ABSTRACT
Theoretically there are two processes involved in the preparation of a role; they are not really distinct in practice, of course, but it is useful to consider them separately in order to see some of the problems of creating character more clearly. One of these processes is a matter of attaining an intellectual knowledge of what the words mean and why the character has to use them; in this way we find out the emotion expressed in them and the character’s objective. The actor, however, has to progress to a point at which he feels in himself sincerely as his own emotion what he knows intellectually the imaginary character has been imagined as feeling. For that reason a modern actor finds it harder to be certain exactly what it is Shakespeare’s words need him to feel and want if he is to speak them as one having no alternative but to speak them and in that way.
