"Maluolio within": acting on the threshold between onstage and offstage spaces.

Publication: Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England

Publication Date: 01-JAN-06

Bookmark this article Print this article Link to this article Email this article Digg It! Add to del.icio.us RSS

COPYRIGHT 2006 Associated University Presses

IN his article, "Malvolio and the Dark House," John H. Astington deals with problems of staging Malvolio's imprisonment in Twelfth Night, 4.2. (1) The F1 text, which is the sole authority for the play, places the stage direction "Maluolio within" (TLN 2005; 4.2.19) before Malvolio's first speech from his prison: "Mal. Who cals there?" (TLN 2006; 4.2.20). (2) Including this speech, he delivers as many as twenty-two speeches from there. The F1 stage direction "Maluolio within" is usually thought to indicate that Malvolio is "entirely out of sight and speaking from the tiring-house, possibly from behind one of the stage doors," but such a staging, Astington believes, would involve practical problems of the following kind:



... on Shakespeare's stage Malvolio was not to be seen watching Feste in 4.2, or so the Folio implies, and although we must hear him, his voice would have reached an Elizabethan audience from 'within' the tiring house, through the thickness of a fairly substantial wooden door, and across the depth of the stage, thirty feet or so to the first rank of standing spectators in the yard.... The central physical problems of the scene, therefore, are those of audibility and visibility.... (3)

Considering this question further, Astington has concluded that the stage direction "within" does not always indicate that the character should remain unseen within the tiring-house, and, in his view, "the house as dark as hell [i.e., Malvolio's prison] could quite appropriately have lain below the Elizabethan trapdoor." (4)

It is certainly true that the meanings of early modern English theatrical terms were flexible. Even the meanings and usages of the most fundamental stage directions like "enter" and "exit" / "exeunt" were by no means fixed or consistent. (5) As Astington has pointed out, the meaning of "within" may have been much broader than the way we usually understand it. However, I am not convinced that the space below the stage could have been treated as "within." A close examination of stage directions containing "within" indicates something about the contemporary usage of this somewhat slippery theatrical term, and an analysis of various scenes in which a character speaks from offstage is also useful in this regard. As a result of examining these matters, I should like to consider the possibility of other interpretations of "Maluolio within."

I

Some stage directions referring to "within" also contain an adverb or adverbial phrase that specifies a particular part of "within." Some of these directions place a character behind a stage door. Not surprisingly, what they indicate is the character's pre-entry action.

One knockes within at the doore. (Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy 1602 Quarto, TLN 2137) (6) The Clowne bounce at the gate, within. (Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus QB, TLN 1675) (7)

On the face of it, each of these stage directions indicates that the character waiting offstage should knock at the door through which he is to enter onto the stage. However, it is equally possible that, especially in the instance of Doctor Faustus, a stage attendant (not the actor himself) produced the required sound effect by beating on something with an iron bar or the like. (8) Since offstage knocking may have involved the use of sound-producing equipment, about which we know very little, it seems prudent to exclude examples of offstage knocking and confine ourselves to characters' offstage speeches, as in the following examples from Othello and Richard II. When in Othello, 5.2 the unseen Emilia calls out to Othello to admit her, the Q1 text marks "Emillia calls within" (M2r; 5.2.85), while the F1 text provides "AEmilia at the doore" (TLN 3343; 5.2.85) and "AEmil. within" (TLN 3350; 5.2.89). Similarly, when in Richard II, 5.3 York makes a similar plea to be admitted, in order to reveal Aumerle's treachery, the Q1 stage direction for him reads "The Duke of Yorke knokes at the doore and crieth" (I2r; 5.3.38), while the F1 stage direction corresponding to it reads "Yorke within" (TLN 2535; 5.3.38). In such situations the obvious place for the entering character to stand is behind his entry door.

