I've only heard of one trained Shakespearian actor before, a professor who taught a course I took in college that covered one play each week (three Histories, three Tragedies and three Comedies. The course was called Shakespeare Rapid Reading, and met for three hours, once per week in the evening. I don't remember the professor, but I do remember the class. It was one of the most intense yet thoroughly enjoyable courses I ever took. The prof could make the characters leap off the page, or be as transfixing as Sir Laurence Olivier.
Wow, that's a wonderful story, Broothru! I did some work with the English Shakespeare Company when they came through doing Macbeth in Chicago. One of the things I found fascinating, was how reverential the Americans actors were of the text - a good thing, if done right - but to the point they treated it as high literature and not living, actionable text. Or, we do the other thing - all "method" and treat it only as grist for "subtext," James Dean does Hamlet, and ignore the clues Shakespeare gives in the rhythm and sound, even the spelling of words. They're like stage directions, but inside the text, not outside it.
When I see a fine English actor performing his or her work, it is the perfect synthesis of music, poetry, sailing on the rhythm -
joined to living experience. Not stodgy, inert, and not mumbled, and "real." Alive, immediate, and understood perfectly and viscerally because the meter matters.
Phew! Anyway, I wax wordy. Here's a much younger moi, in the Smithsonian, outside Edith Wharton's home, where we were located (Shakespeare & Co.). Company warming up for 12th night.
And a few others from ancient history.
Now I'm just an old bald dude, lol.