Question/Problem: How to play out the kiss in the following scene.
Here is the setup - Desdemona and Othello have not seen each other really since their wedding night. Othello has been at war and Desdemona has been at home under the watch of Iago (and Iago is home [at Othello's request] watching Desdemona instead of serving his own duty of office. Buts that's another question/problem). It's been months perhaps. Now however they have a planned meeting at a seaport town in Cypress. But to make matters bad, a storm is raging and that has made travel almost as risky as war, with ships tossing up and down on the sea. Never-the-less Desdemona arrives safely (with Iago and others) first. And Othello soon makes it onshore as well. The storm has calmed, if not completely passed as they see each other, a kind of poetic silence if you will descends. And then.
Othello: O my fair warrior.
Desdemona: My dear Othello.
Othello: It gives me wonder great as my content
To see you here before me. Oh my soul's joy.
If after every tempest come such calms
May the winds blow till they have waken'd death.
And let the labouring bark climb hills of seas
Olympus high, and duck again as low
As hell's from heaven. If I were now to die,
Twere now to be most happy; for I fear
My soul hath her content so absolute
That not another comfort like to this
Succeeds in unknown fate.
Desdemona: The heavens forbid
But that our loves and comforts should increase
Even as our days do grow.
Othello: Amen to that, sweet powers.
I cannot speak enough of this content;
It stops me here; It is too much of joy;
And this, and this, the greatest discords be
(Kissing her)
That e'er our hearts shall make.
She is his "warrior" and he is her "dear."
And so you must imagine like I do, two soaked, wet, drenched people, tired from travel and worry, so deeply in love with each other, standing now before one another, at last, legs a little shaky still from the ship's tossing and tossing. And saying these lines! Come on - it's too beautiful! I love it. This is Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett! ('cept Othello and Desdemona actually do it) Note: Us actors like to say we find clues in the manner in which Shakespeare presents his language - and like great writers, the characters themselves become more and more poetic and beautiful as they become more and more emotionally engaged, with all their senses highly activated - just as in this scene. In the unspoken, in the action, in the kiss itself, they say "I love (and need and want) thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach." (more or less you know).
And so...to the question, the problem...how to do that? How to play out this kiss? Maybe it's only Othello who is soaking wet from the storm, and perhaps we have seen just previously as she has come ashore, Desdemona being protected from the rain. But now, perhaps she freely embraces and kisses Othello without concern for the wet and maybe coldness. Or maybe Othello begins the kiss with the intent not to get her wet, kissing her ever so very delicately, but then slowly they meld together, feeling the wettness between them (no puns intended!!!) and after stepping away from each other, there is "Othello's mark," the outline of his body, in the form of the wetspot (no pun intended again!!!) there on Desdemona. This is love. And the need to feel one another. The need to express love after so much time away. Wet fabric,clothes, clinging as they part, peeling away from each other, lips first, then slowly back from one another, as the wet fabric of their clothes holds together still, like bodies peeling pieces of one another, taking bits of each other.
I think however the kiss plays out, it must have as much poetry and beauty in the action of it as the words spoken between them do. It must have that exactness and precision that the words do. Its not a wild and crazy embrace and kiss, nor is it awkward or too forceful or too casual. It is (or should be) just right. Simple somehow, yet so rich in and full of love. It should be two souls coming together. These are not jaded and angry people (not yet) nor are they momentary lovers or just sexual partners. This is Othello and Desdemona. No matter how odd or unfamiliar a pair, their love is mature, their sensuality full and appropriate in happiness and sureness. This is a kiss the spectators and the others witness - the full blown beauty of love in action. Everyone should be taken, captivated by it in their own way, for their own reasons, from their own point of view. How do you play that kiss as actors?
And who wouldn't want or wish that they had told their love upon seeing them "My soul hath her content so absolute that not another comfort like to this succeeds in unknown fate." And then a moment later kiss her/him! Don't we all want to give and receive that kind of love? My gosh! This in contrast to what we have just seen from some of the other couples or would be couples in the play.
This challenge of Shakespeare, of not only how to say the lines, the words themselves, but how to create the physical action with the same kind of depth and meaning. We can imagine the raw power and grace of Othello, contrasted and combined with the delicate and graceful flow of Desdemona, working somehow in harmony to create, to make, this incredible kiss.
And in related matters of the play - let's take note that Desdemona says in this short but gloriously beautiful and meaninful scene "The heavens forbid but that our loves and comforts should increase even as our days do grow." And so we know, we learn, we are told - as spectators (as is Iago) - in some sense it will become Iago vs the heavens as to what will happen next.
No comments:
Post a Comment