ABSTRACT
This chapter explores emotional urgency has overridden intellectual debate as the dominant mode of expressing the chaos and the violence born of economic depression which characterise the 1990s. In 1984 people had time to applaud an exploration of political crisis which was fair to all sides; today it seems that an overabundance of sympathy for one's fellow man can endanger personal survival. Hall repeatedly insisted that the actor's task is not to create a unique pattern of inflection, but to build the overall shape of the role and its individual gear changes. Coriolanus was written by a man who heard his words as he wrote them down, and each of his scripts contains the complex orchestration of a symphonic score. Before the key note to one musical phrase ends, a new one begins. Indiscriminate use of pauses thus only serves to dissipate the audience's attention and brings the production to a standstill.
