in that the
speaker's body moves in organizations of change precisely in synchronicity with his
speech. The listener's body exhibits the same synchronicity with the speaker. This is
called "interactional synchrony" or "entrainment."174 All participants in a conversation
group display entrainment. A group can automatically share a rhythm and can then change
that rhythm according to situation and context!75 Separately, Condon and Willett
Kempton establish entrainment occurs within 20 milliseconds of a speaker's first sound!"6
Kempton, though, argues that entrainment is not entirely reliant upon sound for the basis of

rhythm, " . . .we must hypothesize that synchronization occurs as a result of both

 

”lJeremy Campbell. We (New York:
Touchstone, 1986) 237.

172Fredrick Erickson, "Classroom Discourse as Improvisation: Relationships
between Academic Task Structure and Social Participation Structure in Lessons,"

Communiceu'ng in me Claemm ed. Louise Cherry Wilkonson (New York: Academic
Press, 1982) 160.

1”Martin, "Aspects" 84.

17’iCondon 56.

175Scheflen 17.

l7‘5William S. Condon, "Cultural Microrhythms," Interagu'euflyflmrs ed. Martha

Davis (new York: Human Science Press, 1982) 56- 57. and Willett Kempton, "The
Rhythmic Basis of Interactional Micro-Synchrony,"

Wand
BMW ed. Mary Ritchie Key (Hague: mouton Publishers, 1980) 71.

 

58

interactants sharing mutually known rhythmic pattems."177 Condon describes the process
"like a car following a continuously rapidly curving road."178

The most conclusive proof of the process of entrainment is through the study of
pathologies. Schizophrenics display behavior out of phase with themselves in terms of
speech. If a schizophrenic says something, the gesture will be delayed compared to the
sound, instead of the synchrony of regular behavior. Condon notes, "It is very
threatening because, if one is talking to him and he's coming in with fast movements when
his speech intensity drops down, it is disconcerting. It is out of phase with the articulatory
rhythm."179

The importance of this shared rhythmicity cannot be over-stressed. Its failure can
lead to a complete destruction of the communication act. Erickson studied various question
and answer sessions. He found that, even if a subject answered a question correctly, but
out of phase; the questioner wouldn't even hear the answer and would move on!80
Disturbances of even a fraction of a second can prove troubling. Stern shows the effect in
the nature of social stimulus. A person expects an acquaintance passing on the street to
say, "Hi. " The person expects and performs a 0.5 second "Hi." If the acquaintance
performs a 0.3 second "Hi," the greeting will seem curt or perfunctory. Likewise, if the
acquaintance performs a 0.8 second "Hi," the person may be prompted to ask what the
acquaintance wants in terms of a favor. Again, the out of phase word may not even be

heard!81

 

177Kempton 71.

178Condon, "Cultural Microrhythms" 66.
179Condon, "Cultural Microrhythms" 66.
1”Erickson, "Timing and Context" 260.

1818mm 86.

 

 

 

59

The on- going level of predictability of human interaction relates directly to the
stage. The majority of stage work encompasses the presentation of behavior rehearsed to
seem spontaneous. Theatrical performance balances the planned and pre-determined with
the spontaneous. Beckerman writes, "The delicacy of this progression [of performance]
emerges as a balance between spontaneity and determinism."182

The way to effect this balance on stage is through awareness of the planned rhythm
of character change in the text. Since Stanislavski, this has been done through the
identification of a character's " goal" or "objective" or "motivation." Practitioners use
many terms. Prominent Stanislavski scholar Bumet Hobgood argues the best English term
to equal the meaning of Stanislavski's Russian is the word 'task' Its meaning should
encompass a concept that both impels and implies "something to be done."133

As there are many terms used to describe this concept, there are many different
ways to define a method of identifying a particular 'task' to be done. Yet, the concept of
'task' seems to also equal the idea of a 'beat.'

A beat is a single unit of action, and a beat change is the point where a new action

begins. A beat change occurs when a new piece of information is introduced or an
event takes place over which the character has no control and which by its very

nature must change what he is doing!84

This explanation provides a definition of a 'beat' or 'task.‘ It also notes the idea of
character change. Finally, it provides a means of locating the boundaries of the beat/task,
and thus the location of the character change. The authors provide an example from
W to illustrate. In scene 2, Oedipus first yields to J ocasta about letting Creon
go. Then Oedipus begins questioning Jocasta about the murder of Laius!85 This example

 

1”Bernard Beckerman, Theatrical Presentation: Performer, Audience, and Act
(new York: Routledge, 1990) 130.

l33Burnet Hobgood, "Central Conceptions in Stanislavski's System," Educuu'enfl
Theatre Jeumal 25 (1973): 155.

