Some Aspects of Elizabethan Staging and Stage Directions*

Yukio Kato

This paper deals with stage directions as one of the most important factors for a discussion about performing Shakespeare's texts. Our concern here is not for the various possibilities of modern production but for Shakespeare's at the Globe. For the purpose of recovering the original staging of Shakespeare's plays, we must, as T. W. Craik says, "read each play with every other Elizabethan play simultaneously in mind."1 Such a far-reaching aim is partly but essentially attainable by examining the original stage directions in the extant manuscripts and printed texts.

It is clear that the stage directions can be observed as definite signals for actual performance, but the problem is complicated by several conditions. Firstly, manuscripts or printed tests themselves came from different origins: they may be authorial drafts, or texts used in the playhouse, or scribal copies, or memorial reconstructions. Secondly, the assumptions or interpretations we bring to the plays can be arbitrary. Thirdly, Elizabethan stage directions are not always "theatrica1" as opposed to "fictional" or "literary", so that some of the directions may not accurately correspond to the actual staging. Fourthly, we have to take parts of the dialogue into consideration, since they can serve as signals equivalent to stage directions; in other words, even in the "fictional" play world some terms which are gestic should be regarded as "theatrical".

In the process of considering these cruxes, our basic attitude towards a study of stage directions will become clear. Along with that, some aspects of Elizabethan staging and stage directions will be illustrated with examples.

First, as to the nature of tests or authenticity in dealing with stage productions, our premise is the same as Alan Dessen's: that is, if a stage effect was seen by an Elizabethan or Jacobean audience, it should not be suppressed, nor even ignored, as lacking "fidelity to its author".2 In that case, we regard every available text as a theatrical reflection without discriminating between "good" and "bad". Take the entrance of a mad Ophelia for example. In what is called the "bad" quarto of Hamlet, the stage direction reads: "Enter Ophelia playing on a Lute, and her hair down singing". This particularity of description is not Shakespeare's. It presumably draws upon an actor's memory, but we assert that such a fragmentary or even uncertain memory, as far as it is written in surviving play tests, can contribute equally to the reconstruction of the whole scheme of Elizabethan theatrical practice. The situation is completely different from the case of actors' interpolations in the dialogue such as Hamlet's groan after he is "silent",3 in which we have to assume a more cautious attitude in judging its validity.

As to the next question, arbitrariness or indeterminacy, it is true that many of the original directions are open to various interpretations about their realization on the stage, but what we have to avoid is unsubstantiated assertion. In re-enacting the movements of characters, we should not make rash speculations on what we cannot say for certain; evidence in some form is required. We have to part from Dessen at this point; he employs a notion of "theatrical shorthand", a sort of convention, and with that fills the vacancy or absence of stage directions, or else minutely re-writes non-specific signals.4 He concludes that Elizabethan spectators were used to receiving such "shorthand", like the use of nightgowns, boots, and disheveled hair, and that spectators could interpret these signals automatically as, respectively, newly risen from bed", "in haste", and "mad". He assumes, therefore, that even if the bad quarto of Hamlet--the only evidence of Ophelia's hairdo--had been lost, her hair must have been conventionally disheveled.

Dessen's approach is supported by the reading of 400 manuscripts and printed plays and we have to admit, if only for that reason, that his exemplification is mostly persuasive. And yet it seems that as a general argument the range included by the notion of convention is ill-defined. In the actual analysis of staging and stage directions, the line of demarcation between established convention and mere casualness tends to be indeterminate. Even though a certain action on the stage was accepted as conventional, it does not necessarily follow that the action occurred in every performance.

