The Address is 221B Baker Street - March
Nov. 10th, 2012 03:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
impulsereader“Sherlock, did you take my -,” John didn’t get to finish his question, which wasn’t really important because, considering how it began, of course the answer would have been in the affirmative, whether or not his flatmate deigned to give voice to the acknowledgement.
“Are you ready?” Sherlock interrupted him impatiently and thrust his script into his hand.
John stared at it dumbly. “Ready for what?”
“Ready to rehearse of course.”
“Well, I suppose. I mean, I was going to -,”
Sherlock looked at him sharply and interrupted, “What do you mean ‘you were going to’? Didn’t you check the schedule?”
“There’s a - sorry, there’s a schedule?”
“Of course there’s a schedule! Why wouldn’t there be a schedule?”
John couldn’t even begin to enumerate the reasons why there wouldn’t be a schedule. He opened his mouth to try, then closed it again. It just didn’t seem worth it. “Um, okay, where’s the schedule?”
“Oh, I don’t know, John, just in the place where schedules belong!”
Annoyed now, he refused to guess. “Which would be where exactly?”
“Guh! On the fridge of course!”
John blinked in astonishment. He couldn’t pinpoint exactly why, but it seemed as if this should have been one of those weird Sherlockian things where for some reason, in Sherlock’s mind palace, schedules belonged taped to the underside of the coffee table or suspended from the ceiling of the ballroom to dangle and spin at eye level. He felt as if he’d just discovered the first and possibly only ‘normal’ thing about his flatmate aside from the fact that he seemed to have a pulse just like everyone else. “Okay,” he said slowly, “so now I know. How long are we scheduled to rehearse right now?”
Imperiously, Sherlock declared, “For as long as it takes.” He then spun dramatically on his heel and stalked into the sitting room.
John rolled his eyes. Okay then, so much for going down the pub for the match. He imagined this was going to take a while.
Sherlock had shoved the furniture and other various detritus in the room toward the walls, leaving an unevenly shaped open space which encompassed the approximate middle. This meant that though he was now lounging in his usual chair, it had been moved out of its normal place.
He was sprawling, looking lazy and expensive as only Sherlock could. John stepped over a displaced stack of books to perch on the sofa.
“The first rule, John, is to never break character.”
“Okay,” he agreed easily.
Sherlock frowned at him. “No, seriously. Once you start a scene, do not for one split second break character until the scene has ended.”
“Yep. Got it.”
There was more frowning and it now bordered on glowering. “Ever.”
Since he’d already agreed twice and it hadn’t got him anywhere he remained silent. After a second, he gave a curt nod, hoping to move this along.
Clearly still unconvinced, Sherlock sighed. “Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue.”
“Trippingly, got it.”
“That’s Hamlet,” Sherlock stated flatly.
“Mm. Well I knew it was Shakespeare.”
He looked slightly mollified. “Specifically, it is Hamlet instructing the players for whom he has written a play; a play which is meant to catch the conscience of the king.”
“Right, I remember that bit. He’s written out how he thinks his uncle killed his father; it was something about pouring something in his ear.”
“Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, but use all gently.” Sherlock looked at John expectantly.
“Erm. Don’t flail my arms about on stage?” he interpreted.
“Don’t be a ham,” Sherlock elaborated.
John grinned. “Just a Ham-let?”
“That is possibly the worst joke you have ever made.”
He shrugged. “I’m sure I’ll make worse in future.”
“Be not too tame neither; but let your own discretion be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the word to the action.”
“This is all fairly common sense stuff, Sherlock.”
“I’m pleased you think so. Now let us see if you can carry it off.”
And John immediately got nervous. They didn’t even have an audience and he was already nervous. Bugger.
“Turn to page 23. We’ll do a little back and forth and then you have a short speech which we’ll work on.”
Nervously, John obeyed.
“All right, so this is right after Done Pedro has staged his little scene on which you were meant to eavesdrop. You remember, of course.”
“Yes.”
“So I’ve been sent to fetch you in for dinner, and you’re apprehensive because you now think that I am desperately in love with you.”
“Right.”