1“Melissa Bruder, Lee Michael Cohn, Madeleine Olnek, Nathaniel Pollack, Robert
Previto, and Scott Zigler, A Practical Handbook for the Actor (New York: Vintage Books,
1986) 23.

185Bruder, et a1. 35.

 

 

 

60

provides another means of locating character change -- by means of a character changing
the topic of conversation.

Wright argues that one of Shakespeare's developments in English drama is the
insistence on change. Every moment should be marked by some significant change in
form, in emotional temperament, in point of view. Shakespeare displays these changes
through variation of feet, of line, of syntax shifts relative to the line. Scenes and parts of
scenes shift in their deve10pment. Wright contrasts this with what he terms the "emotional
monotone" of older English plays, "Characters in earlier plays, from megdue to
Marlowe, often carry on their blank verse in an emotional monotone; their intensity may
not vary a degree in five minutes."186

Along with Stanislavski, Meyerhold devoted himself to discovering and teaching
the rhythm of character change as part of actor training. Evidently Meyerhold thought the
process could be scientifically classified. He established an equation of N: A1 + A2 as a
means of describing the actor's work. In the equation, 'N' is the actor, 'A1' stands for the
artist's conception of an idea with the instruction for its execution from director and others,
and 'A2' equals the actual execution of the conception!” Meyerhold worked each of these
ideas and their execution into 'actin g cycles.’ Braun records that the acting cycle is made of

three parts:

1) intention 2)realisation 3)reaction.
1) the assimilation of the task prescribed by dramatist, director, or actor
2) the cycle of volitional, mimetic, vocal reflexes working

3) the attenuation of reflex after the task just completed, also preparation for

 

186Wrighr 239 - 240.

187Edward Braun, Weld (New York: Drama Book
Specialists, 1979) 165.

 

61

the new cycle!88

Stanislavski's approach was not so clinical in description. Noted Stanislavski
scholar Sharon Carnicke describes that the basis of Stanislavski's work arises from an
acceptance of Aristotle's definition of tragedy. Theatre is distinguished from other art
forms by action. Stanislavski sought practical application of this idea -- how to transfer the
invisible world of the dramatist into hving performance!”

Stanislavski accomplished this though the principle of partitioning dramatic action
into constituent units, ". . .hke phrases in music. [Stanislavski] called these phrases "bits"
or "episodes" (kooski)."190 Hobgood explains:

The actor's work in each phrase, then, is to show the character striving to
fulfill the task; and of course, dramatists construct plays so that characters usually
do not fulfill all their tasks even if they strive mightily to do so, for the action takes
a new turn which calls for a new task to be pursued in response!91
Carnicke describes a method of how to locate the boundaries of the task. First,

examine the 'given' or 'offered' circumstances to describe the present situation. The
present situation poses a 'problem' or 'task' to be solved. Then, a choice of action can be
found to solve the problem and turn the situation to the character's favor. Like a math
problem, there is the suggestion that a logical means of solution will present itself. 192
David Grote describes a clarification of this system. One may start by locating a

given character's last event in the play. Then, locate the stimulus for that event. Then,

determine if there exist minor responses between the stimulus and the event in question.

 

188Braun 166-167.

l”Sharon Maria Carnicke, "An Actor Prepares/Rabota aktera nad soboi, Chast' I:
A Comparison of the English with the Russian Stanislavski," Theuue Jemal 36 (1984):
49 l .

190Hobgood 155.

l91Hobgood 156.

192Carnicke 489.

62

(Grote notes most stimulus/response units are simple in construction.) Then locate the
response that precedes the stimulus noted above and repeat the process for each event in the
play. Grote notes the last step in the process is an evaluation of the process by judging the

parts to the whole!93

SECTION 4
CONCLUSION

The rhythm of character change is the most common to actors and directors. The
rhythm of character change directly compares to harmonic rhythm in music. The main
reason the phenomenon of character change is familiar to actors and directors is its
conformity to the process of human communication. Through entrainment, participants
engage in behavior that is both spontaneous and predictable. This is precisely like a play
that is at once both rehearsed and spontaneous. The rhythms of theatrical art are the
organized rhythms of life. Shomit Mitter writes that in the end " . . . action precedes

meaning; rhythm is character."194

 

l93David Grote, Script Analyeis (Belmont, Ca.: Wadsworth, 1985) 66 - 69.
l9"Shomit Mitter, Wag] (London: Routledge, 1992) 38.

