Chapter Five
THE STAGING
I. STAGE ILLUSION AT THE GLOBE PLAYHOUSE
Staging, like acting, is an art of illusion, but its illusion, unlike that of acting, deals not with being but with time and space. In the manipulation of time, it has long been recognized that Shakespeare is a master. An oft-cited example of his mastery occurs in the guard scene in Othello (II, iii). During the course of the action a night is made to pass. At the beginning of the scene, the time is not yet “ten o’ the clock” (15). At the conclusion, Iago remarks, “By th’ mass, ’tis morning!” (384). In the midst of the alarum, Othello speaks of night and Iago agrees that Cassio should see Desdemona “betimes in the morning” (335). Here, as elsewhere, Shakespeare creates his own illusion of time corresponding neither to actual chronology nor to agreed convention, but solely to narrative demands.
It has also been generally recognized that Shakespeare may utilize more than one time scheme within a single play. For example, after Edmund has shown “Edgar’s” letter to his father, the Duke of Gloucester, he assures him that he will seek out Edgar as quickly as he can,
convey the business as I shall find means, and
acquaint you withal.
[I, ii, 109-111]
In Act II, scene i, three scenes later, he expedites his plot, presumably without delay, for the action picks up where it had left off. In the intervening scenes, however, Lear spends sufficient time at Goneril’s castle for her to complain to the Steward, “By day and night, he wrongs me!” (I, iii, 3). Certainly the spectator is to suppose that a good portion of a month has gone by.
Through a kind of illusion the author accelerates or decelerates the passage of time to fit the needs of his narrative. Thus, the time sequence varies during the course of the play. In some scenes time is extended, in others highly contracted. Antony is told, only a moment after the mob, which he has stirred to fury, rushes out to revenge Caesar’s death, that Brutus and Cassius have fled before this same mob. The reference point, manifestly, is not the length of time that the events would require in actuality, or a fixed standard of time, such as the twenty-four-hour neoclassical day, or a symbolic dimension, such as the morality time scheme of man’s life on earth, but the duration of time required to tell the story. This narrative ordering of time, moreover, has a parallel in a similar narrative ordering of space.
Simultaneous staging illustrates the operation of such ordering of space. By simultaneous staging is meant, in this instance, the practice of mounting more than one setting on stage at the same time so that during one scene the setting for another is already present. The degree to which it was employed by the popular companies is a matter of controversy.