“We’ll go through it once as us with the script then we’ll try it in character and see if we can’t do it by memory since it’s rather short. All right?”
“Yes, all right.” John firmly tamped down his nerves.
“You can do this John, really you can.”
He took a deep breath and nodded.
In his normal voice and with natural inflection, Sherlock read out, “Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner.”
John took another breath and did the same. “Fair Beatrice, I thank you for your pains.”
“I took no more pains for those thanks than you take pains to thank me: if it had been painful, I would not have come.”
“You take pleasure then in the message?”
“Now you see – this is where you’re feeling me out, trying to see if you can tell if I really am interested in you.”
“Yes, I’d spotted that.”
“Very good. Yea, just so much as you may take upon a knife's point, and choke a daw withal. You have no stomach, signior: fare you well. And then I exit. You followed all that?”
John smiled. “Yeah, I followed it. I’m not actually an idiot, you know. We watched the movie and I followed it just fine.”
Sherlock let out an exasperated breath. “Then please do make up your mind. You are either nervous about performing this part or it is the simplest thing in the world. Right now you are swinging wildly between two opposing attitudes.”
“I’m nervous,” insisted John tetchily, “because I can understand the text and know that I’m not supposed to break character but still not be able to act the part, Sherlock. Now do you want me to read my speech aloud or not?”
He waved an impatient hand. “Yes, go ahead, read it through and get used to how it sounds.”
“Ha! 'Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner,' there's a double meaning in that. 'I took no more pains for those thanks than you took pains to thank me,' that's as much as to say, ‘Any pains that I take for you is as easy as thanks’. If I do not take pity of her, I am a villain; if I do not love her, I am a Jew. I will go get her picture.”
Somewhat snidely, Sherlock said, “Follow all that as well?”
“Aside from hoping that I’m not actually being anti-Semitic, yes.”
“Only mildly.”
“Mm. This last bit is quite funny, aside from that. I’ll just run off and get her picture so I can sigh over it, eh?”
“Yes, well spotted.” He sounded for all the world like a proud parent. “That is a funny line. Don’t be afraid to have fun with it.” With a graceful movement which was practically a plié, he rose out of his chair and swept to the middle of the room. “Now let’s do it in character.”
John, utilizing a much more reserved method of perambulation, joined him. Sherlock studied him with a critical eye, and he immediately felt self-conscious. He fought the urge to smooth his hair.
“If you were going to be doing a lot of this sort of thing -,”
John snorted. “Not bloody likely.”
“-this would be a different thing altogether, of course.”
“Oh, of course,” he said mock seriously.
“But as it stands,” Sherlock went on, unfazed by this backchat, “I just want you to play yourself. Benedick is a soldier; you know how it feels to be a soldier. Benedick wants to be in love with Beatrice and wants her to be in love with him; you’ve experienced that scenario as well in your life. The verbal play between the two of us is simply so much foreplay leading to the wedding night. Benedick is honourable, a good friend, and he tells a good joke. There is nothing in any of that which might throw you off, you can simply be yourself while playing this part.”
John considered that. After a moment he said, “That actually makes a hell of a lot of sense. ”
Sherlock raised a brow, clearly amused. “This surprises you?”
“Sort of, yeah. I expected you to launch into a lecture on The Method or that Staniwhatsis bloke.”
“Stanislavski,” Sherlock filled in. “Well, as I said, this is a rather singular case. Do you feel more comfortable now?”
“Yeah, I do.”
He clapped his hands together. “Excellent. Let’s begin.”
John reflected that he would never tire of seeing Sherlock become another person right before his eyes. In this case he was suddenly John’s own height, he looked supremely irritated (which, in and of itself, John admitted was not unusual), and when he spoke it was with a woman’s sultry alto wreathed in smoke rather than his own either purring or clipped baritone. It was, quite frankly, amazing. He wished that his lines would have allowed him to express that – and then realized that right there was his character’s motivation. He himself admired Sherlock terrifically, and in this case Sherlock was Beatrice. If he were actually Benedick, the possibility that Beatrice was in love with him, that he had a genuine shot with her, would be an incredibly heady one.
“Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner.”