 

CHAPTER3

SECTION 1
INTRODUCTION TO THE RHYTHM OF EPISODES

On a given afternoon a director stops a rehearsal. The directOr wishes to work on
the rhythm. It may be that the director is actually wanting to adjust the pace, or tempo, of
the scene or act. The pacing of scenes and acts in performance is tied to the rhythm of
episodes. The rhythm of episodes compares to structural (or phrasal) rhythm in music.
This rhythmic stratum differs from the two previous strata by not having a correlation in
nature. The cliche about television is true -- dramatic questions in real life can not be
solved, discussed, or examined in the short structured time of a play. Life's events are not
usually comprehensibly structured.

The introduction established that events occurring between once every 0.1 second
and once every 1.0 second can be perceived as rhythmic. Events occurring closer together
than once every 0.1 second seem continuous. Events occurring with more than 1.0 second
between them tend to be perceived as disparate events. Therefore, the larger rhythms
suggested to exist in plays might seem harder to grasp.

However, as shown in the previous chapter, larger rhythmic units can be perceived
through the construction of rhythmic patterns. This is true for the rhythm of episodes. For
example, the relationships between the acts of a play arise from the smaller rhythmic
patterns that make up the act. Peter Townsend cites various sources to mount the argument
that rhythmic perception can be distributed from a unit completed to a higher unit within the

structure not yet performed. Comparing reading a novel to listening to a symphony,

63

 

64

Townsend writes that at the end of both the preceptor has been aware ". . . of rhythmic
relationships at many structural levels of the work."195

This stratum deals with the episodes that individually and together make theatrical
art 'Episode' has been used to designate all dramatic units of varying length and compass.
Episodes are the events of a play. Generally, the easiest method of finding the episodes is
by a process of telling the plot of the play. Each time in the story the teller says "And then .
. ." there is an episode of some length. For example, the act length episodes of A_Elea
in Her Ea; might be described as follows, "A group of people centered in an insurance
director's house meet each other and set up a romantic liaison between the director and his
wife that becomes the subject of confusion. And then these people meet an unlikely
identical twin of the director at the local hotel. And then these people return to the
director's house to find safety and end the confusion they have encountered."

Theorists and critics commonly examine play structure and the rhythm of episodes.
David Grote notes that plays are often analyzed in a five part structure : exposition,
development, crisis, climax, and denouement. Grote asserts that such an analysis
imphcitly incorporates the rhythmic aspects of episodes because of the interrelationships
between the various parts!96 Sam Smiley states, "Second, [beats, segments, and scenes]
should act as rhythmic controls in a play. They create rhythm insofar as they are
individually climactic. At best, each contains a high point of interest."197

This process of analysis has also been used regularly by theatrical practitioners
since the popularization of Stanislavski's ideas, as described above. Hobgood shows that
Stanislavski saw a play in terms of larger episodes made up of smaller phrases. To present

properly a scene or act, the actors and director need to understand properly the relationship

 

l”Peter Townsend, "Essential Groupin gs of Meaningful Force: Rhythm in
Literary Discourse," Language and Style 16 (1983): 330.

l9‘5Grote 153.
1”Smiley 159.

 

65

between the smaller phrases with the larger episode. The relationship to the larger episode
holds the phrases together. The phrases join to make the larger episode!98 It should be
pointed out that smaller units, phrases, or beats are not character beats as described in
Chapter 2. Rather, an episode beat may encompass one or more character changes. 199

The basic "'intermediary" episode is the scene. Episode beats (or phrases, etc.)
join to make a scene. Scenes join to make an act. Most scenes have a general construction
of two or three parts. A three-part scene has: a statement of the beginning predicament, the
ensuing development or debate of the predicament, and some resolution (perhaps tenuous
and temporary) of the predicament. A two-part scene may include a main scene with main
characters discussing the issues of the scene and then other characters may be left on stage
to comment on the scene or engage in some antithetical action.200

The rhythm of episodes, then, is the interrelationships of smaller and larger units of
dramatic action in a play. The perception of the rhythm of episodes is concerned chiefly
with play structure. The Halletts clearly state, "Ultimately, of course, understanding the
[episode] is only a means to an end, which'is to experience the emotional rhythms of the
play more fully. [. . . ] What is at stake here is the full reahzation of a play's dramatic

rhythms in any given performance,"201

SECTION 2
RHYTHMIC CLUES IN VARIOUS TEXTS

The rhythm of episodes plays an important part in Shakespeare's plays. Scholar

James Hirsh asserts, "One of the ways Shakespeare binds a play together, in fact, is to

 

198Hobgood 151.
199Hallett 27.

