Colonials: An American Shakespeare Company
1130 Lincoln Blved
Santa Monica, CA 90403
ph: 310-804-6745
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William Shakespeare
Shakespeare used 31534 different words in his plays: 14376 words only once. It is said most novelists currently working use less than half that number of words in their writing. Almost everyone would contend that none of them use the language quite as well as William Shakespeare did.
In the 400 years since Shakespeare's plays were written and staged in the first professional playhouses in London, they have become a worldwide industry. There are over 80 Theatrical companies solely devoted to producing the works of William Shakespeare in the United States alone; many more in England, Canada, and other English speaking countries. His plays have been translated into dozens of languages and are performed the world over. They have been turned into operas, movies, ballets, radio programs, television shows, and major (and not so major) motion pictures. this year the Royal Shakespeare Company is hosting Globe to Globe, part of the World Shakespeare festival each of Shakespeare's plays will be performed by companies from around the world - in the language of the country the company hails from (http://www.worldshakespearefestival.org.
It is generally acknowledged, in the theatrical and literary worlds at least, that Shakespeare’s plays are a treasure, a precious gift from the past, and a cultural cornerstone of the English-speaking world. To the discerning reader (or watcher/listener) Shakespeare’s writing offers a profound articulation of our collective Western paradigm - part history, part mythology, part literature, and part pure, unadulterated entertainment. His oeuvre has become an essential component in our contemporary cultural gestalt – one need only consider the hundreds of lines yanked from his plays that serve as titles of contemporary novels, plays, and movies – and a symbol of artistic excellence and achievement. Thousands of books, scholarly and otherwise, have been written about his work and his life, and many large educational and artistic institutions have been established to preserve, promote, and produce his plays. His writing is required reading in virtually all English speaking educational curricula – and in many non-English speaking curricula as well. Careers have been made (and destroyed) performing, criticizing, and editing his work. The most picayune discrepancies in the surviving 17th century texts are debated and contested so vehemently that, to the non-expert, it borders on the absurd (Read Ron Rosenbaum’s highly elucidating The Shakespeare Wars for instances of this). There even are those that claim that William Shakespeare “invented” all that we consider “Human” - and he wrote a book to prove his point (read Harold Bloom’s Shakespeare; The Invention of the Human).
About Shakespeare's English:
It’s interesting to note that between 1604 and 1611, a few short years before Shakespeare’s death in 1616 at the age of 52, the profoundly beautiful cultural touchstone, The King James Bible, was, at the behest of King James, written in Early Modern English - the same vintage of the English language that William Shakespeare used in his plays . The King James Bible is a work of towering artistic and intellectual stature and while indebted to the earlier Tyndale translation, undoubtedly the bible was written by men who had seen, and most likely read, the work of the most popular and famous playwright of the era, William Shakespeare.
Queen Elizabeth ruled England from 1558-1603 - almost the entire length of William Shakespeare's career - approximately 1590 - 1608. It is during this era of exceptional literary flowering that Blank Verse, the poetic style William Shakespeare and other Elizabethan Dramatists employed in their plays, evolved to its final form, and Early Modern English was in full bloom. Early Modern English was the result of a spontaneous and unconsidered blending of languages over the previous thousand years by the inhabitants of England. As each new wave of invaders took control of the island they brought their own languages and the blending of the old languages with the new created a complex and subtle language with vast vocabulary. Early Modern English as we know it, has a multi-tiered mongrel vocabulary and grammatical structure that draws upon all its major source languages (Latin, Olde English, and Anglo/French).
Even to this day English, more so than most of the “purer” European Languages, has a unusual wealth of words; words assumed from a half-dozen other languages and fitted into the basic West-Germanic structure. This means that English is filled with words that are very close to each other in meaning, but have slight variations of denotation. For example, the Olde English speaking commoners ate lamb, while their overlords dined on mutton: same meal, but not the same word – and, over time and with use, the different words developed slightly different meanings. This wealth of words gives the English language the potential for extraordinary subtlety, precision, and power to communicate, both practically and poetically - a potential whose apex was reached in the works of William Shakespeare. Shakespeare used 31534 different words in his plays: 14376 words only once. It is said most novelists currently working use less than half that number of words in their writing. Almost everyone would contend that none of them use the language quite as well as William Shakespeare did.
It is during this era exceptional literary flowering that Blank Verse, the poetic style William Shakespeare and other Elizabethan Dramatists employed in their plays, evolved to its final form.
