It is said that Shakespeare invented 1,700 words. Is this really true?

Interesting Quotes by Shakespeare:

All the world‘s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts. (As You Like it)
 

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. (Macbeth)
 

This life, which had been the tomb of his virtue and of his honor, is but a walking shadow; a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. (Macbeth)
 

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Constantin Stanislavski  (1863 – 1938), Russian

Stanislavski was the first to create a system of method acting where actors analyze their character's motives and emotions. An actress might recall emotions or sensations from her life, and portray them in her character.

Method acting was popularized in the United States by the Group Theatre in New York City in the 1930s.

Collaborate
Apply the Questions to your Life.

Strasberg's method of sense memory and affective memory  has actors recall their own personal experiences, and incorporate them in their characters.

Strasberg's students include: James Dean, Paul Newman, Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman, Alec Baldwin, Robert De Niro, Jane Fonda, and Dennis Hopper.
 

Examples of Bad Acting

Sometimes bad acting can be good:

Big Bang Theory - We can see that Raj is acting because people don't get drunk after one sip. They don't try to slur their words, and try to stagger - they try not to. It's a comedy, so these things makes it funnier, and the acting doesn't matter.

Jim Carrey plays Ace Ventura
Dumb and Dumber
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a romantic science-fiction comedy-drama about an couple who fall in love, and can't bear the pain of the breakup, so they have their memories erased. The special-effects, acting and cinematography are outstanding.

The film is based a science experiment with mice where they induced memory loss with drugs, but also discovered that they could cause memories that never happened. To learn more, listen to Radiolab.
http://www.radiolab.org/story/91569-memory-and-forgetting/

The title of the film is a quotation from the poem Eloisa to Abelard by Alexander Pope.


Examples of Great Acting

Jamie Foxx plays Ray
Ray Charles - Ray Charles - Hit The Road Jack (Original)

Robert De Niro Awakenings

No Country for Old Men - Anton Chigurh played by Javier Bardem

My Left Foot - Daniel Day Lewis

Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln
Where did Daniel Day-Lewis get the voice of Lincoln? When I put the question to Google, and it said, "But, unfortunately, no recordings of Lincoln's voice exist, since he died 12 years before Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, the first device to record and play back sound." This is not a good argument. Although the phonograph was the first device to record and play back sound, it was not the first device to be able to record sound. The phonautograph is the earliest known device for recording sound - invented by Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville. It was patented on March 25, 1857. Lincoln died in 1865. Although the device was capable of recording sound, it was not able to play it back. This observation might have been the cause of the rumor that a recording was made of the President. 

Where did  Daniel Day Lewis get Lincoln's voice? In this interview, Lewis referred to the voice as the fingerprint of the soul.

Meisner broke from Strasberg and Stanislavski, and argued that recalling personal experiences caused actors to focus on themselves - not the story or character. He sought to free actors by fully immersing them in the moment, and concentrating on their partners. For Meisner spontaneity and improvisation creates a sense of reality that he described as, "living truthfully under imaginary circumstances."
 

Stella Adler, a student of Stanislavski, also broke with Strasberg. She believed that actors should conjure up emotions through the scene's circumstances - not your personal memories. Adler's technique seeks to stimulate the actor's imagination.

Her students included: Marlon Brando, Warren Beatty, and Robert De Niro