200Cicely Berry, The Actor and the Text 2nd ed. (New York: Applause Books,
l992)221, 224.

201Hallett 9.

 

66

establish both thematic and structural connections between scenes in different parts of the
play." Hirsh then goes on to show how thematic and structural connections create
rhythm.202

A clear example of a ternary scene is Act H, scene 1 of W. In
the first section of the scene Luciana and Adriana engage in dialogue about the missing
husband. Dromio comes into the scene and reports his chance meeting with his master's
twin. After Dromio exits, the sisters return to their dialogue. Thus an A - B - A,
alternating pattern creates a rhythm.203

If we use Hirsh's scene boundaries created by a stage cleared of all living
characters, this ternary rhythm also appears in m. In scenes 11.2 - 11.4 Kent
remains on stage as Edgar performs a soliloquy. Shakespeare uses this construction to
show economically an entire day. The scene starts with, "Good dawning to thee,
friend . . ." W211) and ends with, "Alack, the night comes on . . ."(ang
Lea; 2.4.300). Shakespeare might have chosen to place Edgar's speech prior to Kent's
scene or after it. Instead Shakespeare chose to place Edgar on stage with Kent and takes
advantage of both actors being physically on stage even if emblematically separated under
Elizabethan stage convention. Thus the audience can witness a mirroring of the rejected
men forced to take on a disguise to survive and aid the man who banished them. Hirsh
writes, "only after Edgar's departure does an audience realize that his soliloquy constituted
a kind of scene within a scene. Shakespeare tries to have it both ways and succeeds."”4

Another three-part scene in W is V.2. Edgar enters with Gloucester and
says, "Here, father, take the shadow of this tree . . ."(KingLear 5.2.1) Then Edgar exits

and the battle occurs off-stage. Edgar re-enters and says, "Away, old man, give me thy

 

202James E. Hirsh, The Structure of Shakespeare's Scenes ( New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1981) 59.

203Hirsh 188.
204Hirsh 20 - 22.

 

67

hand, away!"(King Lear 5.2.5) Hirsh argues the scene has an A - B - A1 rhythmic
structure. The first and third sections of the scene show Edgar leading Gloucester.
However, the off-stage battle leads Edgar to change from addressing (possibly
ambiguously) Gloucester as 'father' to the less personal 'old man.‘ This creates an ironic
symmetry -- a rhythmic factor used throughout the play.205 Telling in this regard is
Shakespeare's use of duet scenes.

"Duets [in which characters enter simultaneously, interact, and exit simultaneously]
occur more frequently in Shakespeare’s plays than solo scenes. Yet one-third of the plays
have none at all; only a handful have as many as three; and only King Idear, with five, has
more than three."”6 These duet scenes create a rhythmic pattern through their symmetry.

An evil sister (first Goneril, then Regan) has a duet with Oswald in the first and last
ducts in 1.3. and 1V.5. Kent and the Gentleman share the second and fourth ducts in 111.1.
and 1V.3. Cornwall and Edmund constitute the middle duet in 111.5. These ducts are also
symmetrical in thematic material. Both Oswald duets open with a sister asking a question
to which Oswald replies, "Ay, Madam." The first duet portrays the first overt order to
humble Lear. The last duet shows the first order in the fight between Goneril and Regan.
The Kent/Gentleman duets consist of Kent's questions being answered by the Gentleman's
description of off-stage action. Finally, the middle duet between the chief male villains
"most explicitly raises the theme of loyalty or devotion that is prominent in all five
duets."207 This string of duet scenes interspersed throughout the action serve ahnost as
drum-beats and enhance the strong rhythmic feeling of the play.

Shakespeare was not alone in using the rhythm of episodes. In The CheLry

Orchard, Chekhov also uses rhythm of episodes to telling effect. Greta Anderson argues

 

 

205Hirsh 193.
206Hirsh 54.
”7Hirsh 74 - 79.

