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Speaking Shakespeare’s Last Plays

Introduction The inspiration for this investigation into Shakespeare’s late works came from attending three of his earliest plays, the Henry VIs, performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Young Vic in London, over the course of a week. One of the most exciting aspects of this experience was watching and hearing the young Shakespeare grow in his ability to manipulate language to maximize its expressiveness. It made quite vivid to me the fact that Shakespeare continued to make significant stylistic advancements throughout his career; no aspect of his playwriting remained static. This development is widely analyzed by literary scholars but not much discussed in the practitioner literature. I thus became interested in exploring what implications Shakespeare’s evolution might have for actors of his plays and for the voice and text coach who works with them.