Thinking/Seeing/He
aring
Theatrically
Theory, Theatre: Ways of Seeing
• ‘THEORY’ AND ‘THEATRE’ ARE COGNATE
• Gr. a looking at, viewing, contemplation,
speculation, theory, also a sight, a spectacle,
abstr. n. f. (: * ) spectator, looker on, f. stem of to look on, view, contemplate.
• L. theatrum, a. Gr. , a place for viewing, esp. a
theatre, f. to behold (cf. sight, view, a
spectator).
•
• Theory is a way of seeing
• All criticism is theoretical
• Over the last 300 years, the majority of
Shakespearean criticism has more or less
ignored the theatre and instead privileged
other ways of looking at the texts
• This is fine. In your assessed essay and in
Section B of the exam you choose your ways
of seeing
• In Section A: we attempt to think/see/hear
the text theatrically. We put the spectator
back into theory.
What Shakespeare does not give us:
The flower girl enters in state. She has a hat with three ostrich feathers,
orange, sky-blue, and red. She has a nearly clean apron […] The
pathos of this deplorable figure, with its innocent vanity and
consequential air, touches Pickering, who has already straightened
himself in the presence of Mrs Pearce. But as to Higgins, the only
distinction he makes between men and women is that when he is
neither bullying nor exclaiming to the heavens against some
featherweight cross, he coaxes women as a child coaxes its nurse
when it wants to get anything out of her.
HIGGINS [brusquely, recognizing her with unconcealed disappointment,
and at once, babylike, making an intolerable grievance of it] Why,
this is the girl I jotted down last night. She’s no use: I’ve got all the
records I want of the Lisson Grove lingo.
• (George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion, 1914)
‘You must translate’
Claudius, 4.1.2
• If you let the play speak for itself, it may not
make a sound. (Peter Brook)
Advice
• 3.2. What is a theatrical commentary?
• One that considers some of the following:
•
The transitions between scenes; shifts in tone; stage directions (both explicit and
implicit); interpretative options for actors; the movement and interrelation of
bodies in theatrical space; the use of the resources of the stage; use of props and
costumes; the presence of non-speaking characters; the deployment of silence
and pauses; shifts of tempo as the action unfolds; the actor-audience relationship;
how the passage might originally have been staged; how it has been staged since
Shakespeare’s time (i.e. stage history); how it might be staged today or in the
future; how textual variants (if any) might affect performance choices and effects;
the architecture of the stage space (mainstage, balcony [‘above’], trap, columns,
discovery space, downstage/upstage); speech acts (tone, verse/prose, line/speech
lengths, tempo and power, soliloquy and asides); music and song; sound effects.
•
•
Nb. Films can be referenced in passing, but the emphasis should be on theatrical
interpretation.
• 3.3. First things first: when you have chosen your passage, use the reading
time to:
• 1) Re-read the passage carefully, making short bullet points in the margin;
mark significant stage directions, interpretive cruces, changes of style, and
general points of interest.
• 2) Ask yourself why this passage has been set. What is remarkable, in
theatrical terms, about the passage before you? What are its key
problems? What is it trying to do to an audience? How is the world of the
play different at the end of the passage? What’s the dramatic function of
the passage? Your answers to this can provide you with your opening
and/or closing sentences.
•
•
•
3.4. Focus upon the extract: The question is asking you to analyse the text in front of you.
You should be able to identify and contextualise the extract (where it occurs, how it operates
within the play) and bear this information in mind as you do a close-analysis of the extract.
The identification and contextualisation of the piece is only relevant if you relate it
appropriately and usefully to your analysis of the extract. There are no marks available for
simply being able to recognise the piece. Do not write at length about the play as a whole
(merely to show that you know it) whilst ignoring the extract you are being asked to
consider.
3.5. Structuring your answer: There is no single correct way to structure your answer. But a
good response might begin by briefly outlining the context of the passage within the play and
describing its particular theatrical challenges/interest. The bulk of your answer might then
work through the passage chronologically. If it helps you to stay focussed on the text, you
might even subdivide your response into smaller units by line numbers. The best answers will
respond to the passage, as far as is possible, as a whole; i.e. do not spend 30 minutes writing
about the first five lines. If you are running out of time spend the last five minutes bulletpointing the points you would have made if you had more time.
•
•
3.6. Consider the extract as a theatrical text: This means that you should analyse the text as
a script for performance, referring to some of the many components of performance listed
above. It does NOT mean that you are being asked to describe a hypothetical staging of the
play, or reproduce a chronological account of the play’s production/performance history. Do
not explain how you or a hypothetical director would stage the passage in your ideal
production. Example: ‘At this point, Lady Macbeth should frown and tug at Macbeth’s sword,
emphasising his effeminacy.’ Or ‘Lear should be standing for the curse of sterility then fall to
his knees and gibber when his daughter ignores him.’ These – and any uses of the word
‘should’ – are prescriptive and close down possibilities. We want you to be alert to the wide
variety of possible interpretations that the script might allow and this means being openminded, imaginative, and exploratory. We want you to speculate and hypothesize, to think
through the amazing openness of these scripts as instructions for theatrical
performance.