 

68

that Chekhov's noted verbal rhythms create local rhythmic patterns that broaden into larger
patterns. She writes
By understanding the play in terms of musical structure, we can appreciate in
greater detail the measured grace and good humor with which the playwright has
characters conduct themselves together [. . .] Attention to structural rhythm tends
toward a reading of the play more in accord with Chekhov’s designation of the play

as a comedy than do most interpretations, particularly those which focus on its
closing moments.208

Anderson shows that Chekhov broke from the Russian theatrical custom of
delineating “french” scenes, yet using scenes as distinct units of action within each act.
Also, these distinct episodes are usually marked by an entrance or exit. For example, in
Act 1, Dunyasha exits and leaves Anya and Varya alone for a scene that is ended by
Dunyasha’s return.209

Chekhov creates a rhythmic structure to the four acts of the play by use of repetitive
endings. Each of the first three acts closes with the doubled utterance of the verb poidyom

’9 6‘

(translated as “let’s go, come,” and “come along”).210 Anderson argues each act ending
alternates between harmony and discord. Also, the end of the play purposefully mirrors
the end of Act H. Thus, Firs line, “. . . nothing’s left, nothing” replaces the expected verb
established by the first three acts. The alternation of harmony and discord, and the
purposeful repetition of the stage directions from the end of Act 11 indicates a less than
moumful ending. Thus, a rhythmic ending and coda end the play established by the

rhythm of the earlier acts.211 Anderson shows that inattention to rhythm may lead to a

distorted reading of the play.

 

208Greta Anderson, “The Music of The Qhem Qpehurd: Repetitions in the Russian
Text,” Medern Drama 34 (1991) 340.

209Anderson 344.
210Anderson 346.

211Anderson 347 - 349.

 

 

 

1

 

69

Leah Hadomi argues that the rhythm of episodes may be clearly seen in DeadLLfa
Salesman. “[Willie’s] conflicts with himself and with the external world are dramatically
manipulated on a variety of formal levels within which the rhythms of the plot are
developed.”212 Willie’s alternations between reality and fantasy mark the rhythm of
episodes in this play. Hadomi finds six scenes in the first act and twelve in the second act.
The increase in scene division “ . . .is a function of the accelerated tempo of the
protagonist’s shifts of perspective. . . as well as the progressive weakening of his ability
to distinguish between fantasy and reality.”213

A farce, A Flee in Her Ear, demonstrates the connection between tempo and the
rhythm of episodes.214 Smaller episodes usually correspond to “french” scenes created by
entrances and exits. Occasionally an entering character will facilitate the continuation of a
dramatic action. Generally, though, an entering character adds to the confusion and
changes the course of the scene and act, particularly in this play about mistaken identity. A
cursory reading of the text shows a great deal of entrance/exit activity in the play. The
number of entrances and exits in each act are as follows: 1) 47, H) 93, and 111)41. The
sheer amount of short episodes can create the impression of a quick tempo. This can be
shown through an analogy in music. A string of whole notes will sound slower and less
active than a string of eighth notes played at precisely the same tempo. Thus, in theatrical
art the rhythm created by a series of short episodes can of itself give the impression of a
fast tempo.

Moreover, short episodes are deliberately used by Feydeau. Act H, set in the local

hotel, has the most entrance/exit activity. A problem arises of how to maintain that level of

 

212Leah Hadomi, “Fantasy and Reality: Dramatic Rhythm in Death of a Salesman,”
Medern Drama 31 (1988) 168.

213Hadomi 168 - 169.

214All references come from Georges Feydeau, W, trans. Barnett
Shaw (New York: Samuel French, 1966).

 

70

energy in Act 111. Feydeau solves the problem by employing a device commonly used in
music. Feydeau starts Act 111 with longer scenes that progressively get shorter as the act
progresses. The play is brought down from the high pitch of the end of 11, and the
energetic briskness is re-built through the use of the rhythm of episodes.

The building momentum of Act H can be shown through the placement of
entrances and exits in the act. The first half of the act contains only 36 entrances and
exits. The last gum: of Act 11 contains 42 entrances and exits. Then Act 111 begins
with the entrance of the maid and the butler. These characters proceed to have a continuous
scene for three pages of text. The wife and a friend have a scene for a page. Then another
friend enters, and this trio converse uninterrupted for another two pages of text. This is a
quarter of the act. Slighfly less than half of the entrances and exits of Act 111 occur during
the final third of the act. Therefore, Feydeau has used units of longer duration at the
beginning of the act and shorter units at the end of the act This contributes to the feeling of
pace in the farce.

Another factor in the rhythm of episodes in flea is the thematic structure of the three
acts. The first act establishes several character situations. However, Act 11 focuses largely
on the insurance director (Chandel), his wife (Yvonne), his friend (Toumel), and his
coincidental twin (Poche).215 Moreover, the act is structured with focus on Poche in the
first half of the act and Chandel in the second half. Thus, generally, the structure of the
play’s acts is multiple/binary/multiple.