This following rudimentary history of the English language is important for two reasons. First, it gives an idea of the shape and complexity of the English language as Shakespeare used it in his plays. Since words are an actor’s primary raw material when working on Shakespeare’s plays - arguably the only raw material, - an actor must approache a Shakespearean character primarily focused on the language, not, as is the norm today, the sub textural and/or behavioral aspects of a character.
William Shakespeare wrote in what scholars call Early Modern English, the immediate precursor and close cousin of the English we speak today. The English Language has a long, well documented history. As the Roman Empire disintegrated and pulled its legions out of Britain during the 5th century C.E. the Anglo-Saxon people of Northern Europe invaded and occupied the green and comparatively mild-weathered island. They spoke Olde English, a language closer to German than to either Latin, Latin's present day descendents Italian, French, and Spanish, or present-day English in any of its varying dialects. While Olde English was basically a West Germanic tongue, it contained elements of ancient Celtic and Scandinavian languages as well as Latin - the language of the Romans who occupied the island from the 1st to the 5th century CE. These elements are alive and well in the English we speak today.By 1066, a little over five hundred years after Rome’s legions retreated to the mainland and the Anglo-Saxon peoples had become the dominant force on the island the Roman’s had called Britain, Britain had been renamed England (Angle land). 1066 was the year that William the Conqueror sailed the general populace had to learn across the Channel from France and defeated a Saxon Army under Harold Godwineson at the Battle of Hastings. William and his army then marched on London and, after the requisite rape, pillage, and murder, assumed control of the country. For the next several hundred years Normans French occupied and ruled England as part of a larger realm that included Normandy and Aquitaine on the coast of what is now France. In order to consolidate his hold on the island, William replaced the old Anglo-Saxon aristocracy with new Norman-French nobility - nobility beholden and loyal to his throne and committed to the superiority of the culture of their Norman ancestors. So while Olde English remained the language of the conquered common people, their overlords spoke a variant of Middle French. Gradually, through the interface of court and commoner, Olde English was infused with the Norman French of the new ruling class and developed into Middle English.
This merging of the Medieval Norman French and Olde English gave Middle English a complex and rich composition. As is still the case today, the ruling class had a vested interest in maintaining its exceptional and elevated position in society, so the nobility spoke, almost exclusively, their “civilized” Norman French, while the lower, subjugated classes spoke the “lowly” Middle English. The vestiges of this practice are still evident in the extreme differences in rhythm, pronunciation, and vocabulary between the British Royal Family and the everyday speech of a cockney cab driver or a hard-handed farmer from Cornwall. However, after the conquest, enough of the conqueror’s language to interact with their new masters, do their bidding, follow the new laws and edicts, and take part in day-to-day commerce and religious ritual as articulated by their Christian overlords. It was at the boundary between these two separate and antagonistic worlds where Middle English developed. Fortunately, the interchange only went one way: from the ruling class to the underclass. Norman French did not subsume Middle English. Instead Middle English assumed aspects of the invaders’ tongue, and grew in complexity, subtlety and power.
Since Old English was augmented not supplanted by the Norman’s courtly French, Middle English was a language in a constant state of flux and possessed of many variants based upon the geographical proximity to power and population centers. By the time the Renaissance swept over Europe in the 14th Century, Middle English, had absorbed many elements of Norman French and, in one form or another, was the spoken language of daily life in England. The cultural vitality of the age, the various political, and demographic changes in England itself, the rise of an institutionalized and powerful clergy, and the recent revolutionary technological innovations of the era all helped stabilize Middle English. The invention of the printing press around 1450 being the prime example of such a technological innovation.The printing press was as radical a development to 15th Century European as the personal computer was to 20th century American. The printing press forced the fluid, ever changing Middle English to become more rigid and codified. Rules and conventions were developed and imposed on the language by scholars who needed uniformity of language and grammar in order to accommodate the mass production of texts - and the mass dissemination of ideas. The ability to print multiple identical copies of important documents meant that the language needed more uniformity and consistency, as much for printer as for the reader or the writer. The spread of the printed word, primarily in the form of religious and educational works (Bibles, Latin grammar texts etc), being primarily disseminated from the cultural hub of London, had the added effect of setting the standard for usage, spelling, and grammar. While books were certainly being printed when William Shakespeare began his career, they were still extraordinarily rare and expensive, and reserved for the cultural elite of the day - most of the population of England could not read in Shakespeare’s day. Printed books were the possession of larger public institutions, like churches, universities, schools, and of a wealthy, privileged few. An illustration of the rarity of the printed word is the fact that Shakespeare’s play scripts were written out with pen and ink – there were no inkjet printers at the time. Copying scripts for the entire cast by hand was such a time consuming task that each actor only received the lines that he would speak (there were no female actors at the time), with the line before, his cue, and the line after. There were very few full copies of the plays for the company and only a selected few were printed for public consumption (and profit) after the plays were a success in the theatres. During Shakespeare’s lifetime he only saw 18 of his plays printed in what we now call, because of the way the printer folded the vellum into four sections or quarters, Quarto’s. They were produced in extremely limited numbers and it was not until 1623, years after Shakespeare’s death, that a collection of all of his plays (that we know of), the First Folio, was printed at the behest of two of the actors from his theatrical company, The King’s Men, John Hemminge and Henry Condell. To this day we are not sure if they published the plays as a gift for posterity, or for the sake of their own purses.
