2 - Shakespeare’s Life, Times, and Stage

Summary

There were only two books in the ‘Theatre’ section of the Times Literary Supplement listings page in the issue for the week ending 15 February 1990. One was called Theatre Semiotics. The other was Broadway Anecdotes. It is a memorable juxtaposition which neatly defines the epistemological range of the subject, albeit in terms of its extremes: knowledge can be either unapproachably abstract or insignificantly concrete, with the attendant dangers of, on the one hand, producing entries for Pseuds Corner (of which more later), and, on the other, achieving mediocrity as mere anecdote is loosed upon the world. The best work in the field usually cultivates the art of landing gracefully between two stools, and there are many ways of doing so with distinction.

A perennial interest, at the theoretical end of the scale, is the interpretation of what actually happens at performances, not in the sense of recording hard fact but of developing a more precise understanding of the process of theatre in general. Several critics this year have converged, from the very different angles of texts, productions, and theory, on the issue of how and where authority is located in performance. At two extremes of the debate we find Ralph Berry and Balz Engler.