Messengers on Stage - IS MUNI - Masarykova univerzita

Masarykova univerzita

Filozofická fakulta

Ústav slavistiky

Literární komparatistika

Mgr. Tomáš Kačer

New Messengers:

Reportage in Late Twentieth Century British

and American Mainstream Drama

Vedoucí práce: doc. Mgr. Pavel Drábek, Ph.D.

2012

I declare that I have worked on this dissertation independently,

using only the sources listed in the works cited section.

Prohlašuji, že jsem disertační práci vypracoval

samostatně s využitím uvedených pramenů a literatury.

.....................................................

Motto:

’Tis done already, and the messenger gone.

(W. Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra III.3)

Acknowledgements:

Infinite thanks to my supervisor Pavel Drábek for being my teacher,

many thanks to all my colleagues for their support,

and all my friends for being there whenever I needed them.

My gratitude to my family and their patience is beyond expression.

The greatest thankyou belongs to my wife Zuzana for going through the whole

process with me and standing by my side in good times and in bad, as we vowed.

New Messengers

Reportage in Late Twentieth Century British

and American Mainstream Drama

Table of Contents

1. Prelude ........................................................................................................................ 1

1.1. The Thesis Statement ............................................................................................ 3

1.2. Structure of the Dissertation ................................................................................. 6

1.3. Why Mainstream ................................................................................................. 12

2. The Messenger Enters ............................................................................................... 20

2.1. The Messenger as Convention ............................................................................ 20

Oedipus the King by Sophocles ..................................................................... 22

Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare ............................................. 25

Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams ....................................................... 33

3. Theoretical Background ............................................................................................ 37

3.1. The Poetic Tradition ........................................................................................... 37

3.1.1. The Historical Development ....................................................................... 42

3.1.2. Aristotelian Poetics ..................................................................................... 46

3.2. The Prague School Theory of Theatre and Drama ............................................. 50

3.2.1. The Prague School Heritage ....................................................................... 50

3.2.2. The Aesthetic Function ............................................................................... 59

3.2.3. The Referential Function ............................................................................ 64

3.2.4. Some Later Developments .......................................................................... 66

3.3. Morphology and Theory of Actants.................................................................... 75

3.3.1. The Propp Inspiration ................................................................................. 77

3.3.2. The Messenger as Character-Function ....................................................... 80

4. Brecht’s Heritage ...................................................................................................... 85

4.1. The Epic .............................................................................................................. 86

4.2. The V-Effekt ....................................................................................................... 94

5. The Reportage ......................................................................................................... 100

6. Introducing New Messengers ................................................................................. 109

6.1. Further Details Concerning the New Messenger .............................................. 113

7. New Messengers on the Stage ................................................................................ 119

7.1. Applications of the New Messenger ................................................................. 119

7.1.1. A Remark Concerning the Case Studies ................................................... 120

Copenhagen by Michael Frayn ..................................................................... 121

8. New Messengers in Action ..................................................................................... 123

8.1. New Messengers Pushing the Action Forward ................................................. 123

Democracy by Michael Frayn ...................................................................... 123

Arcadia by Tom Stoppard ............................................................................. 127

8.1.1. The Voice from the Gadget ...................................................................... 132

The Real Inspector Hound by Tom Stoppard ............................................... 133


The Piano Lesson by August Wilson ........................................................... 144

8.1.2. It’s All in the Play ..................................................................................... 148

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard ......................... 149

Noises Off by Michael Frayn ....................................................................... 161

8.2. Interpreting for Others ...................................................................................... 169

Night and Day by Tom Stoppard .................................................................. 170

8.2.1. The Eye-Witness Testifies ........................................................................ 179

Fences by August Wilson ............................................................................. 182

Two Trains Running by August Wilson ...................................................... 184

Jitney by August Wilson ............................................................................... 186

8.2.2. New Messengers as Political Agents ........................................................ 191

Alphabetical Order by Michael Frayn .......................................................... 191