The rhythm of episodes contributes clearly to the effect of a plot-driven farce. This

contrasts with a comedy like Barefeet iu the Path. 3&1:me generally has much longer

episodes between the characters. Therefore it does not rely upon the rhythm of episodes to

 

215To be sure the other characters figure in Act H. Yet, the others’ stories figure
more prominently in importance and episode length in Acts 1 and 111. Witness the scene
between the butler and the maid at the beginning of Act 111.

71

enhance the feeling of tempo. A verbal, character comedy, like Batefdot, must use other
rhythmic strata as a basis for judgments of tempo.

The obvious rhythm of episodes in a French farce contrasts broadly with the one-
act Laudseape. The episodes are not as easily discerned. Neither character physically
enters nor exits. As with the rhythm of character change, this lends itself to the feeling of
indeterminacy of Pinter’s play.

Nevertheless, there seem to be episodes in the play. Usually they are marked by a
stage direction of ‘silence.’ The end of the opening episode does not occur until Beth
says, “Snoozing how lovely I said to him. But I wasn’t a fool, on that occasion. I lay
quiet, by his side.” (Laudseape p. 14) It is at this point that both Beth and Duff make a
character change. Likewise, a page later both turn to a discussion of being in a pub and
they start a second episode. (“Silence” at the top of p. 15.) Like a free-form fantasia or
rhapsody (like Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D minor” and Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in
Blue”), Lamieeape moves from episode to episode, slowly revealing ever more about the
lives of these two people.

Since the rhythm of Leudseape is not as clearly punctuated as in a farce, the rhythm
and associated tempo may seem comparatively ethereal. Yet, the progression from episode
to episode lends a deliberateness to the rhythm. The combination of ambiguity and
deliberateness reflects the character of Beth and Duff. Thus the play demonstrates the strata
of rhythm working in concert. The rhythms of language, character change, and episode
interact and interrelate. They mutually enhance the effect of the others. The theatrical

experience shows its rhythmic face.

SECTION 3
THEORY OF THE RHYTHM OF EPISODES

In music the phrase compares to the episode 'beat' (or phrase) in theatrical art.

Phrases join together into periods. Periods constitute a movement. 'Movements' compare

72

to theatrical 'acts.' Thus, the rhythm of episodes compares to the structural rhythms of
music. Perception of structural rhythm in music begins with understanding of phrases.
Phrases are not located merely by counting measures of a melody. Musicologist
William Rothstein notes there are many four-measure phrases in music. However, each 4
measure segment is not necessarily a phrase. Rothstein reduces the opening of the first
four measures of the "Blue Danube Waltz" on a ratio of 3:1. The reduction shows that

what would be the first four measures are a metrical unit, not a phrase:216

3’1 3A 3" (3"

 

1:11

 

216William Rothstein, Phrase Rhythm in Tune] Mus, ie (New York: Schirmer
Books, 1989) 7, 8.

73

As in theatrical art, a musical phrase may consist of more than one harmonic
change. These harmonic changes help point the direction of the phrase, as character
changes equally point the direction of an episode. Here is an example of a short piece of

music that is made of three small phrases. The rhythm of the phrases is

short/short/long:217

 

The rhythmic structure of the piece can be notated as being A- A - B. The first phrase is
repeated. The beginning of the third phrase implies another repetition of the initial motif.
The phrase, though, creates surprise by being different. By analogy, this phrase might be
thought of as an anapest. The difference of the third phrase provides stress. Thus, the
combination of two comparatively weak elements followed by a comparatively stronger
element makes an anapest.

A generally reliable method of locating a phrase on tonal music is through location
of cadence points. A cadence is the expression of the return to the tonal center, or, the
surprise deviation away from the tonal center even though the center's return has been
prepared. Often the cadence coincides- with the end of a rhythmic pattern so that the

feeling of completion is reinforced.218

 

217Marie-Laure Bachmann, Dalcroze Today: An Education through and into Music
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991) 117.

218Rothstein 7 - 8.

74

Phrases may combine together into a 'period.‘ The several phrases constitute the

rhythm of the period.219 The hymn "Ode to Joy" is a period made of four phrases.

 

The rhythm of the phrases can be notated A - A - B - A. Then this period may be used as a
section of a larger unit, as Beethoven did in writing the "Ninth Symphony."

