While I was rehearsing for Richard III, another director, Roger Michell, gave me a tip about soliloquies. ‘When you have to speak directly to the audience,’ he said, ‘always give them a role.’ It’s a simple and brilliant idea. As an example: I said earlier that Iago lies to his audience. If that is true, then he would, presumably, think of them as a pack of gullible idiots. For Hamlet, the only people he can really trust are his friends in the audience; he believes that, whatever happens and whatever he chooses to do, they will understand him. In Richard’s case, he behaves like the leader of the gang. Any challenge that the audience might throw down – seducing a woman over the corpse of a man that he’s just killed, let’s say, or seizing the crown – he will accept. And he will triumph – to his and the gang’s delight.
A Piece of Work: Playing Shakespeare and Other Stories
Simon Russell Beale