Assume you are an actor about to audition for a famous stage director for his/her new production of Shakespeare’s Richard II, Henry IV Part I, or Henry V; you need to demonstrate your understanding of the part for which you are under consideration or you won’t get the job.
Pick a principal character from one of the three plays, and in essay form, answer the following questions about that character, gleaning the necessary information from the character’s dialogue, other characters’ dialogue, the “given circumstances” of the plot, and any other information a close reading of the play may provide; you should also use critical reviews, production histories, and/or scholarly secondary sources to back up your conclusions.
Any assertions should be supportable by quotations from the text, or by extrapolations from the characters’ stated viewpoints. Here are the questions:
1.) Who am I? (You may write about the character in either the 1st or 3rd person.)
2.) Where am I? (Think in broad terms about these first two questions.)
3.) What do I want? (In the entire play/ in each scene in which the character appears.)
4.) What’s in my way? (what obstacles to the character’s needs and desires are there?
5.) How do I get around what’s in my way to get what I want? (what tactics does the character use?)
Permissible principal characters about which to write: Richard II: Richard II, John of Gaunt, Bolingbroke (Henry IV), The Duke of York. Henry IV Part I: Hal, Hotspur, Henry IV, Lady Percy, Falstaff. Henry V: Henry V, the Dauphin, Katherine of France, Captain Fluellen, Pistol. Feel free to pick a character of a gender other than your own.
