Leif, The Town Crier
By Tom Fulton

Not long ago, I had found myself in Lennox, Massachussets. I had been hired to play Lepidus and Scarus in a production of Antony and Cleopatra at a summer Shakespeare Festival. After A rehearsal one afternoon, knowing I was free for the evening, I stopped at a local pub in Stockbridge, the home of Norman Rockwell, for a glass of beer and a sandwich. The interior of The Lion's Pub was surrounded by stained glass windows, lots of brass rails, five hundred wine glasses hanging upside-down over the bar in neat oak slats. Each table had a bowl of that thick, dip cheddar with Pepperidge Farm Goldfish and Wheat Thins on the side. A fireplace in every room. Norman Rockwell would have been proud. Most afternoons, scattered about at separate tables quietly leafing through little paperback books, were uncommonly thin, wiry men and women, dressed casually, smelling of soap and looking newly showered - joggers with large gray-tinted wire-rim glasses and little Nike hats perched back on their heads, sipping white wine and nibbling on fresh fruit salad. Everyone looked as if they were about 35 and completely sincere about taking up as little space as possible. I liked being there. It was like sitting in a drawing room that served cheese and beer. It felt very "hip". I carried my own little paperback copy of Antony and Cleopatra. I sucked in my stomach as I approached the pretty, smiling hostess.

This particular day, along with the regulars, there were two men having an animated conversation at the table by the fireplace. I mention this because I happened to be seated next to them. I got the odd seat that every stained glass, brass-railed pub has - the one over the air conditioning vent and next to the gas logs in the fireplace. Most people complain and ask to be moved, but I liked being able to shift my position and become alternately hot and cold on opposites sides of my body. This feeling was enhanced as I began to eavesdrop on a most remarkable conversation.

Before I launch into the recounting of this tale, a little background is required in order for you to enjoy the full flavor of the story.

When an actor sits down to act Shakespeare, he is confronted immediately with a dilemma: How to act the multi-level nature of the bard's poetry? Do I speak it realistically, and thereby lose the great music of the language – or do I "sing" the speeches and add an inevitable false note to the words? Luckily for actors, there are some approaches to acting Shakespeare that can come to our rescue. The simplest and most interesting of these ideas is that Shakespeare wrote for actors - his plays were meant to be performed, not read. And while he did not provide us with stage directions, he did provide us with clues in the meter and in the arrangement of the lines. So by studying the verse scansion, the internal rhythmic pulse of the words (in Shakepeare's case the da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM heartbeat throb in his verse); by paying attention to the placement of commas, periods, exclamation points, and capitalization - actors are given very clear clues on how to manage the lines. Shakespeare made it clear in many cases that the key to the scene was in the arrangement of the lines.

This has given audiences some wild interpretations, however. For by placing a comma in a different spot, the entire meaning of the line can be altered and even reversed. Richard Burton, for example, when performing Hamlet was convinced that Hamlet wanted to commit suicide. So that Shakespeare's original punctuation of:

Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished; To die, to sleep,
To sleep, perchance to dream - aye there's the rub!

(Note the semi-colon after "wished".)

Burton changed it to:

Tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wished to die, to sleep,

To sleep, perchance to dream - aye there's the rub!

(Note the absence of the semi-colon after "wished.")

There are thousands of examples of this dangling like bait before actors and directors hungry for a concept. Sometimes they help, sometimes they hinder. But occasionally someone gets hooked and the new turn of phrase becomes an obsession.

Which brings me back to the Lion's pub and the bizarre conversation I overheard while sipping my own glass of white wine and munching goldfish. Pretending to read my script, I began eavesdropping on the conversation at the next table. The fellow closest to me, with his back turned, was short and had a strange speech impediment. He would talk normally for a few sentences and suddenly snort. This was no ordinary snort either. It was a kind of sneeze that managed to be contained in his nose. It was an instantaneous event, so that at first I though it might have been just a convulsive snicker. But it continued with regularity throughout his conversation, which was quickly becoming louder and more vehement. He had an insistent personality. He forced his opinion on his table partner.

The other man had a long, gentle face with a copper red mustache dangling over his thickish lips. His eyes were round and moon-like. He was enjoying himself. The more I listened the more I felt the moon eyed man was goading the snorter. Every time the snorter would make a point, the mooneye would smile like the gangster who had the gun. This enraged the snorter who would further galvanize his snorting mechanism- causing rapid bursts of "cghn, cghn's" to punctuate every other word. Curiously, As the snorter was wearing a tee shirt that had the word LEIF written in huge old-English letters across the back. This is from memory mind you, but here is the gist of the conversation into which I fell somewhere in the middle….