And despite Beatrice’s clear irritation, she was supposed to be madly in love with him. John rather thought Benedick would be a bit thrown for a loop here. Therefore he delivered his first line hesitantly. “Fair Beatrice, I thank you for your pains.” He found himself instinctively bowing slightly from his waist as he addressed his acting partner.
“I took no more pains for those thanks than you take pains to thank me,” Beatrice sniffed and added, “if it had been painful, I would not have come.” The tacked on, ‘You dolt,’ was strongly implied by Sherlock’s manner and tone.
Well then, John as Benedick thought, that seemed both clear and promising. “You take pleasure then in the message?” he attempted to confirm.
“Yea, just so much as you may take upon a knife's point, and choke a daw withal. You have no stomach, signior: fare you well.” And she flounced off.
John decided that Benedick wasn’t an idiot, and he hadn’t missed that little jab (as it were) about the knife. So he started off with a weak, possibly a slightly sick-sounding, “Ha!” Clearly the reason Benedick was repeating Beatrice’s words was because he was stalling, looking for a way to cast them into the best possible light. This was also probably why he ignored the bit about the knife. He decided to deliver the first part thoughtfully. “Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner.” He paused, then Benedick as prompted by John rather comically decided, “There's a double meaning in that.”
“Very nice,” Sherlock murmured.
John only broke character in his head, puffing up just a bit at the praise. He switched back to contemplative. “I took no more pains for those thanks than you took pains to thank me.” John urged Benedick to, what the hell, run with it, and he delivered the next bit with a goofy grin on his face and in a triumphant tone. “That's as much as to say, ‘Any pains that I take for you is as easy as thanks.” He went on in a similar manner, still smiling, but talking to himself now, nearly chiding himself. “If I do not take pity of her, I am a villain; if I do not love her, I am a Jew.” And then, he had fun with it. He remembered how dotty he’d been over Suzanne Morris back in sixth form and allowed both the memory of that first rush of infatuation and the realisation of how silly he must have been acting whenever she was within earshot, and he put all of that into the next words. “I will go get her picture.”
To his absolute delight, Sherlock emitted a sharp bark of laughter. “Very nicely done, John. Now memorise it and we’ll try it again.”
“Are you ready?” Sherlock interrupted him impatiently and thrust his script into his hand.
John stared at it dumbly. “Ready for what?”
“Ready to rehearse of course.”
“Well, I suppose. I mean, I was going to -,”
Sherlock looked at him sharply and interrupted, “What do you mean ‘you were going to’? Didn’t you check the schedule?”
“There’s a - sorry, there’s a schedule?”
“Of course there’s a schedule! Why wouldn’t there be a schedule?”
John couldn’t even begin to enumerate the reasons why there wouldn’t be a schedule. He opened his mouth to try, then closed it again. It just didn’t seem worth it. “Um, okay, where’s the schedule?”
“Oh, I don’t know, John, just in the place where schedules belong!”
Annoyed now, he refused to guess. “Which would be where exactly?”
“Guh! On the fridge of course!”
John blinked in astonishment. He couldn’t pinpoint exactly why, but it seemed as if this should have been one of those weird Sherlockian things where for some reason, in Sherlock’s mind palace, schedules belonged taped to the underside of the coffee table or suspended from the ceiling of the ballroom to dangle and spin at eye level. He felt as if he’d just discovered the first and possibly only ‘normal’ thing about his flatmate aside from the fact that he seemed to have a pulse just like everyone else. “Okay,” he said slowly, “so now I know. How long are we scheduled to rehearse right now?”
Imperiously, Sherlock declared, “For as long as it takes.” He then spun dramatically on his heel and stalked into the sitting room.
John rolled his eyes. Okay then, so much for going down the pub for the match. He imagined this was going to take a while.
Sherlock had shoved the furniture and other various detritus in the room toward the walls, leaving an unevenly shaped open space which encompassed the approximate middle. This meant that though he was now lounging in his usual chair, it had been moved out of its normal place.
He was sprawling, looking lazy and expensive as only Sherlock could. John stepped over a displaced stack of books to perch on the sofa.
“The first rule, John, is to never break character.”
