Acting time

One of the set books on my acting course is John Barton's "Playing Shakespeare" - originally a series of televised workshops he did with the Royal Shakespeare Company.

In one chapter, where he's talking about the dangers of being too earnest with the text (Shakespeare's words are to be "searched and savoured" not solemnified) he perfectly illustrates his point by having two actors play out the following scene taken from the Cambridge Footlights of 1981. (In the original Footlights skit, Stepehn Fry played the Director, Hugh Laurie the Actor.)

DIRECTOR: All right let’s start at the beginning shall we?
ACTOR: Right, yeh.
DIRECTOR: What’s the word, what’s the word, I wonder, that Shakespeare decides to begin his sentence with here?
ACTOR: Er, ‘Time’ is the first word.
DIRECTOR: Time, Time.
ACTOR: Yep.
DIRECTOR: And how does Shakespeare decide to spell it, Hugh?
ACTOR: T-I-M-E.
DIRECTOR: T-I?
ACTOR: M.
DIRECTOR: M-E.
ACTOR: Yep.
DIRECTOR: And what sort of spelling of the word is that?
ACTOR: Well, it’s the ordinary spelling.
DIRECTOR: It’s the ordinary spelling, isn’t it? It’s the conventional spelling. So why, out of all the spellings he could have chosen, did Shakespeare choose that one, do you think?
ACTOR: Well, um, because it gives us time in an ordinary sense.
DIRECTOR: Exactly, well done, good boy. Because it gives us time in an ordinary, conventional sense.
ACTOR: Oh, right.
DIRECTOR: So, Shakespeare has given us time in a conventional sense. But he’s given us something else, Hugh. Have a look at the typography. What do you spy?
ACTOR: Oh, it’s got a capital T.
DIRECTOR: Shakespeare’s T is very much upper case there, Hugh, isn’t it? Why?
ACTOR: Cos it’s the first word in the sentence?
DIRECTOR: Well I think that’s partly it. But I think there’s another reason too. Shakespeare has given us time in a conventional sense – and time in an abstract sense.
ACTOR: Right, yes.
DIRECTOR: All right? Think your voice can convey that, Hugh?
ACTOR: I hope so.
DIRECTOR: I hope so too. All right. Give it a go.
ACTOR: Just the one word?
DIRECTOR: Just the one word for the moment.
ACTOR: Yep.
(He howls the word)
DIRECTOR: Hugh, Hugh, Hugh, Hugh. Where do we gather from?
ACTOR: Oh, the buttocks.
DIRECTOR: Always the buttocks. Gather from the buttocks. Thank you.
ACTOR: Time!
DIRECTOR: What went wrong there, Hugh?
ACTOR: Um, I don’t know. I got a bit lost in the middle actually.