Scales of Time and Shakespeare

Presided by Sarah Werner, Independent Scholar

First Presenter: Christopher D'Addario, Gettysburg College
"Inside Time in Shakespeare's Late Plays"

Dr. D'Addario spoke to what happens to the perceptions of an audience when it moved indoors to the Black Friars Theater within the city walls of London from the outdoor Globe experience. 

The Black Friars theater was acquired by the Kings Men, and in viewing The Winter's Tale at this new venue, the audience would have been aware that they were inside the city walls, as opposed to a more wide open Southwark.  Chaos would have been caused by the theater goers, with the narrow, cooked streets crowded with coaches, horses, and unruly theatre goers.  Inside, the galleries would have been crowded and the candle lighting would have strong.  A sense of isolation would have been emphasized. 

D'Addario says that an audience could imagine an existence far removed from time, and that the smaller, indoor space of the Black Friars, with its limits put on actor movements, would have contributed to this feeling.  The audience would have been able to closely observe the faces of actors, especially in the tableaux scenes, which focuses on the stasis of time rather than its movement.  Since people fear the transformation of time, which naturally comes with the passage of time, they desire the static present.  Moving the performance into a secluded space would have slowed down the moment and allowed the audience to see how much motion there is in a still, silent moment--that nothing is ever settled; when time freezes, the audience becomes aware of the candlelight, the rustle of costume, the shimming of neighbor movements.

2nd Presenter:  Katherine Attie, Towson University
"Redeeming Time: Prince Hal's Reformation and the Poetics of the Everyday"

In discussing Prince Hal in Shakespeare's Henry IV, Dr. Attie discussed how rather than being a memorable climatic event promised, the reformation of Prince Hal, the future Henry V, turns out to be as spectacular as grass turning green.  The reformation actually turns out to be a revealing of quiet, constructive process. 

Attie says that Shakespeare's early plays include a vast temporal span in his early plays.  Consequently, Hal is very attentive to the hour glass.  Henry's reverie reveals smaller time periods that are an ode to time, a way of ordering human activity, and suggests that routine doesn't result in boredom, but beauty.  Henry, in fact, imagines that he is in control of time because he created a sun dial, but his understanding of actual time is not understood.  He mostly counts hours of leisure, not work.

Shakespeare amplifies the portrayal of the habitual effort involved in everyday work with the quiet beauty of routine.  He explores and emphasizes everyday labor, which was both an Elizabethan request and considered a Calvinistic triumph.  It wasn't mere labor; it gave life meaning.  When Hal leads his men into battle, he is laboring within his calling; he has been working on self-improvement all along.  And he has changed toward time, valuing it like never before.  With labor, lifelong existence is profitable.  Ultimately, Shakespeare conveys the daily routine as a pattern that conveys the meaning that ordinary is beautiful.

Third Presenter:  Paul Menzer, Mary Baldwin College

"One Time:  Shakespeare in the Key of Anecdote"

This speaker was a funny man, which is appropriate to the topic of anecdote.  In fact, he began his talk by pointing out the incongruousness of speaking abouy theater at such an early hour (earliest AM session).  Then he shared an anecdote about a Peter O'Toole performance in Twelfth Night, which he heard shortly after the death of that actor.  It was a funny story told about drunk actors, which has been told and retold, which has resulted in many variations and original authors.  250 years, he said, can change an anecdote--the years, in fact, are what have made the story anecdotal.  His point was that theatrical anecdotes are very much part of theatrical history.  He expanded that theater history is told through anecdotes; they are a form of vernacular criticisms.  They resolve the unresolvable about the plays. 

Tracing of anecdotes about plays, he says, is a weird branch of theatrical history, but they are also a form of prophecy.  The phrase, “one time” is a time stamp, and tracing them provides a history.  Anecdote is not a fake memory--it is a promising note of what will happen again.  They are recollections of the past and promise of the future. 

Because anecdotes are often absurd, they would never stand up to the kind of scrutiny of involved in archives--there is no specific date or time ascribe directly to an anecdote, making them hostile to systemization.  One can’t organize the experience.  "One time" is an antonym to a date, time.  Anecdotal time is time without specificity.  Anecdotes, Dr. Menzer says, do count time, but it's the kind of time that doesn't use a clock to count. 

Menzer finished his talk by saying that actors live out pre scripted lives, finished before it begins.  Anecdotes are all about preventing the play from running its pre-scripted course.  It is a protest, and actors are reluctant recorders.  Anecdotes interrupt, but they don't care about the consequences:  interruptions introduce breaks in the sameness; they produce a deviant history.  Ultimately, anecdotes are both an echo and a promise.