About the Book:

HARD TO FIND BOOK, only a very limited number of copies are still available.

Shakespeare's text is packed with clues that tell the actor when but never why or how. Legendary director and founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company Sir Peter Hall asserts that "Shakespeare tells the actor when to go fast and when to go slow; when to pause, when to come in on cue and when to accent a word. His text is full of such clues." In this book, Peter Hall works through speeches from Shakespeare's plays, revealing and elucidating these clues, providing the key to understanding and speaking the text. Reading Shakespeare's Advice to the Players makes watching or reading Shakespeare a richer experience, for audiences as well as actors.

"You can't improvise this shit!" — Dustin Hoffman, two-time Oscar winning actor

"Reading this book I am reminded not only of Shakespeare's genius but also of Peter's. He manages to convey, lucidly and helpfully how to speak the language that can seem so very daunting... It is a book that should be compulsory for every actor, experienced or inexperienced, professional or amateur, to own and use." — David Suchet CBE

"I find the most valuable ingredient is Peter's tone. Even though he is academic, instructive, exhaustively experienced... his observation of the texts and of his own experiences is fresh and immediate and always helpful. His guidance is born of a genuine passion and fascination with Shakespeare's words and the characters who speak them. Quite often, the points one absorbs as useful go beyond the world of Shakespeare too. He shares his tools with great generosity in this book, as he does in the rehearsal room. I will be forever indebted to him and the book will be forever by my side." — Janie Dee, double Olivier Award-winning actress and singer

Shakespeare's Advice to the Players also celebrates Peter Hall's fifty years as a director of Shakespeare; from his early days at Cambridge, through founding the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford on Avon in the early 1960s, and later to his fifteen years as the director of the Royal National Theatre of Great Britain. Throughout these years, Peter Hall worked with the greatest Shakespearean actors of our generation including Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Edith Evans, Ralph Richardson, Peggy Ashcroft, Charles Laughton and in later years Judi Dench, Anthony Hopkins, Ian Holm, David Warner, and many others. Through this great line flows a tradition of speaking and understanding Shakespeare that remains as relevant and important today. And it is Peter Hall's experience of working and learning with these and many other actors over the years that underpins the core of this book.

An essential text for classical training at drama school, an invaluable reference book for actors and directors working on Shakespeare productions and a treasure trove for avid Shakespeare readers and theatregoers.

What people say:

"This is a fabulously hybrid book — part actor's handbook, part memoir — but what is most inspiring is Hall's conviction that form can be as exciting as feeling. Acting in this way is more than just listening to Shakespeare — it is 'responding to Shakespeare's linear needs'." — The Observer

"As fascinating to readers as it is to actors." — The Independent

"…Shakespeare's Advice to the Players about the art of Shakespearean verse-speaking, and the clues in the text that tell actors how to speak it. He talks spellbindingly on the subject and I suspect both acting students and young professionals will flock to learn from him." — The Telegraph

About the Author:

Sir Peter Hall (1930-2017) was an internationally celebrated stage director and theatre impresario, whose influence on the artistic life of Britain in the 20th century was unparalleled. The former director of the National Theatre and founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company, he directed over two hundred productions, including the world premiere in English of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, and the premieres of most of Harold Pinter's plays. Knighted in 1977 for his service to the theatre, he was a vociferous champion of public funding for the arts.