Tip #10: Know Who’s Talking to Whom

It can be easy to get confused if you lose track of who is speaking to whom. The script gives us the speaker, so that’s easy, but you have to pay attention to who else is in the scene. At the start of every scene, the playwright tells us who is present using the stage direction Enter. During scenes, some characters may Exit, while other characters Enter. Take note. At the end of scenes, sometimes the stage direction says Exeunt. That’s just the plural for Exit. If two or more actors leave the stage at the same time, they will be named: [Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern]. If it just says Exeunt, it means all the characters leave the stage.

Another stage direction to take note of is Aside.  When you see that, it means the speaker is speaking to himself so that no one else can hear. No one but the audience that is. Hamlet’s first line is an aside:

Hamlet. [Aside] A little more than kin, and less than kind.

Sometimes only one character appears in a scene. When that character speaks, it’s called a soliloquy. The character is revealing their thoughts by speaking to him or herself. Some of the most famous parts of Shakespeare come in these soliloquies, like Hamlet’s most famous lines, “To be, or not to be: that is the question.”