SNORTER: . . question of punctuation! You don't think for a second that Mr. Hemmings and Mr. Condel could have been (Cghn!) 100 percent accurate on every page. Seriously! They had to (Cghn!) hand letter every page. What if they had run out of capital "L"s?

MOONEYE: You think capitalization and punctuation was important to Shakespeare?!

SNORTER: (Cghn!) Of Course! Of Course it was important! That's what I'm trying to say. But he (Cghn!) was dead! It's like what happened after Disney died.

MOONEYE: Really? What happened after Disney died?

SNORTER: They made "The Rescuers!" See my point? You can't count on a couple of actors to get the commas and the (Cghn!) capitalization right.

MOONEYE: Ok, so?

SNORTER: Ok, so say the line your way.

MOONEYE: "Speak the speech I pray you as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it as many of our players do, I would as lief the town crier spoke my lines."

SNORTER: (Cghn!)(Cghn!)(Cghn!) Alright, alright. Now put a comma before "the" and after crier, and capitalize "lief". Say it again.

MOONEYE:(Writing it down) A comma after "leif" and capitalize "the" ‘L’.

SNORTER: Yes and before ‘the’! (Cghn!)

MOONEYE: Alright, alright, I got it. "Speak the speech I pray you as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it as many of our players do I would as LEIF, the town crier, spoke my lines.

(As soon as Mooneye "capitalized" Leif, he began to giggle uncontrollably)

SNORTER: You see? You see what it does? (Cghn!) (Cghn!)

MOONEYE: Lief, the town crier? Leif is a name?

SNORTER: Yes.

MOONEYE: You mean like Leif Ericson…?

SNORTER: Yes. But not Leif Ericson… just a nobody.. a fellow actor…

MOONEYE: Don’t be silly.

SNORTER: I’m quite serious. It changes the entire speech. It humanizes it. There’s no question.

MOONEYE: (Beginning to giggle more openly) It's patently absurd. ‘leif’ means "I would … rather.. I would … I might as well … have the town crier speak my lines… Come on! What are you saying, the town crier is a man named Leif?! Ah-ha! ha! ha ha!

SNORTER: (Cghn!) (Cghn!) (Cghn!) Yes, it's perfectly clear! It brings the whole speech a kind of humanity (Cghn!). It makes you feel for the man. Hamlet's not just talking about (Cghn!) a "general" town crier - but one they all know. "I would as (Cghn!) LEIF, the town crier, spoke my lines.

MOONEYE: (snickering) "I would as Dick, the town crier, spoke my lines! Ah-ha! Ha! ha-ha.

SNORTER: What is the (Cghn!) point.

(The Snorter threw his napkin on Mooneye's plate. Even I am starting to get the giggles now.)

MOONEYE: (Wiping his eyes) … Tonto, the town crier…

SNORTER: (Cghn!) I should have known better (Cghn!) than to speak to you about a damn thing! You're one of those dickhead actors who think they don't need to learn a-a (Cghn) a damn thing. You’re such a slave to conventionality! You give the pretense of being creative, but you reject anything that doesn’t live in your own narrow definition of the world. You can’t think for yourself. It’s people like you who keep the theatre in a perpetual state of mediocrity. What, do you think I’m an idiot? That I don’t know (cghn!) know the conventional meaning of the line? You think you have to explain simple English to me.

MOONEYE: (Beginning to calm down) I'm sorry, sorry. Don’t… It’s just…

SNORTER: Take a look under things, Josh! Look in the shadows. Look up your ass for all I care. You’re one of the morons that would have walked out on The Rite of Spring. Who would have (cghn) jailed Galileo!

MOONEYE: (Still smiling) Oh, for heaven’s sake.. Ok, Ok, Leif, the town crier… alright, it could be played that way… It just seems (giggle temptation).. highly implausible, that's all.

(At this point the Snorter turned away from Mooneyes and I could see his face. It was swollen with rage and hurt. Tears were welling up in his eyes. I could see he was trying to say something, but his throat wouldn't let him. He snorted a couple of times and large streams of salt tears rolled across his cheeks, which he quickly wiped away with his napkin. Then, without a word he stomped out of the restaurant. Mooneyes became suddenly alarmed. I could sadness and resignation creeping into his eyes. He threw a 20 dollar bill onto the table and followed his friend onto the street. I watched them for a while as Snorter walked faster and faster down the sidewalk, while Mooneyes ran to catch up with him.)

It was funny exchange. It was sad. It was unsettling all at once. I couldn't get it out of my mind. I shifted my position to get some air-conditioning on my left side.

