Des. How is’t with you, my lord?
Oth. Well, my good lady. O, hardness to dissemble!
How do you, Desdemona?
[III, iv, 33-35]
Today the actor mutters the aside, “O, hardness to dissemble,” turns away, or in some other manner endeavors to give plausibility to the convention that Desdemona does not hear the remark. In final desperation, he may cut the line. The study of asides below shows that these were not the methods employed at the Globe.
Naturally, the high degree of spatial compression among the players caused a change in the quality of their relationships. When one actor comes closer to another than realistic action plausibly admits, as in the scene in Pericles, he destroys illusion, if it is one of reality, or he creates a new illusion, if it is one of convention. By standing near the defiled princess while he unravels the mystery, the actor of Pericles can convey his horror with maximum effectiveness, and by speaking his aside near her while he paints a word picture of her outer beauty and inner pollution, he can project his revulsion at her foul proximity. The Globe players, in the staging of asides, did not think in terms of creating an illusion of actuality but of relating the crucial elements of the narrative to each other. Within such a frame of reference the dilemma, folly, or scheme which gives rise to an aside is demonstrated more lucidly and more dramatically than it could be within a realistic frame of reference. What is true of the aside is equally true of observations, disguises, concealments, parleys, and other theatrical devices.
The conventions governing grouping of actors also governed the sequence of actions. From scene to scene, and within scenes, space had a fluidity which was accommodated to the narration. Generalization of locale required such fluidity, for locale was as broad or as narrow as occasion demanded. The picturing of locale, we must remember, was not accomplished with scenery. Nor was passage from one locale to another accomplished through physical changes in the stage façade, as some scholars have insisted. According to various views, the drawing of a curtain or a shift from one part of the stage to another or from one mansion to another was a conventional means of conveying a change of place to the audience. All these views assume in common that the establishment of space was dependent upon clues of a physical sort.
The application as well as the refutation of such an assumption can be illustrated in the assassination scene of Julius Caesar, which begins in the streets of Rome and moves to the Capitol (III, i). Ronald Watkins would express this sequence in a change in the stage itself. To mark the moment when the scene shifts into the Capitol, he would open the “inner stage” curtain to reveal a state for Caesar.[1] The possibility that the street and the Capitol were situated in the same imaginary area is never explored although there is no instance in a Globe play where a shift takes place like that which Watkins predicates. Before examining this scene in detail, it might be well to turn to another Globe scene which is unqualified evidence against Watkins’ method of staging.
In scene x of Miseries of Enforced Marriage, it will be recalled, Butler has convinced Ilford, Bartley, and Wentloe that he can provide them with rich wives. Appointing a time to introduce them to their “brides-to-be,” he arranges to meet first Ilford and then the other two “at the sign of the Wolfe against Gold-smiths row” (Sig. G1v). After these rakes depart, Butler soliloquizes upon the punishment that he will inflict upon them for their villainy. At the conclusion of this brief soliloquy, he does not exit. Instead, Thomas and John Scarborrow enter.