By 1500 Middle English had morphed into the language William Shakespeare used to compose his exquisite plays and poetry - the extraordinarily facile and beautiful Early Modern English. In the 1520’s. , around the time of Shakespeare’s birth, the influential Protestant edition, the Geneva Bible was written in Early Modern English by exiled English churchmen in Geneva Switzerland and printed and sold to the general public. While there were several other bibles in use at the time, most notably William Tyndale’s translation, young William Shakespeare would have heard and read the Geneva bible in the Church and rural schoolhouse of his childhood hometown Stratford upon Avon. It is almost certain that in his years as a literary man about town he would have been familiar with the several editions in circulation, and the various political/religious positions of each of the works.
The Curious Case of
“What Curio?”
An examination of the opening scene of Twelfth Night.
Shakespeare begins Twelfth Night with a rhetorical device taken straight from his childhood Latin Grammar textbook[i], the conditional sentence. A conditional sentence expresses an idea in two parts – the first part of a conditional sentence is the premise upon which the second part rests: if this is so then that is that. If it’s cold today, you’re going to need an overcoat. If it’s not cold, no overcoat will be needed. Needing an overcoat is conditional - no cold, no need for the overcoat. Latin grammarians call the “If” part of the sentence the “protasis”; the “then” part of the sentence the “apodosis”. Each part needs the other to articulate the idea: in fact the two parts taken together are the idea.
I mention this because it is important to understand that as a young man Shakespeare attended a Grammar school – literally a school where Latin grammar was taught. He undertook an extraordinarily rigorous course of study that was heavy on rote memorization: long lists of vocabulary, conjugated verbs, and rules and devices for composition. The sheer number of rules and conventions in Latin – naming and defining the two parts of a conditional sentence, for example – is, to a contemporary reader, astonishing[ii].
Despite Ben Jonson’s assertion that Shakespeare knew little Latin and less Greek[iii], one must presume that Shakespeare did well in school. He was a master of using Latin rhetorical devices: such devices are everywhere in his work. So Shakespeare would have been keenly aware that he was opening Twelfth Night with a protasis, and following it with an apodosis. He would have chosen to open the play with a conditional sentence because he wanted to tell the audience something about his character: to articulate an idea the way his character, Duke Orsino, would express the idea to his courtiers, at that particular moment, in that particular circumstance, in that particular state of mind.
This means that the actor playing Orsino, and the other actors playing courtiers and musicians, must consider that the first line of Twelfth Night is based on the somewhat shaky premise that music is the food of love. Only “if” music is the food of love should the musicians play on. If music isn’t the food of love – well, Orsino never goes there. However, his command to the musicians is conditional – it depends on the premise that music is the food of love - not if music is the food of melancholy brooding or the food of emotional indulgence, or the food of happy, carefree moods.
Orsino, at that moment in the play, embraces his peculiar (and ridiculous) assertion. By using a questionable “protasis” Shakespeare sets the tone for the rest of the play – his characters are basing all of their actions on false or absurd premises. They are, in effect, fools.
Shakespeare would also have been keenly aware of any irregularities he placed in the rigid, 10-syllable structure of the blank verse. The opening scene of Twelfth Night is an excellent example of how Shakespeare wields blank verse to sculpt the action of a scene, shape the emotional state of a character, and dictate how specific moments should be played.
