The new illusion of solitude on the stage tended to disregard the presence of the audience, but the illusion of not being overheard still must have seemed so weak that it could be comically dismissed. 9
In spite of numerous transformations, he [the fool] has never achieved the psychological complexity or ability to develop associated with more modern dramatic characters. 11
The descendant of a ritual that has long since lost its original function, the fool is an atavistic agent of the cult, both the heir of myth and the child of realism—a contradiction in his genealogy that gives the fool his Janus-like status. 11
No other actor stands so clearly on the threshold between the play and the community occasion. 43
In the folk play, disguise is almost as important and traditional as the elements of song and dance. And again it is the fool who stands out as singer and dancer, a versatility that is not confined to the English ceremonial but is reflected in the etymology of Narr, the German equivalent of “fool,” derived from narro, which, like the old Indian nrtu (dancer), goes back to a common root, nart (to dance). 47
Self-introduction that stands apart from the dramatic action proper… 120
The age and power of the Vice lend themselves to the uses of topsy-turvydom, and yet the self-expressive function of this language is no longer solely nonrepresentational or grotesque. For the heritage of antic ritual expression has been incorporated within the allegorical form of dramatic action—an integration assisted by certain qualities of the English morality tradition itself. 122
Platea = place of extension with the audience; Loca = play world 130
The play is acted, therefore, on a level of dialogue as well as of narration. 131
But at the same time, this traditional perspective is no longer exclusively connected to the descendants of the Vice. Wherever the modern representative of evil (Gloucester, Iago, Edmund) tends to dominate the serious part itself, other figures, such as Brakenbury or the Scrivener in Richard III, or Poor Tom and the Fool in King Lear, are brought in to enunciate a complementary vision of the main theme. Their dramatic function is not a farcical one, but involves that special relationship with the audience which results from a platea-like position and allows the statement of generalized truth in a choric mode. 159
But usually this function is restricted to a single scene or a series of comic variations and extrapolations of he main course of serious events. It is only when, as in Richard III, Hamlet, Othello, and, partly, King Lear, the dramatic heirs of the Vice usurp and direct the main plot that their changing structural significance becomes infinitely expanded. Their extradramatic awareness becomes submerged and is adapted to the needs of a more highly self-contained dramatic action. Richard Gloucester, for instance, is presented as the image of a royal person in history, but at the same time he remains the punning, self-expressive ambidexter directing, in continuous contact with the audience, his own murderous rise to the throne. So the structural impact of the Vice tradition is felt inside the main plot and even as a grotesque stimulus to the main character as well. 159
The first great artistic portrait of a nascently tragic figure as central to the drama develops from a character—the Vice—deeply rooted in the popular tradition and now turned to a distinctively modern representation of reality. 160
However sinful he may be, Faustus craves “a greater subject (39); and this longing puts him far beyond the homiletic frame of reference. The challenge and inversion are not effected from the outside; they well up from within. Mephistophilis does remain the devilish tempter, but at the same time he is the hero’s intimate ally, the poetic projection and dramatic vehicle of Faustus’ own desires. 184
In shifting the spirit of inversion to within the hero himself, Marlowe created a new kind of character, one who is not only the object but also the Subjekt of the dramatic conflict, not only the victim but also the provocateur of a cosmic antagonism. 184
Insofar as it illuminated the character of the speaker, the way in which a speech was delivered could now be as dramatically significant as what was said. 200
And although such innovations in no way eliminated stock types, these elements now assumed their typicality not only though conventional (and hence easily recognizable0 poses or stock rhetorical formulate, but also by revealing specific patterns of behavior through skillfully juxtaposed word and action. As this affected the serious figures in drama, the changing conventions of speech reflected, and contributed to , the emergence of a new conception of character and a new image of the relationship between the individual and society. No longer functioning merely to represent preconceived attitudes or preordained patterns of static conflict such as the allegorical particularly well-suited to represent the movement (the relations and the struggle) between the world and the ego, environment and character. This involved the task of representing a variety of moral, psychological, and historical factors, a task that was finally achieved through a new dialectic between generality and detail, vision and experience. 200
It was in Marlowe’s plays that the serious hero, through a new realism in the interplay of speech and action, first moved to the foreground as an essentially individual and dynamic (as opposed to an allegorical and static, or unchanging) figure. 200
…an intellectual process that involves an empirically significant image of change and movement in thought or attitude. 201
Thus the pattern of the whole appears different: out of the antitheses of argument and counterargument comes an expression of genuine wavering an doubt, out of talking to himself…a genuine soliloquy, out of embellishing maxims a personal view of thingns to which Faustus has fought his way. 201
Far from being an achievement in technique alone, these new verbal modes of representation were predicated upon a changing apprehension of botht he function of art and the nature of human reality. 201
…new modes of correlating them more intimately and yet less directly.
Postallegorical 203
“The ‘character’ of a romance-hero is rather a rehearsed interior monologue than a meaningful and unpredictable dialogue with the outside world. To put it briefly, the hero has to realize his potential, not to come to terms with life” [quoting a student 204]
Hamlet also distances himself from the illusionistic modes of causality and locality and assumes a theatrically more neutral position from which he, as it were, collaborates with the audience. But, again, the traditional patterns of audience address are integrated into the dialogue with its mimesis of verbal exchange and leave-taking. Thus, an old popular stage convention is impressed into the service of a new kind of realism. 218
Potentialities of downstage acting.
Because of the variety of sources and influences that pervaded Elizabethan dramaturgy, monologue—like dialogue and the aside—was a changing and changeable form of speech that was capable of many different effects depending on the immediate dramatic context. Obviously monologue served both illusionistic and nonillusionistic, naturalistic and stylized functions. It could be used in aside or in the direct address of the prologue, or it could become a form of soliloquy or the kind of thinking out loud in which a character “in solitude renders an account to himself of his innermost thoughts and feelings.” In light of the rich and diverse dramatic functions of Shakespeare’s language, it is difficult to separate monologue and dialogue too dogmatically. We can say, however, that as a general rule the localization and neutralization of scene and action in downstage acting reflects, respectively, a dissociation from or identification with the audience, and that the structure and style of speech are largely determined by this relationship. 221
In Hamlet there are still signs of direct address (IV, 4, 47)[might want to look at this], but these are admittedly quite rare. More characteristic of play like Hamlet is an indirect audience contact that operates through an awareness of the theatrical medium itself. 222
He can, however, through his well-articulated counterperspective, expand the audience’s awareness and establish new, perhaps deeper and more comprehensive dramatic tensions that in their turn expand the meaning of the play as a whole. 227
The ritual identification between actor and audience, was, to be sure, a thing of the past in Shakespeare’s day; and so although Hamlet’s rapport with the audience may be linked to the self-introduction characteristic of the figures who traditionally acted on the platea, by the time Shakespeare made use of it, it had taken on entirely new forms and served entirely new functions. What has been termed the “extra-dramatic moment” in the Renaissance theater, then, was the product of both tradition and the new Renaissance conception of drama, by which means the connection between action and character became much more effective. 231
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