Afterlife by Michael Frayn ........................................................................... 204

Rock’n’Roll by Tom Stoppard ..................................................................... 212

The Coast of Utopia Trilogy by Tom Stoppard ............................................ 219

8.3. Informing (not only about) the Actual World ................................................... 229

Hapgood by Tom Stoppard ........................................................................... 232

8.3.1. New Messengers as Teaching Agents ...................................................... 236

Arcadia by Tom Stoppard ............................................................................. 237

Copenhagen by Michael Frayn ..................................................................... 243

The Coast of Utopia Trilogy by Tom Stoppard ............................................ 248

8.4. The New Messenger’s Applications: a Conclusion .......................................... 258

9. Epilogue .................................................................................................................. 266

10. Works Cited .......................................................................................................... 268

Summary ...................................................................................................................... 279

Shrnutí .......................................................................................................................... 282

Kačer 1

1. Prelude

“A whole is that which has a beginning, a middle, and an end,” writes Aristotle in the

Poetics (1.VII), thus setting one of the most influential theoretical observations about

the inner relations in a work of art in the history of Western humanities. Besides a

descriptive and analytical qualities, the quote – like the whole of the Poetics – has a

prescriptive one, too.

It has not been chosen arbitrarily out of a stock of appropriate Aristotle’s quotes to

make beginnings of a piece of writing about drama and theatre, which is what the

present thesis will attempt to be as soon as the reader proceeds towards its middle and

end. As it is a well-established tradition to begin (this beginning) with first things first,

let me raise the reader’s awareness to that Aristotle’s statement proves to be the ultimate

signalling phrase marking the line of thought to which this thesis subscribes in a

twofold fashion.

The first signal which an appearance of the Philosopher’s name in the very first

sentence sends out is the recognition of the founding role of the Poetics in the Western

tradition of the study of literature and drama in particular. Following Lubomír Doležel’s

perspective laid out in his Occidental Poetics, this thesis develops the line of argument

which sees Aristotle as the direct – though distant – predecessor of some approaches to

drama which flourished in the twentieth century. Aristotle speaks of the structure of a

piece of drama, thus elevating it to one of the main aesthetic principles of dramatic art.

A study within these bounds is then called poetics. More subtle and detailed analyses

back-referring to Aristotle’s focus on the well done structure find their most outspoken

supporters in the teachings of the (Russian) Formalists and various Structuralist. In this

context, the important role of the Prague School and its influence and contribution to the

Kačer 2

study of drama and literature will be mentioned, as well as more recent developments

mainly in the field of theatre/drama semiotics. Teachings of these schools, with due

respect to the variability of approaches given the time of origin of several writings and

interdisciplinary developments during the course of the twentieth century as well as the

most recent reactions to them in the zero years of the twenty-first century will serve as

the main theoretical and methodological background of this thesis.

The second signal of the quote marks the inner organization of the argument of this

thesis. What begins as an observation about a change in utilizing an old convention of

the messenger as a dramatic character with specific qualities and functions, is developed

into a study of the varieties of its new use among three contemporary English writing

authors, ending up as a theoretical claim casting a new perspective on dealing with this

conventional figure’s transformation in contemporary, post-Brechtian drama. Yet, it

needs to be admitted that the thesis does not develop in a neat, stylistically pure fashion,

as the levels it operates on intertwine on various occasions, cross-influencing the

argument and its developments.

Thomas Hobbes claimed there were two types of authors, didactic ones who only

presented the results of their private reasoning (such as he saw himself), and

contemplative ones who let the reader follow their argumentation in the development.

This thesis is rather written in the other tradition of writing, which leads the reader

along. I hope it makes it possible for the reader to see the development and directions of

my thoughts when they are approaching the end.

Kačer 3

1.1. The Thesis Statement

The present thesis deals with a traditional type of character in the dramatic

convention – the messenger. It identifies various transformations and variations of this

character in the history of drama and studies its more contemporary uses, while

understanding the the messenger as a certain type of character bearing specific

functions. It claims that the messenger as a character remained a crucial character type

especially in the historical/political mainstream (Broadway, well-written, etc.) play but

it also underwent several radical transformations.