I have written elsewhere about this problem with particular attention to Hamlet's "tables", a memorandum-book.5 Compare the following three texts:

My tables,

My tables--meet it is I set it down (The Oxford Shakespeare)

My Tables, my Tables; meet it is I set it downe, (The First Folio)

(My tables) meet it is I set it downe, (The First Quarto)

Just after the Ghost disappeared with "Remember me" (1.5.91), Hamlet uttered a curse, "0 villain, villain smiling, damned villain!" (106) and continued with the words above-listed. The question is whether this "tables" is real or metaphorical. In other words, did the actor make a gesture of writing or did he just speak about memorizing? Ever since Nicholas Rowe, most modern editors have interpreted this memorandum book as a real one and inserted a stage direction "He writes" (The Oxford Shakespeare) or "writing" in the Quarto and Folio texts. But the point I made in the paper is that there is no evidence for this action. Scholars inform us that, in Elizabethan times, it was common for a youth to take a notebook from his pocket. Even if this is true, however, we have no means of knowing to what degree this characteristic behavior might affect the action of Hamlet. But neither is there any ground for insisting on a metaphorical reading. It all depends on personal interpretations of the context of the play world.

A similar passage from Macbeth will show us the difficulty of the matter. A doctor watches Lady Macbeth walking at night, saying, "Hark, she speaks. I will set down what comes from her to satisfy my remembrance the more strongly." (5.1.31-2) But this time we cannot find any editions, including Nicholas Rowe's, to indicate that the doctor "writes". What is the difference between Hamlet's writing and the doctor's not writing, both being with the verb phrase "set down"? Or is it that the difference of action is due to Nicholas Rowe's arbitrary interpretations and that he has ever since exerted his sway over a long history of Shakespeare editions? What we want to emphasize here is that in recovering theatrical practice from original stage directions, or the absence of them, groundless arguments should be avoided. In some cases where actual staging is thus indefinable, the original state of the test should remain untouched. We should leave it unsolved rather than run the risk of getting it wrong. This may sound an evasive way of handling the matter but it is necessary to recognize that some groups of stage directions defy our attempts at recovery.

Now, the third requirement which is concerned with "theatrical" stage directions as opposed to "literary" or "fictional" ones was originally pointed out by W. W. Greg. Dessen elucidates the distinction in Richard Hosley's terms: "theatrical" signals refer to theatrical structure or equipment (e.g. "within", "a curtain being drawn") and "fictional" signals refer to dramatic fiction (e.g. "on shipboard", "upon the walls"). To put it in another way, the former provides information to the actors on and off stage and the latter to the characters in the play world. But the distinction between the two is, again, by no means always sharp or clear-cut. In the Quarto edition of Othello, Brabantio shows himself at a window", shouting, "What is the reason of this terrible summons? (1. 1.83). We cannot decide whether this "window" is a part of the structure of the Globe or just an imaginary one.

We might have a preconceived idea that stage directions are basically and mostly "theatrical" and that "fictional" signals are exceptional. It is to be noted, however, that the "fictional" directions appear with high frequency especially when the actions or movements of the actors are not plainly distinguishable from those of the characters. They are, for example, "kneeling and weeping" (Sir Thomas More), in which actors do not weep actually, and "flying" (The Battle of Alcazar), in which actors are just running although allowing the audience to imagine that they are escaping, and "being in disguise" (John a Kent John a Cumber) whose device is for the sake of the other characters instead of the audience. These expressions are composed naturally by what we term "permeation" phenomena; the play world permeates or seeps out into the theater. One of the interesting samples is "enter" in Coriolanus. This frequent stage direction is supposed to be typically "theatrical", but the first battle scene being set before the gates of the city of Corioles, the characters so often speak of entering the city in the dialogue that the ordinary "exit" directions are sometimes changed into "enter". Other examples in which "fictional" signals are naturally used are "kill" and "die", for these words cannot be misinterpreted as "theatrica1" by any means.

Now we have reached the last of requirements, that is, the necessity to consider some parts of the dialogue to be "theatrical" signals. This necessity arises always from the genre of drama. No one thing can be confined within a play world; some or most parts of the dialogue are intended for the audience, who get information about time, place, scenery, property, and suchlike.