“Okay,” he agreed easily.
Sherlock frowned at him. “No, seriously. Once you start a scene, do not for one split second break character until the scene has ended.”
“Yep. Got it.”
There was more frowning and it now bordered on glowering. “Ever.”
Since he’d already agreed twice and it hadn’t got him anywhere he remained silent. After a second, he gave a curt nod, hoping to move this along.
Clearly still unconvinced, Sherlock sighed. “Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue.”
“Trippingly, got it.”
“That’s Hamlet,” Sherlock stated flatly.
“Mm. Well I knew it was Shakespeare.”
He looked slightly mollified. “Specifically, it is Hamlet instructing the players for whom he has written a play; a play which is meant to catch the conscience of the king.”
“Right, I remember that bit. He’s written out how he thinks his uncle killed his father; it was something about pouring something in his ear.”
“Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, but use all gently.” Sherlock looked at John expectantly.
“Erm. Don’t flail my arms about on stage?” he interpreted.
“Don’t be a ham,” Sherlock elaborated.
John grinned. “Just a Ham-let?”
“That is possibly the worst joke you have ever made.”
He shrugged. “I’m sure I’ll make worse in future.”
“Be not too tame neither; but let your own discretion be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the word to the action.”
“This is all fairly common sense stuff, Sherlock.”
“I’m pleased you think so. Now let us see if you can carry it off.”
And John immediately got nervous. They didn’t even have an audience and he was already nervous. Bugger.
“Turn to page 23. We’ll do a little back and forth and then you have a short speech which we’ll work on.”
Nervously, John obeyed.
“All right, so this is right after Done Pedro has staged his little scene on which you were meant to eavesdrop. You remember, of course.”
“Yes.”
“So I’ve been sent to fetch you in for dinner, and you’re apprehensive because you now think that I am desperately in love with you.”
“Right.”
“We’ll go through it once as us with the script then we’ll try it in character and see if we can’t do it by memory since it’s rather short. All right?”
“Yes, all right.” John firmly tamped down his nerves.
“You can do this John, really you can.”
He took a deep breath and nodded.
In his normal voice and with natural inflection, Sherlock read out, “Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner.”
John took another breath and did the same. “Fair Beatrice, I thank you for your pains.”
“I took no more pains for those thanks than you take pains to thank me: if it had been painful, I would not have come.”
“You take pleasure then in the message?”
“Now you see – this is where you’re feeling me out, trying to see if you can tell if I really am interested in you.”
“Yes, I’d spotted that.”
“Very good. Yea, just so much as you may take upon a knife's point, and choke a daw withal. You have no stomach, signior: fare you well. And then I exit. You followed all that?”
John smiled. “Yeah, I followed it. I’m not actually an idiot, you know. We watched the movie and I followed it just fine.”
Sherlock let out an exasperated breath. “Then please do make up your mind. You are either nervous about performing this part or it is the simplest thing in the world. Right now you are swinging wildly between two opposing attitudes.”
“I’m nervous,” insisted John tetchily, “because I can understand the text and know that I’m not supposed to break character but still not be able to act the part, Sherlock. Now do you want me to read my speech aloud or not?”
He waved an impatient hand. “Yes, go ahead, read it through and get used to how it sounds.”
“Ha! 'Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner,' there's a double meaning in that. 'I took no more pains for those thanks than you took pains to thank me,' that's as much as to say, ‘Any pains that I take for you is as easy as thanks’. If I do not take pity of her, I am a villain; if I do not love her, I am a Jew. I will go get her picture.”
Somewhat snidely, Sherlock said, “Follow all that as well?”
“Aside from hoping that I’m not actually being anti-Semitic, yes.”
“Only mildly.”
“Mm. This last bit is quite funny, aside from that. I’ll just run off and get her picture so I can sigh over it, eh?”
“Yes, well spotted.” He sounded for all the world like a proud parent. “That is a funny line. Don’t be afraid to have fun with it.” With a graceful movement which was practically a plié, he rose out of his chair and swept to the middle of the room. “Now let’s do it in character.”