The thesis looks at the uses of the conventional messenger as well as its transformed

appearances. It claims that in the recent decades and within the given context of the

concerned dramatic works, the traditional messenger has been substituted with a

follower, which I call the new messenger. These contemporary messenger-figures on

the one hand carry out the basic function of the conventional messenger, which is to

report about facts and events from outside the frame of the stage action, and as such

they fulfil his original role of bringing new information to push the action forward. On

the other hand, the new messengers have acquired several new roles, namely that of

widening the fictional world of the play when they feed the other characters and

audience with supplementary information, which create the context but do not need to

be directly connected with the development of the plot. This use of the new messenger

is identified in connection with the concerned historical/political mainstream plays as

assigning them the function of political agents. Furthermore, the new messenger also

continues in the didactic tradition, when he presents information from scientific and

other areas of contemporary knowledge, thus speaking directly about phenomena from

the actual world occupied by the audience. The thesis builds up its observations on a

Kačer 4

fusion of several theoretical traditions, when it focuses on the language and the modes

of communication associated with the messenger (the reportage), includes an approach

capitalizing on the narrative grammar tradition (study of the structural role of the

character as a type) and also attributes a great influence on the development of the

messenger convention to Brecht’s Epic theatre (shift in the general understanding of

how certain dramatic conventions work on the stage).

This thesis presents a working definition of the new messenger as a main character

with a name possessing specific qualities such as civil occupation that grant him

exclusive and legitimate access to information outside the scope of the logic of the

dramatic action while remaining a useful and widely used type of character. Lastly

focusing on the linguistic and narrative levels it gives a number of examples of

characters that legitimately leave their roles for a short while to switch to the narrative

mode in order to deliver a reportage from a sphere of their expertise, such as hands-on

experiences from the past in the case of eye-witnesses, political and historical

commentaries in the case of politicians and journalists, as well as lessons in various

areas of science and history of the Western thought in the case of scientists and

philosophers.

To show the conventional messenger and the variability of its traditional uses, King

Oedipus, Antony and Cleopatra, and Glass Menagerie are analysed in a separate

chapter. As far as the various types of the new messenger are concerned, this thesis

remains in the mainstream production and focuses on plays by Frayn, Stoppard and

Wilson, capitalising on the success of their plays which signals an understandability of

the application of a transformed type of conventional character, the new messenger.

Case studies of Frayn’s Democracy, Stoppard’s Arcadia, Wilson’s The Piano Lesson as

well as others show how the new messenger retains the main function of the traditional

Kačer 5

messenger, which is to push the action forward. Analyses of Stoppard’s Night and Day

and Rock’n’Roll, Wilson’s Fences, Two Trains Running and Jitney and Frayn’s Afterlife

are among those that identify a role of the new messenger which already separates it

from its older counterpart, when the new messenger interprets facts and events from the

fictional (and sometimes actual, too) world to the others, thus becoming a political

agent. Finally, sub-chapters focusing on Stoppard’s Hapgood and The Coast of Utopia

trilogy, as well as Frayn’s Copenhagen, show the new messengers in these plays in the

light of the didactic tradition of the stage when they operate as teaching agents.

Although the need for a messenger and its traditional function survives, the

application has undergone a radical structural change which lead to the abandonment of

the conventional messenger and introduction of the more dynamic figure, the new

messenger.

Kačer 6

1.2. Structure of the Dissertation

It is perhaps necessary to admit here, and thereby prepare the reader for it, that the

present thesis does not unfold in a clear-cut, straightforward fashion. There are several

types of argument structures employed. Chapter 2 is a historical overview; chapters 3 to

5 are theoretical; chapters 6 and 7 are deductive, building up on the principle of what

the new messenger is; and finally, chapter 8 consists of case studies following the

analytical, inductive tradition. The reason for this methodological eclecticism is that

there are a number of ways that lead to the subject matter, which is the character of the

new messenger.

