Texts and Techniques

Abstract

Shakespeare’s playscripts are both immediately enjoyable and endlessly demanding. Their words can occupy so much attention that a reader may not wish to look further, towards the theatrical events in which they were intended to play their part. Add to the words a voice, an actor, and space on stage, an auditorium full of people drawn from various backgrounds, and the day, time, and place for consecutive performance of the entire play and then, clearly, the changes wrought on what the words on the page might communicate will, at first, baffle enquiry. Yet here is the centre of interest for anyone wishing to know how the texts can do their proper work.