The structure of larger units may vary widely. Short compositions or short 'out-
takes' from larger works may have 'isorhythms;' that is, only one basic pattern as with the
Couperin "Carnival" in Chapter 2.220 The common structure of the Baroque era was

binary (A - B) in nature. An example of this type of structure is the tune to "London

 

219Rothstein 20.

220Creston 173.

 

75

Bridge." In the Baroque era, often each section is meant to be repeated (thus, A - A - B -
B)!”

After the Baroque era, composers innovated larger musical units and developed
symphonic structure. One such structure is the sonata/allegro form. The sonata/allegro
form is made of three units that are themselves divisible into smaller units. The first unit is
the exposition and includes: the first theme, a bridge (modulation), a secondary theme in a
related key, and probably a codetta with a cadence in the contrasting key. The second unit
is the development and includes: fragments of the themes in various 'foreign' keys, extra
material, and a transition to the 'home' key. The third section is the recapitulation and
includes: the first theme, a bridge, the secondary theme in the 'home' key, and a coda in
the home key.222

Another major structure is that of a theme and variations. This structure is made of
a theme repeated numerous times with each repetition distinguished by variation, usually,
of melodic material. (A famous example is J .S. Bach's "Goldberg Variations") Such a
piece would have a rhythmic structure of A - Al - A2 - A3 - A4 - etc.223 Other forms include
the minuet and trio, and the rondo. The minuet and trio is a large binary form consisting of
smaller binary or tertiary units:

minuet A-B-A(orA-B)+trioC-D-C(orC-D)=minuet.

The rondo is composed of a recurring theme separated by varying melodic material or non-
repeated themes, thus: A - B - A - C - A - D - A - E - etc.”4 The symphony, then, is

constructed out of these elements. The classic symphony has four movements:
1 - Sonata/allegro

 

221Joseph Machlis, The Enjoyment pf Musie 4th ed. (New York: W.W. Norton,
1977) 371.

222Machlis 223.
223Machlis 225.
224Machlis 226 - 227.

 

76

2 - Theme and variations OR Sonata/allegro OR some A - B - A piece
3 - Minuet and trio OR Scherzo and trio (same structure)
4 - Sonata/allegro OR Rondo OR Rondo/sonata OR Theme and variations?”

The rhythmic patterns of movements can thus be notated. Creston notates
Scriabin's Piano Sonata No. 1 thus:

I: Large/triple/temary

11: Lon g/quadruple/binary

III: Short/quadruple/temary
IV: Long/quadruple/binary?26

Creston then analyzes Beethoven's Piano Sonata in G Op. 31 No.1 with three movements
being short/long/short and the structure being binary/ternary/binary.”7

Cooper and Meyer provide a simple graphic analysis of the first movement of
Beethoven's Symphony No. 8:228

Exposition Exposition repeated Development Recapitulation Coda

v \J v —-——- u

1 L - 1;
Cooper and Meyer explicitly add to this analysis, "Now, these large rhythms associated
with forms are possible because of clearly articulated phrasing associated with

morphological lengthsf?” Thus the interrelationship between the smaller, well-articulated

phrases and the larger units are clearly perceptible and create rhythm.

 

2”Machlis 228.
226Creston 181.
227Creston 175 - 176.
228Cooper and Meyer 161.

229Cooper and Meyer 161.

77

Machlis shows the rhythm of episodes is not limited to formal music with an

analysis of "Jelly Roll' Morton's "Black Bottom Stomp:"230
Intro - 8 measures
A - 16 measures
A1 - 16 measures
A2 - 16 measures
Interlude - 4 measures
B - 20 measures
B1 through B6 - 20 measures (each)
Coda - 2 measures

Machlis comments, "Such an outline can only hint at the echoed antiphonal patterns, the
echoed breaks and rhythms which are surprises in themselves but which give order to the
performance through their recurrence."231 The recurrence of a given structure adds to the
creation of a pattern and is, therefore, rhythmic.

The rhythm of episodes in theatrical art mirrors this phenomenon. This can be
illustrated in Shakespeare's plays, as shown above. Evidently Shakespeare did not write
act structures, yet the rhythm of episodes is quite clear.

Hirsh joins others in arguing that the act divisions in the Shakespearean canon did
not originate with the author. Hirsh cites evidence on behalf of his argument. Between
1583 and 1616, some 123 plays have some sort of act division, but only 89 scripts (of
201) printed prior to 1616 have act divisions. Between 1591 and 1610 only 19 of 102
plays likely performed in public theatres have act divisions. Finally, in the period between
1591 and 1607, of 74 printed plays for adult companies, only 5 printed plays by Ben
Jonson have act divisions?32 Therefore, Hirsh does not examine act structure in

Shakespeare.