John, utilizing a much more reserved method of perambulation, joined him. Sherlock studied him with a critical eye, and he immediately felt self-conscious. He fought the urge to smooth his hair.
“If you were going to be doing a lot of this sort of thing -,”
John snorted. “Not bloody likely.”
“-this would be a different thing altogether, of course.”
“Oh, of course,” he said mock seriously.
“But as it stands,” Sherlock went on, unfazed by this backchat, “I just want you to play yourself. Benedick is a soldier; you know how it feels to be a soldier. Benedick wants to be in love with Beatrice and wants her to be in love with him; you’ve experienced that scenario as well in your life. The verbal play between the two of us is simply so much foreplay leading to the wedding night. Benedick is honourable, a good friend, and he tells a good joke. There is nothing in any of that which might throw you off, you can simply be yourself while playing this part.”
John considered that. After a moment he said, “That actually makes a hell of a lot of sense. ”
Sherlock raised a brow, clearly amused. “This surprises you?”
“Sort of, yeah. I expected you to launch into a lecture on The Method or that Staniwhatsis bloke.”
“Stanislavski,” Sherlock filled in. “Well, as I said, this is a rather singular case. Do you feel more comfortable now?”
“Yeah, I do.”
He clapped his hands together. “Excellent. Let’s begin.”
John reflected that he would never tire of seeing Sherlock become another person right before his eyes. In this case he was suddenly John’s own height, he looked supremely irritated (which, in and of itself, John admitted was not unusual), and when he spoke it was with a woman’s sultry alto wreathed in smoke rather than his own either purring or clipped baritone. It was, quite frankly, amazing. He wished that his lines would have allowed him to express that – and then realized that right there was his character’s motivation. He himself admired Sherlock terrifically, and in this case Sherlock was Beatrice. If he were actually Benedick, the possibility that Beatrice was in love with him, that he had a genuine shot with her, would be an incredibly heady one.
“Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner.”
And despite Beatrice’s clear irritation, she was supposed to be madly in love with him. John rather thought Benedick would be a bit thrown for a loop here. Therefore he delivered his first line hesitantly. “Fair Beatrice, I thank you for your pains.” He found himself instinctively bowing slightly from his waist as he addressed his acting partner.
“I took no more pains for those thanks than you take pains to thank me,” Beatrice sniffed and added, “if it had been painful, I would not have come.” The tacked on, ‘You dolt,’ was strongly implied by Sherlock’s manner and tone.
Well then, John as Benedick thought, that seemed both clear and promising. “You take pleasure then in the message?” he attempted to confirm.
“Yea, just so much as you may take upon a knife's point, and choke a daw withal. You have no stomach, signior: fare you well.” And she flounced off.
John decided that Benedick wasn’t an idiot, and he hadn’t missed that little jab (as it were) about the knife. So he started off with a weak, possibly a slightly sick-sounding, “Ha!” Clearly the reason Benedick was repeating Beatrice’s words was because he was stalling, looking for a way to cast them into the best possible light. This was also probably why he ignored the bit about the knife. He decided to deliver the first part thoughtfully. “Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner.” He paused, then Benedick as prompted by John rather comically decided, “There's a double meaning in that.”
“Very nice,” Sherlock murmured.
John only broke character in his head, puffing up just a bit at the praise. He switched back to contemplative. “I took no more pains for those thanks than you took pains to thank me.” John urged Benedick to, what the hell, run with it, and he delivered the next bit with a goofy grin on his face and in a triumphant tone. “That's as much as to say, ‘Any pains that I take for you is as easy as thanks.” He went on in a similar manner, still smiling, but talking to himself now, nearly chiding himself. “If I do not take pity of her, I am a villain; if I do not love her, I am a Jew.” And then, he had fun with it. He remembered how dotty he’d been over Suzanne Morris back in sixth form and allowed both the memory of that first rush of infatuation and the realisation of how silly he must have been acting whenever she was within earshot, and he put all of that into the next words. “I will go get her picture.”
To his absolute delight, Sherlock emitted a sharp bark of laughter. “Very nicely done, John. Now memorise it and we’ll try it again.”
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Date: 2012-11-12 02:51 am (UTC)