The thesis looks at the new messenger from several perspectives and each of them

find their expression in one or several chapters and call for a different type of argument

to be sound and persuasive. When taken into account all at once, they create a multi-

layered picture of the new messenger as a new convention, a character-type, a specific

dramatic function, and a vehicle of artistic communication.

First, the choice of authors and their works needs to be explained. This has to do with

the development of the topic of this dissertation, which began as research in the field of

implementing scientific issues onto the stage. This is where the material for this topic

included two English playwrights, Michael Frayn and Tom Stoppard. After looking into

where their ability to explain science to theatre audience comes from, I realized that it is

their journalist careers that made them skilful mediators of information. The focus

shifted towards journalism and the stage – a thematically broader issue. After yet

another extrapolation, I somehow identified the journalist as a special type of the

messenger as it is known from the history of drama, that is to say a character whose

purpose is to inform and bring news. This is where August Wilson came in, as he had

Kačer 7

long been my favoured American dramatist. I admired his The Twentieth Century Cycle

as a fictional chronicle, a dramatic version of a series of reports about African-American

inhabitants of Pittsburgh by the decades of the 20th century. The idea was to compare

the journalistic approach to “actual” issues with “fictional” ones – and the topic became

even broader. After all, Wilson also published extensively in the newspaper, albeit his

topics mainly resided in his involvement in the issue of African-American rights and

African-American aesthetics, rather than reporting journalism. At this moment, an

inquiry into a theoretical coverage of these three authors began.

But then, as it happens, the more I tried to identify the messenger as a unifying

factor, the more the messenger alluded me, until I found that there are no messengers in

the plays! Yet, this moment of void proved to be a starting point for a fresh start. The

messenger was gone, but somehow still lingered. It did not disappear completely, it was

transformed and found new ways of entering the stage. There came idea of the new

messenger, a component of the plays which has some of the properties of the old

messenger but holds a whole set of new ones. The structure of the present thesis thus

maps out the various ways of approach to the topic, and I believe it eventually shows

that the idea of the new messenger is a viable and functional concept.

The decision to remain with Frayn, Stoppard and Wilson is based on two premises.

The first one is that it was the study of their works that lead to the notion of the new

messenger in the first place. The second one is that they are mainstream authors and as

such they work with dramatic tools and techniques which are functional, generally

understandable, and acceptable by the audience. The second argument is important

when this thesis claims that the new messenger meets all the mentioned criteria and as

such deserves a critical attention, which it has not received. The sub-chapter 1.4 “Why

Mainstream” deals with the relevance of dealing with mainstream for a theoretical study

Kačer 8

of drama and it explains what this thesis understands as mainstream. It also supports the

claim that the new messenger has become a widely used dramatic convention.

Chapter 2 introduces the messenger – the classical convention used throughout the

history of drama. It is a historical overview of what I consider the most influential uses

of the messenger in the history of drama and as such it presents analyses of Oedipus the

King by Sophocles, Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare, and Glass

Menagerie by Tennessee Williams. The chapter explains how the convention of the

messenger works and shows its three various uses. It is in breaking away from the

conventional usages of the messenger that the new messenger could begin to function as

a new convention.

Chapter 3 is called “Theoretical Background” and it consists of several sub-chapters.

It introduces theories that have shaped the theoretical understanding of the new

messenger as it is handled in the present thesis. It begins with the poetic tradition

capitalising on Aristotle as a part of the Western approach to the study of drama, which

views a piece of art as structure that can then be analysed. This view contributed to a

concern of the new messenger as a component of the dramatic structure with its specific

place and purpose. The chapter continues with selected issues from the works of the

Prague School. It identifies the School as an important source for the semiotic approach

to drama and theatre, which also shapes the understanding of how the element of the

new messenger operates within a play when viewed as a system of signs. A greater

attention is paid to the issue of the functions of language, mainly on the coexistence and

interaction between the aesthetic function of language and the referential function of

language. This approach of the Prague School makes a theoretical background to

understanding how characters switch between various modes of delivery (from dialogue

to narrative, for example), which this thesis identifies as one of the principles of the new

Kačer 9

messenger’s materialization on the stage.