 

230Machlis 602 - 603.
231Machlis 603.
232Hirsh 3 -4.

78

Instead Hirsh argues the important play structure for Shakespeare was the scene.
For Hirsh a scene may continue as long as a living character is on stage to continue the
scene's action. He ends, " . . . hence a scene division does not occur unless the stage is
cleared of all living characters'?”

Charles and Elaine Hallett agree with Hirsh that act divisions in Shakespearean
plays are not of Shakespearian origin. However, they contrast in examining action
'sequences' in the plays. For the Halletts the sequence is a dramatic unit that answers a
dramatic question. The sequence fits within a hierarchical scale of beat/sequence/frame. A
notated scene may encompass more than one sequence. Likewise a sequence may
encompass more than one scene. A frame encompasses a group of sequences and answers
a larger dramatic question. The boundaries of each unit are found through a change of
dramatic function. The change in function creates rhythm?34

As a group of sequences, the frame should be a complete unit dealing with one
dramatic question. The Halletts note the frame is made of an introductory sequence, an
intensifying sequence, a key sequence that is the dramatization of a major plot event, and a
concluding sequence?” They illustrate this with an early frame of King Lear, The
opening sequence of Lear and his daughters is also the key sequence from which the other
events of the play flow. This is followed by an intensifying sequence between Lear and
Kent in which the faithful retainer is exiled. The third and final sequence in this frame is a

concluding sequence that includes Lear, France, and Burgundy?”

 

233Hirsh 15.
234Halletts 11.
23SHalletts 188- 189.
2”Halletts 201.

79

Despite differences in labels, both Hirsh and the Halletts identify the episodic units
in Shakespeare's plays and thereby display the rhythm of episodes that Shakespeare
employs.

The rhythm of episodes in theatrical art matches the rhythm of forms (or phrasal
rhythm) in music. Small phrases made of notes and harmonic changes combine into larger
structures. In theatrical art the episode is made of words and character changes that
combine into phrases or beats. The larger units in both art forms participate in a larger
rhythmic pattern. In this way the rhythmic strata interrelate and affect each other

continually.

SECTION 4
CONCLUSIONS

Rhythm in theatrical art is the relationship between the constituent parts and the
parts to the whole work of art. Three basic strata compose these constituent parts and the
whole. The first rhythm is the basic rhythm of the words. The relationship of word to
word and the alternating stresses of language may provide clues to aid the actor and director
in deriving possible meanings. The rhythm of character change provides a link to the
rhythms of everyday interaction. Communication is a process that is simultaneously
predictable and improvised. Rhythm of character change mirrors that process on the stage.
Finally, the rhythm of episodes creates a larger scale of rhythm in which the other strata can
interact.

This study has examined these strata and shown how they work in various plays.
However, this study has remained within the realm of objective rhythm, the rhythms
notated in a published script. To better understand the rhythmic phenomena of theatrical
art, study of performance rhythms seems logical. Thus the rhythm of movement and
gesture, largely not notated in a script, can be added as another stratum. Also, the rhythm

of audience reponse can be added to the picture of the rhythm of theatrical art.

80

Also, it might be worthy of study to determine if an aesthetically pleasing theatrical
experience could be created out of nothing but articulated rhythmic patterns. The
contemporary popular musical culture of dance and rap music indicates that an audience can
be entertained by raw rhythm, unadorned by other material.

The concept of rhythm is intimately tied to the perception of time. While spatial
rhythms exist and can be studied, rhythm is commonly considered to happen within time.
Time is still largely enigmatic. Is time merely a word tied to the ability to perceive
duration? Is time an existing force that follows certain natural laws? Science has only
recently started to ask such questions and search for meaningful answers. Time, like the
wind, is something more easily experienced than explained.

In ending an introductory discussion of rhythm in music, musicologist Manfred
Clynes wrote about music and time in a way that could also be applied to theatrical art.

In this chapter we have seen how our own clocks may be involved, through

[theatre], in the bridge between concepts and the physical world; and also how,

biologically, meaning has coopted time to create expressive forms through which
we communicate and share the evolving story of our feelings?”

 

237Manfred Clynes, "When Time Is Music," Rhythm iu Psyehelpimmp
and Musieal Prpeesees, ed. James R. Evans and Manfred Clynes (Springfield: Charles C.
Thomas Publishing, 1986) 220.

 

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