Recovering Shakespeare's Theatrical Vocabulary

Dessen investigates what a playgoer actually saw on stage at the first performance of, for example, Hamlet or Macbeth.

In this rigorous investigation of the staging of Shakespeare's plays, Alan Dessen wrestles with three linked questions: (1) what did a playgoer at the original production actually see? (2) how can we tell today? and (3) so what? His emphasis is upon images and on-stage effects (e.g. the sick-chair, early entrances, tomb scenes) easily obscured or eclipsed today. Basing his analysis on the 600 English professional plays performed before 1642, Dessen identifies a vocabulary of the theatre shared by Shakespeare, his theatrical colleagues and his playgoers, in which stage directions do not admit of neat dictionary definitions but can be glossed in terms of options and potential meanings. To explore such terms, along with various costumes and properties (keys, trees, coffins, books), is to challenge assumptions that underlie how Shakespeare is read, edited and staged today.

Preface; Note on texts and old spelling; 1. The problem, the evidence, and the language barrier; 2. Lost in translation; 3. Interpreting without a dictionary; 4. Juxtapositions; 5. Theatrical italics; 6. Sick chairs and sick thrones; 7. Much virtue in as; 8. The vocabulary of 'place'; 9. 'Romeo opens the tomb'; 10. Vanish and vanishing; Conclusion: so what?; Notes; Plays and editions cited; Index.

Alan Dessen draws upon stage directions from hundreds of plays (from 1425 to 1642) to investigate what a playgoer may actually have seen when watching the original productions of Hamlet or Macbeth. He argues for the presence of a shared vocabulary among playwrights, players and playgoers.