In fact, the number and the kinds of early stage directions are very scarce in comparison with those of modern play texts. To be more precise, Elizabethan dramatists, as Alan Dessen says, "often saw no need to write down for us what would have been obvious to them".6 But then what is "obvious", and how, and to what extent? The difficulty indeed lies in this. Investigations concerning the relationship between stage directions and gestic expressions constitute the most difficult task in analyzing dramatic works. When a stage direction is written in the old texts, there is no problem. But if not, we must ask ourselves whether we should read the absence of directions positively or negatively.

In order to show these two extremes concretely, we may, for example, take the opening scene of Hamlet. Since this has also been written elsewhere as a part of my paper,7 I touch only lightly on the point. Did the audience at the Globe hear the bell beating twelve o'clock at the beginning of Hamlet? It begins as follows:

BARNARDO Who's there?

FRANCSCO

Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself.

BARNARDO

Long live the King!.

FRANCISCO Barnardo?

BARNARDO He.

FRANCISCO

You come carefully upon your hour.

BARNARDO

'Tis now struck twelve. ...

My answer to the question is no, by which I mean that Barnardo's words "'Tis now struck twelve", do not function as a stage direction for beating the bell. "'Tis now struck twelve" is in itself a message which informs the audience of the present time, with no need of sound effect. Thus we have read his words negatively. But how about one o'clock? Let us hear Barnardo speak :

Last night all,

When yon same star that's westward from the pole

Had made his course t'illume that part of heaven

where now it burns, Marcellus and myself,

The bell then beating one--

This speech is significant in the sense that the time and space of the last night completely overlap those of tonight. With the words '1ast night all,/When you same star...-, Barnardo now points to "westward from the pole" and "that part of heaven / Where now it burns" and the moment he speaks "The bell then beating one--", the bell now beating one, as if to fill the missing meter. Thus we have read a hidden stage direction positively.

Now let us apply the above-mentioned principles to some of the kinds of the stage directions. In order to do so, we need a vast amount of data, but it is almost impossible, not just difficult, for us to keep every play "simultaneously in mind" as T. W. Craik demands. As an alternative to human memory, therefore, we should recognize the necessity and utility of the computer system. The records of the database we have used amount to approximately 30,000 items of stage directions in over 200 Quarto and Folio play texts which were performed from 1495 to 1642. The records of Shakespeare's original stage directions count 8,901, those of the Oxford Shakespeare are 11,427, and those of the other Elizabethan play texts amount to 20,738 (this is a current numeral).

This database is one of the results of a co-operative research project with Professor Yasumasa Okamoto at Tokyo Gakugei University and others with the assistance of a government subsidy.8 Since the research is now in progress and the input of records is not yet complete, my analysis here must be a tentative one. The items or the numbers which have been selected in the paper are also subject to correction. The texts we have dealt with are in a list of authors and titles printed at the back of the paper.** The list is based on the third edition of Alfred Harbage's Annals of English Drama.9 I have to thank Professor Okamoto for allowing me to use the database and the list of authors and titles, but the responsibility for misuse or misunderstanding, if any, is entirely mine.

A statistical approach shows us that some kinds of stage directions are unexpectedly frequent, and others are comparatively scarce. Take the pair "kill" and "kiss" for example. In Shakespeare's early texts alone, "kill" appears 18 times, and in other Elizabethan texts 44, which seems rather many for the situation's rarity. "Die" is even more frequent; 32 times in Shakespeare alone. As against "kill" or "die", though the number of the references to "kiss" in the dialogue is around 300 and in the 0xford Shakespeare the direction appears 75 times, yet in the Quarto and Folio texts of Shakespeare's plays the direction "kiss" is used only 7 times. See the endings of Othello and Romeo and Juliet.

OTHELLO (to Desdemona)

I kissed thee ere I killed thee. No way but this:

Killing myself, to die upon a kiss.

He kisses Desdemona and dies.

(The Oxford Shakespeare)

Oth. I kist thee ere I kill'd thee. No way but this,

Killing myselfe, to dye upon a kisse. Dyes.