The chapter then continues with the last part that deals with another theoretical

concept, which also comes from the structural poetic tradition. This concept is narrative

grammar, in particular as devised by Vladimir Propp and then applied to drama by A. J.

Greimas. Both theoreticians came up with a system of character-functions, that is to say

with an applicable set of roles within the development of a narrative in general.

Particular characters are then only viewed as carriers of these functions. However

abstract and limiting this approach may seem, it is convenient to view the new

messenger from this perspective when its abstract and general qualities need to be

deduced. So, these three perspectives form the main theoretical background of the

concept of the new messenger, based on which the deductive argument is based.

Chapter 4 deals with Bertolt Brecht and it proved to be necessary to include it for

two reasons. One, Brecht tends to come up when the issue of “political” drama arises, as

is the case of the three authors in focus in the present thesis. More about that in the

chapter itself. Two, the chapter claims that it was Brecht’s influence that had a direct

influence on the emergence of the new messenger. The reason to hold this stance is that

Brecht’s radical innovations redefined theatrical illusion and exposed some theatrical

conventions. As a result, these conventions stopped fulfilling their role, that is to say

that the audience not only see through them, they do not accept them. The convention of

the messenger is among them, which has to do with Brecht’s use of the reportage. In

this sense, drama needed to substitute for the messenger and Brecht stood at the

emergence of the new messenger.

Chapter 5, “The Reportage” capitalises on the theoretical chapter and identifies the

reportage as a narrative technique which is the main identifying element of the

messenger as well as its new follower. It stands in contrast to Brecht’s use of the

Kačer 10

reportage and shows how it works when employed to inform about facts and/or events

from outside the frame of the on-stage action, which is, in fact the main role of the

(new) messenger. This chapter also theorizes the three case studies which make the

introduction of the present thesis, thus creating ground for introducing the new

messenger.

This happens in Chapter 6. This chapter is central to the present thesis, as it on the

one hand follows from all the preceding chapters with their historical and theoretical

perspectives, and on the other hand it can be viewed as a generalization based on the

analyses performed in Chapter 8, which represents the second half of the thesis. As

such, the chapter presents to the reader the key elements of the issue of the new

messenger when viewed as a character-type with a specific role within the structure of

the plot development, but it also introduces the mechanism that allow characters to step

out of their roles and assume the role of the messenger for the given time. However, this

chapter would seem unconvincing without the preceding theory and the claims it make

call for studies of applications which are about to be presented in the following

chapters.

Chapter 7 is an introduction to Chapter 8 as it explains its structure in general terms.

It is therefore Chapter 8 that then forms a substantial part of the thesis. It contains of a

number of case studies of plays by Frayn, Stoppard, and Wilson. These case studies are

done from the perspective of identifying and explaining the role of the new messenger,

focusing on those aspects of the plays that are relevant to the issue. This is why the

chapter is divided into three large sub-chapters, which are differentiated by the role that

the new messenger has. The first part deals with the new messenger as the agent that

pushes the action forward, which is a function that it shares with the traditional

messenger. However, specific new applications are introduced in the latter two major

Kačer 11

parts. One is a presentation of the new messenger as an interpreter of facts and events,

which make the new messenger a political agent of the contemporary mainstream

theatre. In this way, the new messenger is a propeller of social debate and

communication, which follows from the tradition of drama and theatre in particular as

the focus point of a public forum. The second one is the teaching role of the new

messenger when extrafictional information about the actual historical is explicated to

the audience. Here, the new messenger follows in another tradition of drama, which is

its educative role. A summary of the given case studies with general conclusions

completes the chapter.

