Neil Freeman: Reviews & Testimonials
- “The actor’s best champion of the Folio”
Kristin Linklater, Columbia University
- “At last. A readable from of the original Folios, invaluable to conceiving and creating one’s own interpretation”
Richard Rose, when Director of the Stratford Festival Young Company
- “Neil Freeman is handing you the same text that William Shakespeare handed his actors . . . Destined to become standard texts in schools, universities, and libraries”
Tina Packer, Artistic Director, Shakespeare & Co.
- “This Folio fills me with joy and wonder . . . a gold mine for anyone connected with the teaching or production of Shakespeare’s plays. Neil Freeman, with his deep and broad knowledge directs the reader to the relationships between spelling, punctuation, capitalization, meter and interpretation.”
Bonnie Raphael, now of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill,, written when senior voice coach for the Institute for Advanced Theatre Training, Harvard University
- “I can’t imagine working on Shakespeare without Neil Freeman’s Folio. An indispensable resource, rich in clues for the student teacher, director, and actor.”
Ines Buchle, Director, Graduate Studies, York University
- “Neil Freeman’s First Folio work is a cornerstone in the revolution in acting Shakespeare’s text.’
David Smuckler, Director, National Voice Institute, Canada
- “Given the many modern editions of Shakespeare plays, it is easy to forget that the text is not fixed and that an examination of the original folio still reveals many features of importance and profit both to the scholar and the actor . . . But because of the difficulties of photographic reproduction, coupled with the idiosyncrasies of the 1623 typeface, these tend to be more curiosities than interpretative tools to all but the most diligent. To rectify this situation, Freeman, a trained actor, director and professor of acting and directing (Univ. of British Columbia), has produced a modern type version of the original which makes the textual features of the First Folio easily accessible. The volume presents all 36 plays, to which Freeman adds introductions and endnotes as well as a valuable introduction to the history of the First Folio and textual notes.”
T.L Cooksey, The Library Journal
- “The rhythm text is clearly, wonderfully helpful as a preparation tool . . . I found it to be hugely stimulating to help me engage the myriad provocations in text; it instantly focuses attention on moments of technical--and, therefore, most likely emotional—irregularities . . . Adding to the long spellings, shared lines, short lines, dropped sentence-thought groups, the new notations consistently directed attention to the right question (always, the right question): now what exactly is going on HERE? and HERE? and HERE? The possible inversions and long pronunciations were helpful enough, but most would have yielded to usual examination. This text was much faster in locating these moments, though, than my usual approach would have been . . . The discovery of the out-of-kilter phrasing and its implications is wonderfully new and mind-blowing! It's always provocative to notice this technique and to seek why it's there, what's happening to the speaker. There are so many that you've noted, that the actor should use the rhythm text for him/herself as a preparation resource to work through the riches available.”
Ronald D. Moyer, University of Southern Dakota
- "I found the rhythm texts very useful - reaffirming many choices, as well as offering new ones. I think it would be very helpful for young folk , especially with rhythm changes, double hits (as in a compound phrase where you need to stress both) and strong beginnings of lines and phrases. This is an area where they get the most confused. So Bravo again...."
Seana Mckenna, leading actress, Stratford Festival (Ontario)
- “One thing that really surprised us was when the rhythm went to ‘normal.’
The two most striking times were Angelo's ‘who will believe thee
Isabell?’ speech and the middle of Claudio's ‘I, but to die, and go we
know not where.’ The evenness in these moments is startling and very
opposite the bombast with which they are often played.”
Carey Upton, Artistic Director, Whole Actor Enterprise
- “He’s done all the work for me”
Member of the Whole Actor Enterprise
- The workshop was when the students first got to see a page of the Rhythm Text. I think the most exciting use of this edition for them was to be able to see where a character is left gasping for words, or where s/he may be making things difficult for her interlocutor—whether deliberately or not—by leaving an awkward silence to fill. The line sharing business also provoked some useful discussion about character relationships. The text looked clean and uncluttered.
Kirilka Stavreva, Associate Professor of English, Cornell College, in connection with her English 111 class