In 5.1 of The Virgin Martyr, a Red Bull play by Thomas Dekker and Philip Massinger, Harpax is first directed to be heard from "within" / "Within" (Q1, K4r, K4v; 5.1.81, 86), laughing on each occasion. (9) His voice then increases in volume; it is referred to as "lowder" (K4v; 5.1.94). The unseen devil also changes location, first shouting "At one end" (K4v; 5.1.95), then "At tother end" (K4v; 5.1.97), and finally laughing "At the middle" (K4v; 5.1.100). After laughing "Within" for the last time (L1r; 5.1.119), he is directed to enter "in a fearefull shape, fire flashing out of the study" (L1r; 5.1.122). It is most likely that the term "end" here denotes a flanking door, (10) and that "the middle" refers to the central doorway serving as "the study." While on the face of it there may seem no reason why he should not take various offstage positions including the specified three, in practice it may well be that he positioned himself behind the three openings in the frons scenae. In other words, when he laughs "within" for the first time at line 81, he would already be "At one end." He would remain there for a while, laughing and shouting several more times from the same position (lines 83, 84, 85, 86, 94, 95). He would then race to "tother end" (line 97), before moving back to "the middle" (line 100), and when he laughs "Within" at line 119, he would still remain "At the middle" so that he could come "out of the study" three lines later. This example suggests that even when an offstage voice is not closely related to the character's entrance, it may have been usual for the actor to deliver the speech from behind one of the openings in the tiring-house facade, as opposed to behind the solid wall of the frons scenae. The advantages in terms of increased audibility are, of course, obvious.

The following two anticipatory directions are both from Massinger's plays performed by the King's Men:

Harry: Willson: & Boy ready for the song at ye Arras: (Believe as You List, TLN 1968-72) Musicians come down to make ready for the song at Aras. (The City Madam Q1, K2r)

The manuscript playbook of Believe as You List, bearing Henry Herbert's license dated May 6, 1631, shows that the first direction is an annotation marked by the company bookkeeper. (The hand has been identified as that of Edward Knight, who held the position of bookkeeper in the King's company in the later twenties and early thirties of the seventeenth century.) (11) Later in the same scene, there are the bookkeeper's annotation "the Lute. strikes & then the Songe" (TLN 2022-23) and the author's original direction "musicq & a songe" (TLN 2025). The City Madam was licensed for performance by Herbert on May 25, 1632. (12) The second anticipatory direction, which is printed in the margin of the quarto, must have been originally written by the bookkeeper as he prepared the theater playbook lying behind the Q1 text. This warning is related to the following stage directions: "Musick. At one door Cerberus, at the other, Charon, Orpheus, Chorus" (L2v); "Sad musick. Enter Goldwire, and Tradewell as from prison ..." (L3r). In the two play texts, "at ye Arras" and "at Aras" are very likely to refer to the position immediately behind the stage hangings. In neither play does the dialogue provide any particular reason why the music and song should be delivered from there. (13) In each case, the bookkeeper's purpose of specifying the space behind the hangings was probably to ensure better audibility.

It seems almost certain that the stages of most early modern English playhouses had three entryways, that is, two flanking doors and a central doorway or opening. (14) One important question relevant to our present interest is whether the three doorways were all routinely curtained off, or whether the flanking doors were normally free of curtaining. (15) In the case of The City Madam, acted at the Blackfriars, the warning "Musicians come down to make ready for the song at Aras," which is printed several lines after the beginning of act 5, is also related to the marginal annotation printed some thirty lines before the end of the previous act: "Whil'st the Act Plays, the Footstep, little Table, and Arras hung up for the Musicians" (K1r). This direction seems to suggest that for the performance of the play all the doorways should be free of curtaining until the interval between acts 4 and 5. (16) The direction, "Musick. At one door Cerberus, at the other, Charon, Orpheus, Chorus" (L2v) appears in the play's closing scene (5.3). Although this direction does not include the term "enter," it is evident that the characters listed here should enter onto the stage. Sir John's words, "Appear swifter then thought" (L2v), which precede the direction, require their entrance. What the direction indicates is, therefore, the simultaneous use of a curtained space and both flanking doors by the musicians and the entering characters. (17) From these things it can be inferred that during the interval between acts 4 and 5, only the central opening in the stage wall was covered with the arras. In other plays as well, what seems likely is that, whether temporarily or permanently, only one of the doorways, presumably the central one, was covered with hangings. If this is not the case, stage directions like "Six Chaires placed at the Arras" (John Fletcher and William Rowley, The Maid in the Mill F1, 4A2v) and "Exit Gall behind the hangings" (Francis Beaumont and Fletcher, Philaster Q2, D2v...

Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.