In the opening scene of Twelfth Night the irregularities in the blank verse tell us that Duke Orsino, like Hamlet, is in a turbulent emotional state. However, Orsino’s problem is not as weighty as the life or death decision Hamlet faces. Orsino’s dilemma is about life and love - unrequited love that is. His obsession is with the beautiful but dismissive Countess Olivia, not with murdered fathers, justice, and/or revenge. While the question for Hamlet is “To be or not to be…” the question for Orsino is “to love or not to love” – or more precisely “to love and how to get the loved-one to love me back or how to get rid of this love-sickness.”
The opening scene of Twelfth Night is printed below. The punctuation is from the First Folio[iv]. The scansion and the end punctuation have been marked. Read the scene aloud. Overemphasize the stress pattern of the iambic pentameter - da/dum da/dum da/dum da/dum da/dum. Note any long lines, feminine endings, or trochaic inversions. Notice the effect these irregularities have on individual lines, on the rhythm of the language, and on the overall meaning of the speech. Consider the shared lines, the internal caesuras, the end-‘o-line caesuras, the elisions and any unvoiced beats. Read it now:
DUKE ORSINO
u / u / u / u / u /
If music be the food of love, play on;1
u / u / u / u / u /
Give me excess of it: / that, surfeiting,2
u / u / u / u / u /
The appetite may sicken, and so die. /3
u / u / u / u / u /
That strain again, it had a dying fall: /4
u / u / u / u / u /
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound,5
u / u / u / u / u /
That breathes upon a bank of violets,6
u / u / u / u u / u /
Stealing and giving odour. / Enough; no more,7
u / u / u / u / u /
'Tis not so sweet now as it was before. /8
/ u / u / u / u / u /
O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou,9
u / u / u / u / u /
That, notwithstanding thy capacity10
u / u / u / / u u /
Receiveth as the sea. / Nought enters there,11
u / u / u / u / u /
Of what validity and pitch soe'er,12
u / u / u / u / u /
But falls into abatement and low price,13
u / u / u / u / u / u / u
Even in a minute; so full of shapes is fancy14
u / u / u / u / u /
That it alone is high fantastical. /15
CURIO
u / u / u /
Will you go hunt, my lord? /
DUKE ORSINO
u / u /
What, Curio? /16
CURIO
u / u / u / u / u /
The hart. /17
Orsino
u / u / u / u / u /
Why, so I do, the noblest that I have: /18
u / u / u / u / u /
O, when mine eyes did see Olivia first,19
u / u / u / u / u /
Methought she purged the air of pestilence! /20
u / u u / u u / u /
That instant was I turn'd into a hart;21
u / u / u / u / u /
And my desires, like fell and cru-el hounds,22
u / u / u / u / u / u
E'er since pursue me. / How now! what news from her? /23
Enter Valentine
u / u / u / u /
Valentine
u / u / u / u / u / u
So please my lord, I might not be admitted;24
u / u / u / u / u / u
But from her handmaid do return this answer:/25
u / u / u / u / u /
The element itself, till sev’n years' heat,26
u / u / u / u / u /
Shall not behold her face at ample view;27
u / u / u / u / u /
But, like a cloistress, she will veil-ed walk28
u / u / u / u / u /
And water once a day her chamber round29
u / u / u / u / u / u
With eye-offending brine: / all this to season30
u / u / u / u / u /
A brother's dead love, which she would keep fresh31
u / u u u / u / u
And lasting in her sad remembrance. /32
Orsino
u / u / u / u / u /
O, she that hath a heart of that fine frame33
u / u / u / u / u / u
To pay this debt of love but to a brother,34
u / u / u / u / u /
How will she love, when the rich golden shaft35
u / u / u / u / u /
Hath kill'd the flock of all affections else36
u / u / u / u / u /
That live in her; when liver, brain and heart,37
u / u / u / u / u /
These sovereign thrones, are all supplied, and fill'd38
u / u / u / u / u /
Her sweet perfections with one self king! /39
u / u / / u u / u /
Away before me to sweet beds of flowers,40
/ u u / u / u / u /
Love-thoughts lie rich when canopied with bowers. /41
Let’s see what the blank verse dictates.
