and to distract his audience by asking them positively to imagine Cæsar and Taurus and an army in a definite locality for two minutes, and then—hey presto—Antony and Enobarbus in the same locality, or any other, for the space of one. He was not that sort of a playwright. Dr. Chambers sees the difficulty. But he says that the play might almost be regarded as “a challenge to classicists,” and that “Shakespeare must surely have been in some danger, in this case, of outrunning the apprehension of his auditory….”[1]
With all respect I suggest that precisely here Dr. Chambers’ own misapprehension of the artistry of the Elizabethan stage, in its normal aspect and greatest aspect, is summed up and brought to ahead. He speaks quite rightly of Shakespeare’s “auditory.” That is just what they were, and all but nothing besides. The vision of the audience comprised the speakers and actors of the play, and such material things, as by their use of them, they brought to a momentary life, an apparent reality. Further than this it did not stray. Apart from the use that inner, outer, and upper stage were momentarily put to they were nothing, they were artistically non-existent. And scene after scene might pass with the actors moving to all intents merely in the ambit of the play’s story and of their own emotions; unless, the spell broken, they were suddenly and incongruously seen to be upon a stage.
Antony and Cleopatra may push this stagecraft to its limit; I believe it does. But that here was the essence of the stagecraft bred upon the inn stages is, I think, demonstrable. There were, of course, other influences at work; those traditions of the Court stage and of Paul’s, upon which Dr. Chambers insists. But I suggest that during the great days of the outdoor theatres these lay quiescent. They probably began to revive when the conditions which suited them were revived by the King’s company’s entry into the Blackfriars. The revival would take effect but slowly, for the accumulated weight of the other movement had to spend itself. And a further, quite important factor in the matter is that backgrounds can be made effective indoors and by a constant artificial
- ↑ These scenes are technically akin to such a scene as Julius Cæsar V. i., in which the armies confront one another. And Dr. Chambers himself quotes others, ranging over his whole period, which can be rounded into this convention. But had the audience been asked, any one of them, as to where precisely these generals and their armies were, it would have been thought an idle question and very disturbing to the actual illusion which was created.
