Offstage Space, Narrative, and the Theatre of the Imagination PDF
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Offstage Space, Narrative, and the Theatre of the Imagination This page intentionally left blank Offstage Space, Narrative, and the Theatre of the Imagination William Gruber OFFSTAGE SPACE, NARRATIVE, AND THE THEATRE OF THE IMAGINATION Copyright © William Gruber, 2010. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2010 978-0-230-62289-0 All rights reserved. First published in 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-38449-5 ISBN 978-0-230-10564-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230105645 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gruber, William E. Offstage space, narrative, and the theatre of the imagination / William Gruber. p. cm. ISBN 978-1-349-38449-5 (alk.paper) 1. Offstage action (Drama) 2. Drama—Technique. 3. Narration (Rhetoric) I. Title. PN1696.G78 2010 808.2—dc22 2009030402 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: March 2010 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This book is for Robert This page intentionally left blank Contents Introduction: Sights Unseen 1 1 Showing vs. Telling 17 2 Against Mimesis 77 3 Theatres of Absence 127 Works Cited 181 Index 189 Introduction: Sights Unseen I have observed that in all our tragedies, the audience cannot forbear laughing when the actors are to die; it is the most comic part of the whole play. —John Dryden, Essay of Dramatic Poesy (1668) Near the end of The Winter’s Tale, after Leontes has been reunited with his daughter, Perdita, and with Polixenes, the King of Bohemia, three characters identified only as “gentlemen” come on stage to give a ret- rospective account of that joyful meeting. Superficially the scene is a thinly dramatized narrative of events which have taken place recently off stage; many find it odd that Shakespeare chose to tell about the re- union rather than show it, and for this reason the scene has not been much admired. Samuel Johnson, for example, attributed its recursive format to slothfulness on the part of its author: “It was, I suppose, only to spare his own labour that the poet put this whole scene into narrative, for though part of the transaction was already known to the audience, and therefore could not properly be shewn again, yet the two kings might have met upon the stage . . . and the young lady might have been recognized in sight of the spectators.” Here is part of the scene that caused Johnson to doubt Shakespeare’s energy: 3. Gentleman. Did you see the meeting of the two kings? 2. Gentleman. No. 3. Gentleman. Then you have lost a sight which was to be seen, cannot be spoken of there might you have beheld one joy crown another, so and in such manner that it seemed sorrow wept to take leave of them, for their joy waded in tears. There was casting up of eyes, holding up of hands, with countenance of such distraction that they were to be known by garment, not by favor. Our king, being ready to leap out of himself for joy of his found daughter, as if that joy were now become a loss, cries, “O, thy mother, thy mother!” then asks Bohemia f orgiveness; 2 / offstage space then embraces his son-in-law; then again worries he his daughter with clipping her; now he thanks the old shepherd, which stands by like a weather-bitten conduit of many kings’ reigns. I never heard of such another encounter, which lames report to follow it and undoes description to do it. (5.2.40–57) Johnson is a shrewd critic of theatre, and nothing in what he says about Shakespeare’s dramaturgy can be attributed to ignorance or wrong-headedness with respect to the dependence of effective theatre on scenic enactment. Most of us would agree with the general propo- sition that underlies Johnson’s complaint, namely, that in comparison with actually seeing something, words are usually a poor substitute. For modern theatre audiences this mindset is especially uncompromising; it has been so deeply fixed for contemporary audiences by widespread exposure to visual media that nowadays even those things which are en- tirely accessible in and through language are invariably given a pictorial dimension. One cannot, for example, listen to television broadcasters report the comparative statistics of holiday sales figures without at the same time seeing an accompanying sequence of images of debit cards, cash registers, and pairs of hands counting out piles of greenbacks. Viewed, however, from a different, more indulgent angle, this par- ticular scene from The Winter’s Tale appears in some respects to be quintessentially Shakespearean. The comments of the various gentle- men regarding the relative inefficacy of narrative in representing events are surely meant to invite spectators to think of their own role as both viewers and listeners and to consider the scene with a degree of aesthetic detachment. Moments such as this when Shakespeare turns his mirror onto his own art can be found throughout his work from its beginnings. But especially in late dramas such as The Tempest or The Winter’s Tale, Shakespeare more than ever before seems to be amused by the conven- tions of theatre on which he has relied for so long, making light of the features of his art at the same time he depends on them. Such seems to be the case with the foregoing scene from The Winter’s Tale: one character (Gentleman 3) tells the audience of an event so marvelous it cannot be described—at which point he flatly contradicts himself, pro- ceeding to paint with words a rich and lively image of the meeting he’s just claimed was beyond words’ reach. The artistic sleight-of-hand by which narrative replaces enactment is so cleverly ironic one can imagine Shakespeare composing the scene on a wager: a master playwright bets that he can first cause his audience to believe that they missed out on
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