(The First Folio)

JULIET

To make me die with a restorative.

She kisses Romeo's lips

. . .

This is thy sheath! There rust, and let me die.

She stabs herself, falls, and dies.

(The 0xford Shakespeare)

Iul. To make me die with a restoratiue.

. . .

'Tis in thy sheath, there rust and let me die Kils herselfe,

(The First Folio)

Both the Moor and the daughter of Capulet kiss his or her dead spouse and die. But early texts give only one direction, "die" or "kill". Attention should be paid to this fact.

The pair of "read" and "write" gives us a similar example. Shakespeare employs a reading scene quite effectively as in reading messages from afar or reading letters of intrigue; in all, the number of stage directions of that kind comes to 50. In contrast with that, "write" or "writing" appears only twice and one of these is found in the Quarto alone. Even in other Elizabethan play texts, the characters "write" on the stage just 14 times. Various factors may be involved in such a difference of these two pairs, but my hypothesis is that possibly there was a degree of "gravity" in registering stage directions; in other words, there might have been some stage directions which were inclined to have a status as such and others which were not. It seems that the stage direction "giving" something belongs to the latter, since the characters are in most cases entrusted with the "giving" actions without any corresponding directions.

Metaphorically speaking, in the center of the Ptolemaic system or universe rest the most constant directions "enter" and "exit" or "exeunt". The more the directions are incidental, the more they are situated in an external or "peripheral" area. Of course, one reason why such stage directions are scarce is that the dialogue can supplement the absence with gestic terms. But apart form that fact, some groups of stage directions are originally located away from the central part of this universe.

As a typical example of "peripheral" stage directions, let us argue about actions concerned with "standing aside" or "stepping aside". These seemingly trivial movements of characters present an important problem. In Shakespeare's early texts, "stand aside" and "step aside" each appear only once. By a curious coincidence, the two are adjacent to each other in the same text: the Folio of Love's Labour's Lost, but nowhere else. The number of 24 incidences in other Elizabethan texts is not so many as might be supposed. It has already been pointed out there is no need to add directions for action which is evident from the dialogue. So we have to count the words with which one character orders another to stand aside or step aside. But the total of such words in Shakespeare is only 15. Thus the question recurs. Again, we have no means of knowing whether such actions are intended to be prevalent without stage directions or are rare because such directions are few in number. At least, it is better to be cautious by keeping the original tests untouched where there are no such stage directions or such gestic terms in the dialogue. Let us look at the movement of Edgar when he sees Gloucester, his father, led by an Old Man.

EDGAR But who comes here?

My father, parti-eyed? World, world, O world!

But that thy strange mutations make us hate thee,

Life would not yield to age.

[Edgar stands aside]

Edgar here is in disguise as a Bedlam beggar, and Gloucester comes to him "parti-eyed" (i.e. with bleeding and blind eyes). Edgar groans, "World, world, O world!..."(4.1.10-2) Then he "stands aside" according to the Oxford Shakespeare, though the broken brackets in the text imply the dubiousness of the interpretation. This direction suggests that Edgar should move away from Gloucester for fear of being recognized. But, leaving aside Edgar's disguise and Gloucester's blindness, we doubt the necessity of creating spatial distance between son and father. Rather, when Gloucester deplores after 10 lines, "O dear son, Edgar, / The food of thy abused father's wrath-- / Might I but live to see thee in my touch / I'd say I had eyes again" (21-4), Edgar should be in his "touch", so that the lamentation of son and father will pathetically amplify each other.

The beginning of The Winter's Tale gives us a similar problem. Requested by her husband, Hermione pleads with Polixenes to stay longer, and succeeds, saying:

The one for ever earned a royal husband;

Th'other, for some while a friend.