You are very welcome to use information about productions you may have seen/read
about/performed in, but ONLY if it is relevant and appropriate to the point you are trying to
make, as an illustrative example to your own analysis.
• 3.7. Brief Closing Tips on Section A:
• 1) Make a checklist based on (2) above – revise this, be clear about
what is meant by ‘theatricality’.
• 2) Visualize – put the action into three dimensions; try to see the stage
in your ‘mind’s eye’; remember the audience, both onstage and in the
theatre.
• 3) Speculate – avoid prescription, embrace openness.
• 4) Simulate naiveté – it may help to imagine you are watching and
hearing the action unfold for the first time, moment by moment. Be
responsive to the shifts, shocks and surprises of the script as they might
play out in front of a live, uninitiated audience.
• 5)
•
Stick to the passage in front of you.
I can take any empty space and call
it a barestage. A man walks across
this empty stage whilst someone
else is watching him and that is all
that is needed for an act of theatre
to be engaged.
Peter Brook, The Empty Space
I can take any empty space and call it a barestage. A man walks across this empty stage whilst
someone else is watching him and that is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged.
Seeing and hearing the theatricality of the opening
lines of Hamlet:
• SCENIC CONSTRUCTION – preparation par
excellence – prep for war, prep for ghost
• ATMOSPHERE OF SENSORY DEPRIVATION:
Broad daylight but fictional visibility is low.
When Horatio and Marcellus enter:
FRANCISCO: ‘I THINK I HEAR THEM’
• THIS IS A PLACE OF SEEING AND HEARING –
Horatio is there to see the Ghost and
‘approve’ their eyes
• SPEECH ACTS: Begins with question – who’s
there? – an interrogative play
• Lines constructed to convey tension, anxiety:
short, split lines. Notice moments when
tempo slackens.
• SCENE-CREATION: Disjunction between verbal
imagery and spectacle: locale, atmosphere
created through languages – bodily and
verbal. Despite Italianate/Spanish-sounding
names, it’s bitter cold. Later learn we’re ‘in’
Denmark.
CHOREOGRAPHY OF BODIES: Sit down a while… Well, sit
we down… Atmosphere relaxes slightly before entrance
of Ghost. Multiple levels
TEMPO / SENSE OF TIME: it is past 12 at opening: by line 64
it is 1am. The scene is moving towards the dawn in russet
mantle clad…
• BARNARDO: ‘THE BELL THEN BEATING ONE’…
• MARCELLUS: ‘THUS TWICE BEFORE AND JUST AT THIS
DEAD HOUR’
ENTER GHOST – Where from? Below the stage? Purgatory?
Costume and movement can be reconstructed from
dialogue; embedded stage directions
Am I a Coward?
Who calles me Villaine? breakes my pate
a-crosse?
Pluckes off my Beard, and blowes it in my
face?
Tweakes me by'th'Nose? giues me the Lye
i'th'Throate,
As deepe as to the Lungs? Who does me
this?
Ha?
Why I should take it: for it cannot be,
But I am Pigeon-Liuer'd, and lacke Gall
To make Oppression bitter, or ere this,
I should haue fatted all the Region Kites
With this Slaues Offall, bloudy: a Bawdy villaine,
Remorselesse, Treacherous, Letcherous, kindles
villaine!
Oh Vengeance!
Why? What an Asse am I? I sure, this is most
braue,
That I, the Sonne of the Deere murthered,
Prompted to my Reuenge by Heauen, and Hell,
Must (like a Whore) vnpacke my heart with
words,
And fall a Cursing like a very Drab.
A Scullion? Fye vpon't: Foh. About my Braine.
Hum.
I haue heard, that guilty Creatures sitting at a Play,
Haue by the very cunning of the Scoene,
Bene strooke so to the soule, that presently
They haue proclaim'd their Malefactions.
For Murther, though it haue no tongue, will speake
With most myraculous Organ. Ile haue these Players,
Play something like the murder of my Father,
Before mine Vnkle. Ile obserue his lookes,
Ile tent him to the quicke: If he but blench
I know my course. The Spirit that I haue seene
May be the Diuell, and the Diuel hath power
T'assume a pleasing shape, yea and perhaps
Out of my Weaknesse, and my Melancholly,
As he is very potent with such Spirits,
Abuses me to damne me. Ile haue grounds
More Relatiue then this: The Play's the thing,
Wherein Ile catch the Conscience of the King.