We’ll start with the caesauras[v] both end-line caesauras and the internal caesauras. Lines three, four, seven, and eight, fifteen, 16, 18, 20, 23, 25, 32, and 39 all have end-line caesuras. Lines two, seven, 11, 16, 17, 23, and 30 contain internal caesauras. Reading the shape of the caesuras’ always gives an indication of the flow of the blank verse – remember the caesura’s always indicate the end of an independent idea, and usual a place where the actor must take a breath. In this scene a cursory view of the caesura structure indicates a long stretch between the caesura at the end of line 32 and the caesura at the end of line- 39. There are no internal caesuras, no breaks in a single sentence over the 7 lines. This tells us that the pace of the delivery must increase for no other reason than the need to get the 7 lines out on a single breath. The character, like the actor, must move through the lines quickly, and this speed indicates and creates an emotional agitation. Orsino becomes more consumed with his object of desire, the subject of the seven lines, the beautiful Countess Olivia.
Internal caesauras[vi] always deserve special consideration because, as we discussed earlier in the book, they challenge the integrity of the line. In the middle of Orsino’s second line, there is a colon[vii] that separates two independent clauses – clauses that could stand as sentences in their own right, but are connected in order to express a single idea. This colon signals an internal caesura and breaks the rhythm of the blank verse in the second line of the play. The First line states the conditional idea that “if” music is the food of love his musicians should keep playing. The second line, connected to the first with a semi-colon takes the idea a step further. Orsino wants them to give him too much of it – “it” being music. On the other side of the colon, the internal caesura in the second line, he tells the musicians why – so that by listening to too much music he’ll get sick of it.
If music be the food of love, play on;1
Give me excess of it: / that, surfeiting,2
The appetite may sicken, and so die. /3
While the scansion of these opening lines is regular, the internal caesura breaks the rhythm of the verse, stalls it just enough to indicate that something is out of whack: either Orsino is unsure if he should express the idea out loud and holds back a nanosecond before saying it aloud – it’s not the most rational suggestion to be spouting out in public, after all – or he is so caught up in the music’s mood that his thoughts are meandering in a semi-dream state where he simply drifts from thought to thought unsure of what he really wants - more of the lovely music or to overindulge and kill his appetite for it. In the hands, or voice, of the right actor it is a subtly comic moment where, like a gorging Roman Senator, Orsino begs for more food so that he can vomit everything he’s already eaten up.
Say the lines aloud, taking a small sense-pause at the internal caesura, but don’t stop the movement of the verse - slide between the sounds.
If music be the food of love, play on;1
Give me excess of it: / that, surfeiting,2
The appetite may sicken, and so die. /3
Now move a few lines further on in the speech. Line-seven contains the second internal caesura of the play. It falls immediately before Orsino suddenly and arbitrarily dismisses the musicians.
That strain again, it had a dying fall: /4
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound,5
That breathes upon a bank of violets6
Stealing and giving odour./ Enough; no more.7
‘Tis not so sweet now as it was before.8
O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou,9
This sudden change in focus is the second indication that Orsino’s is emotionally fraught – the first being that he publically calls for more music so he can purge his love-sickness! The irregularity of the lines augments the Duke’s precarious emotional state.
Line-seven is also a divided-line[viii] - one sentence ends and another begins somewhere other than the end of the 10 syllables that make up the line. In this case the period comes after the 7th syllable -“odour”. The action dictated by this internal caesura is that the instant after he asks the musicians to keep on playing, Orsino suddenly and summarily cuts them off. The internal caesura marks the change of the Duke’s mind.
Here are the lines leading up to “enough”. Read them aloud. Emphasize the sudden change at the internal caesura after odour. Go from waxing poetical about the music you just heard to telling the musicians to shut up:
u / u / u / u / u /
That strain again, it had a dying fall: /
u / u / u / u / u /
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound,
u / u / u / u / u /
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
u / u / u / u u / u /
Stealing and giving odour. / Enough; no more,
u / u / u / u / u /
'Tis not so sweet now as it was before. /
In the blink of an internal caesura, Orsino swings from wanting to devour more and more music to not wanting to hear any music at all. The music becomes “not so sweet now as it was before”. He’s had ‘enough.
To my ear, the change, marked by the internal caesura and the stress on “…nough”, makes the perfectly regular line-eight - 'Tis not so sweet now as it was before - seem gentle, soft, almost an apology to the musicians for snapping at them. However it could just as easily be played as a spoilt Duke’s petulant and self-indulgent justification of his sudden change of heart. It is an actor’s choice. However the choice must be consistent with the behavior of the Duke throughout the play.
It should also be noted here that the end of line-eight, the word before, rhymes with the end of line-seven, the word “more”. “More” is the pivot point of the Dukes speech. It is the last syllable of a long-line, and also creates an internal rhymed couplet.