Then I noticed the notebook. Under Snorter's chair was a stenopad, doodled in red, black and blue ink, but scribbled in big old-English script was the word "LEIF". I watched it for a while, expecting Snorter to return for it. But after an hour, my curiosity could no longer be quelled. I quickly snatched up the book and rather shamefacedly began to read. There wasn't much, but what was there was unexpected. Instead of the jerky, nasal, nearly apoplectic rhythms of Snorter's speech, was a soft and gentle prose. None of it was interrupted by those comical and horrendous snorts. Instead came a fluid, uninterrupted rhythm, which told a completely different story of the man at the table. What was inarticulate and nearly laughable in its physical manifestation was now eloquent in its gentility and simplicity. The diary read:

"Speak the speech I pray you as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it as many of our players do, I would as Lief,the town crier, had spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand thus"

Question: Who is Leif, the town crier? I can't say the line anymore without thinking of Leif. "I would as Leif, the town crier, had spoke my lines."

I've grown very fond of him. I know him. It seems perfectly clear. If the line is read correctly, Leif's the man Hamlet thinks would "mouth" his lines, rather than repeat them trippingly on the tongue. Here's a perfectly good actor being criticized by the playwright for not saying the words his way! Not to mention the fact that he's not around to defend himself. So now I find myself compelled to come to his rescue. I see Leif as a kind of every-actor, a man struggling to find his place in his art, but fumbling about miserably, soliciting the wrath and disdain of critics, audiences and fellow actors alike. Leif is eager to create something beautiful. He is a serious student of his art. Leif works hard. Leif is a great believer in truth. He practices like a dog, holding his mirror up to nature. I can see him at a party showing virtue her own image, scorn her own feature and wondering why no one will dance with him.

He's probably a "robustious, peri-wig pated fellow" and ought to be well liked. But he's not. Leif has acted in a lot of roles. He always plays the thankless parts - He probably played Guildenstern - and Captain in Twelfth Night, Lodevico in Othello, Lepidus in Antony & Cleopatra.

(That stopped me for a second.)

But he's a good man, and he his honorable. He's faithful as a dog. And frankly, the company takes him far too much for granted, because he solves a myriad of problems in the background, silently. He never seeks reward, he's the first to volunteer to strike the set, take out the garbage or do the laundry. When you come right down to it, Leif is the buttress of the ensemble. His selflessness sets a standard. His sense of humor - his ability to laugh at his shortcomings is legendary.

Shakespeare knows he doesn't mind. In fact, Leif's kind of proud to be mentioned in so famous a speech about acting. He loves the notoriety and figures its all in good fun. Leif might have been well known to the groundlings. For it seems to me that ragging a man in public about his speech impediment is a really a cheap laugh. And since Shakespeare included no last name, I think it's reasonable to assume Leif was known to London on a first name basis. The Elizabethans would have understood Hamlet's joke. Leif's problem is this "mouthing" business. In early readings, either he mumbles or he shouts. People laugh at the way he speaks behind his back. Lei cold-reads like a chump. And every director gets nervous around him and starts giving him line-readings. And they all say things to him like:

"Speak the speech I pray you, as I pronounced it to you."

This enrages him. It makes him nervous. He sometimes leaves rehearsal weeping. I know Leif. I've worked with him, I've been him. I've tried to add up the times I felt like Leif, and the times I've felt like the other guy. The score is about 102 to 15 in favor of Leif. And I know what he is mumbling. It's the whisper of a man who has great expectations but wonders if he can fulfill the dream. He's demanding: "Don't fail. Oh, God, please don't let me fail. Leif, you S.O.B. don't you fail." I love Leif. He's an O.K. guy. I could have a beer with him. I could act with him. I could count on him. And I'm convinced that Leif, left to his own devices, will fail a lot, but someday will astound the world. I think Leif has a spark of genius in his breast that might explode if the world would just give him leave to mumble for a while."

I put the notebook back under the seat, paid my bill and left. I didn't want to read any more. This was a personal diary! I was intruding. I felt a swell of guilt. I felt a little sick. Outside the sun was setting. Creased pants and crisp shirts sauntered around me. I popped a mint into my mouth – it didn’t exactly refresh. It was the dumbest thing I ever read. A perfect example of concept overtaking reason. 

For some reason it reminded me of the time I met an old vaudevillian who ranted on and on over several beers about how us "kids" knew nothing. How, when he was a young actor, his touring company was so poor, he had to improvise madly and cut make-up sponges in half and spirit-gum them onto his face to act as jowls whenever he played the Cowardly Lion in a tour of the Wizard of Oz.   He shouted at me: 

"You know nothing! You think you’ve got all the answers, young man, but you know nothing!"

I wish I could remember his name….

copyright (c) 1992 by Tom Fulton