The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 27.149  Monday, 25 April 2016

 

[1] From:        Pervez Rizvi <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

     Date:         April 23, 2016 at 6:19:55 AM EDT

     Subject:    Re: Costume Changes and Exits 

 

[2] From:        Alan Dessen <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

     Date:         April 23, 2016 at 10:26:09 AM EDT

     Subject:    Othello's Clown 

 

 

[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------

From:        Pervez Rizvi <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

Date:         April 23, 2016 at 6:19:55 AM EDT

Subject:    Re: Costume Changes and Exits

 

John Briggs asked: “Could an actor immediately re-enter in a different costume as a different character?”

 

I don’t think the change of costume would be an insuperable obstacle. With a little rehearsal a change of costume could be effected very quickly. Moreover, in a theatrical culture in which doubling was (we think) routine, audiences would have been used to seeing the same actor pop up in different roles without his appearance always being transformed. In cases when one character is disguised as another, audiences can also be expected to understand the convention that when someone is in disguise the other characters do not recognise him even if the disguise is just a token.

 

The main objection to the practice John wonders about is that it is not what you expect from a professional playwright. A professional would just write a few lines of dialogue by other characters, to allow time for a change of costume by the actor assuming the other role or the disguise. In cases of disguise, a professional playwright would also make sure the audience understood that they were watching actor A playing character X disguised as character Y, rather than actor A doubling the roles of character X and character Y, which is what they might otherwise think. That is just what happens in King Lear. When Kent first enters disguised as Caius he immediately lets the audience know what’s going on, by referring to himself as “banishd Kent”. 

 

As I said, it’s conventional for disguises to be just tokens. Another fictional Kent is not recognised by anyone as Superman when he puts on his glasses to become Clark Kent. In King Lear, none of the other characters recognise Kent when they see him as Caius at Gloucester’s castle. It’s an interesting question whether Cordelia recognises him at the moment when the two of them enter together in scene 4.7. We could suppose that Kent had revealed his identity to her offstage, but thematically a more interesting interpretation is to suppose that she is seeing him for the first time since they parted in scene 1.1. He is still disguised (she tells him to “Be better suited”) but she instantly recognises him because she begins by referring to him as “O, thou good Kent”. We could, if we like, take this as underlining the play’s point that, unlike her father, Cordelia can see people for who they really are, whether they are dressed in tattered clothes or furred gowns.

 

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------

From:        Alan Dessen <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

Date:         April 23, 2016 at 10:26:09 AM EDT

Subject:    Othello's Clown

 

Since I have not been reading through all the posts, I am not going to comment on the larger argument about Iago-Clown. I can, however, provide some context for the 3.3-3.4 exit of Iago (after one of his most powerful lines in the script) and the appearance of the Clown (and Desdemona). Years ago I had lunch with Fredson Bowers who, in discussion of a comparable problem, invoked what he termed “the Law of Re-Entry” whereby a figure who exits at the end of one scene cannot immediately appear in the next. I, for one, do not believe in such “laws” (Shakespeare and his colleagues were not that rigorous in following supposed rules) – and, without doing a lot of research, quickly found an obvious exception (look at the end of 5.6 and the opening s.d. of 5.7 of 3 Henry VI for Richard’s exit-reappearance). Elsewhere, to show a figure moving from one room in a house to another Heywood has Geraldine exit at one door and re-enter at another (The English Traveller). Both situations make good sense today (Richard has just had a big speech after killing Henry VI and can trail behind the processional entry).

 

Other kinds of evidence do survive about quick changes in costume, even within a single scene, but there is always a time allowed, especially if the change is from a male to a female character. The clearest examples are from the troupe moral plays from the 1560s and 1570s. E.g., the penultimate scene of Thomas Lupton’s All for Money (1578 - likely performed by four actors) provides a trial  in which two figures remain on stage and two other quick change artists alternate as different petitioners, but time is allowed for the switches. Then there is the s.d. in from George Wapull’s The Tide Tarrieth No Man (1576) where the Vice and another actor are directed to fight “to prolong the time while Wantonesse maketh her ready.”

 

The Iago-Clown exit-re-entry suggested here seems to me the kind of effect that would appeal to an inventive director or reader today but not one that fits with stage practice in the original performances.

 

Alan Dessen

 

 

 

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