At this moment, according to the 0xford stage directions, Hermione [gives her hand to Polixenes.]" (again with broken brackets) and the two "stand aside". Soon after Leontes suddenly burst out in jealousy, "Too hot, too hot: / To mingle friendship farre is mingling bloods". (1.2.110-111) Another edition tells us that long before this speech Leontes himself "draws apart" while Hermione is persuading Polixenes.10 Then walking back to his wife, Leontes says, "Is he won yet?" (88). Note that there is not any stage direction in the old texts. So why, we may ask, should it not be performed as it is? I maintain that the distance between Leontes and Polixenes with Hermione should not be unnecessarily increased. No movement, in this case, has the effect of a spiritual differentiation of characters within the same spatial community.

Now, we end with a brief observation on "silence". Shakespearean "silence" has been much discussed as in Philip McGuire's Speechless Dialect or Harvey Rovine's Silence in Shakespeare.11 Both of them enumerate various aspects of "silence" on the assumption that "silence" itself is significant. It is true that there are many silent figures and the examination of their degree of silence and their roles in the play is significant. But the problem of "silence" as a purely theatrical device, a blank pause, is completely different. I doubt whether the Shakespearean stage is as full of silence as McGuire and Rovine maintain. In searching the database for "silent" as a stage direction, one finds that Shakespeare's early texts have only two, and other Elizabethan texts just one.

The one in Shakespeare occurs in Act 4 Scene 3 of The Third Part of Henry the Sixth:

2. Watch. I: wherefore else guard we his Royall Tent

But to defend his Person from Night-foes?

Enter Warwicke, Clarence, Oxford,Somerset,

and French Souldiers, silent all.

(The First Folio)

This direction shows, however, that the actors, Warwick and others, are walking "stealthily" to the three Watchmen of the King; in other words, it is not that the stage is empty of words and deeds, but that the audience see the meaningful action.

The only example in other Elizabethan texts is from Thomas Middleton's The Second Maiden's Tragedy.

They bringe the Body in a Chaire drest vp in black velvet which

setts out the / pailenes of the handes and face, And a faire Chayne

of pearle crosse har brest / and the Crucyfex aboue it ; He standes

silent awhile letting the Musique / play, becknyng the soldiers

that bringe her in to make obeisaunce to her, and / he hym self

makes a lowe honour to the body and kisses the hande.

(Through Line Number, 2225-2229)

It is to be noted that in this case, too, the stage is not blank, but full of music. I do not believe that there would have been any lapse of time which the audience could fill with any emotions. I repeat again that silence in itself has no significance unless it involves something tangible, like action, music, and words especially. After the denouement, Iago declares his silence meaningfully, "From this time forth I never will speak word". (5.2.310) Even a silent Cordelia had to express her silence with words: "Love and be silent". (1.1.62) Rhetorically speaking, silence is significant only when it is supported with the word "silence".

The other example in Shakespeare's texts, and this is the last one in my paper, is the famous passage in the last Act of Coriolanus. The Oxford Shakespeare reads as follows:

VOLUMNIA ...

This fellow had a Volscian to his mother.

His wife is in Corioles, and this child

Like him by chance. --Yet give us our dispatch.

I am hushed until our city be afire,

And then I'll speak a little.

He holds her by the hand, silent.

CORIOLANUS O mother, mother!

After a long speech by Volumnia, Coriolanus meditates for a long while in silence, and then declares, "O, mother, mother! / What have you done? Behold, the heavens do ope, / The gods look down, and this unnatural scene / they laugh at. O my mother, mother, O!..." Volumnia's speech, Coriolanus's silence, and his decision; this is a generally accepted situation, and Coriolanus's silence is, as Harvey Rovine comments, "a silence which expresses his resignation to the demands of family and a decision based on emotion instead of honor".12 But is it so? Is it absolutely impossible to think that the silent figure in this scene is not Coriolanus but Volumnia? Let us look at the original stage direction.

Volum. ...

I am husht vntill our City be afire, & then Ile speak a little

Holds her by the hand silent.

Corio. O Mother, Mother!

