Stage directions: from page to playhouse

Stage directions are a new research area among scholars of early modern drama. ‘Stage direction’ is a term that invites the reader of a play to imagine the written dialogue as dramatic action staged in the theatre. Stage directions can be remnants of a text used for performance, or equally, they may be put in after performance, to evoke action for readers. In other words, they may survive from original guidance notes to performers to direct their movement, or their purpose may be to recreate that movement in the reader’s imagination. Stage directions - for instance, ‘exit’, ‘enter’, ‘descend’, and ‘above’ - are susceptible to revision and to error. The stage directions in Shakespeare’s early modern editions can be of both types, both ‘fictional’ and ‘theatrical’. In more recent editions, editorial policy can partly shape how the reader imagines, say, Macbeth taking place both on stage and in Scotland at the same time. Stage directions in modern editions are often printed in square brackets to indicate alterations and additions. This is designed, as Jowett puts it, ‘to highlight the problem in staging and invite the reader to consider possible alternatives to the words enclosed within them’.1 In this paper I will analyse the meaning and status of stage directions in printed texts. The main focus will be on whether the stage directions in these surviving texts, are written by the author himself, the theatre scribe, members of the theatre companies, or later editors, paying particular attention to the early texts of Middleton’s The Witch and Shakespeare’s later plays as evidence of performance practice.