Page. That silke will I go buy, and in that time
Shall M. Slender steale my Nan away,
And marry her at Eaton: go, send to Falstaffe straight.
[The Merry Wives of Windsor, IV, iv, 73-75. F.]
In such speeches, the actor had no time realistically and credibly to leave the individual or group to whom he was speaking. A slight turn of the body or face or a change in voice had to suffice. But the evidence of Pericles indicates that the action may have been deliberate and emphatic rather than precipitous and surreptitious. The abundance of asides is sufficient testimony that their delivery was not slighted. However, instead of suggesting by the division of solo asides into two groups that there were two methods of delivery, I suggest that the first group, for which the evidence is negative, were staged in the same way as the second, that is, not realistically but conventionally.
The asides were spoken from all parts of the stage. Actors delivered them from the enclosure as well as from the very front of the stage. Both Marina and Pericles speak rather long asides from the cabin or tent of Pericles’ ship, certainly a discovered setting (V, i, 95-97, 163-167). But there is no specific evidence that indicates the method of delivery. The traditional picture of the cliché aside being delivered by the actor out of the corner of his mouth or from behind the back of his hand as he leans toward the spectator did not originate in the Globe playhouse. Instead, as the following scene from Troilus and Cressida shows, the actor cultivated the irony or mockery of the aside quite overtly. Perhaps the other actors had to “freeze” during the aside, for there is no indication that they covered the solo aside with action as they did the conversational aside.
Occasionally, an elaborate pattern of asides is unfolded, often including conversational and solo asides in the same sequence. In these extended asides the formal character of staging at the Globe is readily perceptible. One particularly mannered example occurs in Troilus and Cressida. Ulysses has convinced the Grecian chiefs that they must pit Ajax against Achilles if they are to gain the services of the latter. Following this advice, Agamemnon flatters Ajax, stirring his pride and vanity. Ulysses seconds Agamemnon, asserting that Ajax should not be asked to go to Achilles as a messenger. I quote at length, italicizing the asides so that the pattern may be clear.
Nest. O, this is well! He rubs the vein of him.
Diom. And how his silence drinks up this applause!