Because there is no Quarto edition of Coriolanus, we have to refer to the Folio text alone. We may see that the direction "holds her by the hand silent" lacks a subject. Since the object is "her", which should be Volumnia, then the subject ought, grammatically, to be Coriolanus. But we may feel uneasy about the textual position of this direction, which is placed just after Volumnia's speech. The other examples in the same text suggest that the action belongs to the immediately previous speaker. Take a line of Act 4, Scene 5, for example:

Corio. Follow your function, go, and batten on colde

bits. Pushes him away from him.

If the subject of "Holds" was Volumnia, "her" should have been "him". An unambiguous alternative might be "Coriolanus holds Volumnia by the hand who is silent", though the sentence itself is awkward. Why am I so insistent about Volumnia's silence? It is because at the last part of her long speech Volumnia talks about her own silence: "Yet give us our dispatch. / I am hushed until our city be afire, / And then I'll speak a little". (181-3) So much language of hers provides her silence with a firm resolution, to which Coriolanus gives in.

Again, silence in itself, to borrow Macbeth's words, "signifies nothing". Even Hamlet, who said lastly "The rest is silence", did not keep silent, with "0, o, o, o!" in the Oxford Shakespeare.

* This paper was originally read at the British Counci1's Seminar at Hakone on 26th September, 1990. The revision owes a great deal to the kind suggestions and acute criticisms of Professor Stanley Wells and Professor Peter Holland. A part of the revised version was read at the 5th World Shakespeare congress held at Kyoritsu College of Pharmacy, on 16th August, 1991. During the period I received the benefits of precious instructions from Professor G. R. Proudfoot, a chairman of our Session of the Congress, and from Professor Yasumasa Okamoto, a chief of our cooperative research project.

** A list of authors and titles is omitted in this internet version.

NOTES

The quotations of the plays in this paper are taken from various tests, but the only modern edition of Shakespeare's plays is the Complete Oxford Shakespeare (named as the Oxford Shakespeare in the paper), eds. by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor (Oxford Univ. Press, 1986).

1. "The Reconstruction of Stage Action from Early Dramatic Texts," The Elizabethan Theatre V, ed. G. S. Hibbard (Hamden), p. 91.

2. Elizabethan Stage Conventions and Modern Interpreters (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1984), p. 25. See also Dessen's Elizabethan Drama and the Viewer's Eye (The Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1977) and Shakespeare and the Late Moral Plays (Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1986).

3. The Folio edition of Hamlet read, "The rest is silence. 0, o, o, o."

4. See Chapter 2, "Interpreting stage directions", in Elizabethan Stage Conventions and Modern Interpreters, pp. 19-52.

5. Yukio Kato, "Hamlet's 'Tables': Speeches and Stage Directions in Shakespeare's Plays" (Japanese), Shakespeareana, Vo1. 6 (1988), pp. 50-71.

6. Dessen, Elizabethan Stage Conventions and Modern Interpreters, p. 44.

7. Yukio Kato, "Beating the Bell in the Beginning of Hamlet" (Japanese), Bulletin at Kyoto Univ., No. 50 (1985), pp. 44-55.

8. A part of the result is published as Comparative Tables of Shakespeare's Stage Directions, Yasumasa Okamoto, et a1., (A Report of Co-operative Research Project, No. 62301056, 1988). See also Okamoto's "Elizabethan Stage Directions", 1-13, Bulletin at Tokyo Gakugei Univ., No. 28-42 (1976-1991).

9. Annals of English Drama 975-1700, rev. S. Schoenbaum, 3rd ed. rev. Sylvia Stoler Wagonheim, Routledge, 1964/1989.

10. The New Penguin Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale, ed. Ernest Schanzer (Penguin Books, 1969), p.56.

11. Philip C. McGuire, Speechless Dialect: Shakespeare's Open Silences (Univ. of California Press, 1985); Harvey Rovine, Silence in Shakespeare: Drama, Power & Gender (UMI Research Press, 1987).

12. Silence in Shakespeare: Drama, Power & Gender, p. 65.