The rhyme of more and before aurally marks the transition from Orsino’s emotional high - brought on by his listening to lovely music - to his sudden low. This low brings on his meditation on the fickle nature of love, and how, to his love-obsessed mind, everything becomes consumed and diminished by the vastness of love’s ocean. An actor needs to be aware both the scansion of the lines and of the function of the rhyme as an aural punctuation mark. Normally rhymed couplets come at the end of a scene, and give a nice sounding finish to the scene. In this case, however, the internal rhymed couplet signals the Duke’s transition from one train of though to another.
The long-line:
/ u / u / u / u / u /
O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou,
immediately follows Orsino’s transition.
Usually an eleventh syllable presumes a feminine ending. However in this case, a few lines after the sudden mood change marked by “enough”- another long-line without a feminine ending - Orsino begins the line with the exclamation “O”. If “O” is stressed the rest of the line scans regularly. This makes “O” an emphatic sigh of frustration, an indication that Orsino is aware of his sudden mood swing and less-than-courteous behavior. He is annoyed with himself, unhappy with his wild emotional swings! He can’t get Olivia out of his mind! A stress on “O” also precisely marks the change in topic that follows the mid-speech couplet of more and before. “O” begins Orsino’s gorgeous seven-line lament on the nature of the “spirit of love”.
When Orsino finally takes a moment to breathe, one of his attendants, Curio, cuts in and tries to change the subject and yank Orsino out of his funk – an indication that the Duke’s mood isn’t playing very well with the Illyrian courtiers. Curio asks the Duke: “Will you go hunt, my lord?”
The self-absorbed Duke, floundering in the emotional depths of the ocean of love, doesn’t quite understand the question. He responds by asking Curio for a clarification – “What Curio?”.
Now this question has two possible intents. Either the Duke is asking Curio what he just said, or he is asking Curio what prey he plans on hunting. The words themselves are entirely ambiguous in this regard. If the Duke has said “What did you just ask, Curio”, or “Hunt, what, Cure?” the intent of the line would be clear. It is, however, not clear and the actor must choose how to deliver the line.
What is clear, however, is what the scansion tells us is needed immediately before or after “The Hart”. Here’s this section of the scene:
u / u / u / u / u / u / u
Even in a minute; so full of shapes is fancy14
u / u / u / u / u /
That it alone is high fantastical. /15
CURIO
u / u / u /
Will you go hunt, my lord? /
DUKE ORSINO
u / u /
What, Curio? /16
CURIO
u / u / u / u / u /
The hart. / 17
u / u / u / u / u /
Why, so I do, the noblest that I have: /18
“Will you go hunt my lord, what Curio” contains ten syllables. The two sentences, one by Curio and one by Orsino constitute a shared-line. However, the next line is only two articulated syllables: Curio’s “The Hart.” Eight unvoiced syllables swirl around this short sentence. The syllables are not unvoiced because Shakespeare couldn’t think of anything else to say at that particular moment in the play.
The eight unvoiced syllables in line–seventeen, between Curio’s “the Hart” and Orsino’s obtuse response, “Why so I do …” must be accounted for: the metrical integrity of the blank verse demands it. Either Curio takes the eight syllables before his sentence “The Hart”, or the actor playing Orsino must take the eight syllables after Curio’s words - effectively sharing the line with Curio, although the Duke’s share of the line is silent. There is no chance of bringing the two syllables to the next line – Why, so I do, the noblest that I have. The line is already full.
The choice before the actors is who takes the unvoiced syllables – Curio, or the Duke. The unvoiced syllables HAVE to be taken because all lines of blank verse HAVE to have 10 syllables – or more. Blank verse never has lines with less than ten syllables. This brings us to Rule 11.
Rule 11: Any lines with less than ten syllables require unvoiced syllables to complete the line.
If Curio takes the unvoiced syllables it suggests that he, and his compatriot musicians, is somewhat reticent around the Duke and find his behavior, and specifically his response to the question a bit strange. If the Duke assumes the unvoiced syllables the actor must find the way Orsino goes from Curio’s response “The Hart” to “Why, so I do, the noblest that I have” - an answer that completely ignores poor Curio’s suggestion that they actually going hunting. Instead Orsino plays the pun, converts Hart to heart, and rambles on about the noble heart of the object of his affection, Olivia.
A most curious Duke Shakespeare composed.
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