The Epilogue is a short farewell to the topic of the dissertation.

Kačer 12

1.3. Why Mainstream

From a certain perspective, Frayn, Stoppard and Wilson may be considered

mainstream authors. Although each of them has certain specifics, which distinguish

them from artistically dubious and theoretically/critically unrewarding commercial

mainstream, their dramas meet requirements and standards of both Broadway and West

End. This is connected with the fact that some, most, or all of their plays are eligible for

commercial mainstream productions and as such won recognition among both

theatregoers and critics. This introductory chapter deals with the most typical feature of

a “well written” commercial mainstream play, discusses its affiliation with Broadway

and West End, thus defining it, and explains that the selection of mainstream authors

works as a good basis for a convincing argument that the new messenger as a character

type has become a widely accepted, used, and understood convention.

In the English speaking world, there are two traditional centres of commercial

mainstream theatre – Broadway in New York and West End in London. For the purpose

of this dissertation, it is useless to describe details of both venues concerning numbers

of theatres and their histories. I am using the terms “Broadway” and “West End” to

identify the two areas in the American and English cities, respectively, as well as a

metaphor for the commercial mainstream theatre in general, which is associated with

them, as Broadway “has become synonymous with New York theatre in particular and

American commercial theatre in general” (Chambers 112), and although there are also a

few subsidized theatres in West End (such as the National) that promote quality non-

profit productions, all in all the same holds for it in the English context.

It is also understood that Broadway and West End are constantly changing, their role

and position in the context of drama and theatre in the English language is shifting:

Kačer 13

But historically, Broadway has been primarily a commercial enterprise,

demonstrating for decades that the profit motive could support vibrant artistic

expression. Broadway today, rather, must be examined in light of numerous

artistic and economic currents that have changed greatly the way in which

professional theatre in America is conceived, produced, marketed, and

presented. Broadway, once the prime generator of American theatre, is now

just one element—albeit a critical one—in the theatrical equation. (Adler ix)

West End has also seen its ups and downs when it “comfortably accommodated

occasional products of the rebels” (Chambers 830) as Dan Rebellato put it, only to be

“surviving on a diet of musicals, The Mousetrap (since 1952), farces, and a stream of

work from the publicly subsidized sector” (830) in the years of crisis (albeit an

economic and/or social one, due to various developments resulting in an artistic crisis,

too)1.

Still, it holds for a majority of their productions that they keep up to the highest

standard in the craft of theatre and musical shows, where the word “professional” is

stressed in relation to all aspects of a stage production: Wilmeth and Bigsby praise

Broadway for its “slick professionalism” (12) and stress that full-length works are

“professionally produced” on Broadway (16). Similarly, Ibell in his Theatreland

analyses the professionalism of West End to a large detail (see Ibell).

The influence of mainstream producers also is also traceable in the content of chosen

plays, in effect creating a parallel with the situation in the late 19th and first half of the

20th centuries and the “well made play”. This relates to mainstream theatre as well as

1

See, for example, Dan Rebellato’s 1956 and All That.

Kačer 14

other genres in the contemporary mainstream artistic production, where the

“commercial imperative” (Wilmeth and Bigsby 10) influences the choice of producers

about their productions: “Broadcast television, films and mainstream theatre alike

produce representations of human relations based on the assumptions that a few people

hold about many. Thus the producers control the means of representation and the

spectators consume the representations, internalising them via the dictates of false

consciousness” (Prentki and Selman 157). So, when talking about the commercial

mainstream, there are structural as well as content-related issues at play.

There is environment and craft related background which gives opportunities to give

state of the art performances. However, a few words need to be said about other

important components of any performance: its material and spectators. It is often

lamented by theatre practitioners that Broadway and West End shows lack artistic

innovation and experiment due to the spectatorship which attends the shows. The

theatre business (which is often dominated by musical shows) is connected with

consumerism and mainstream taste: “Theatreland”2 still a distinct area which is

dominated, in an un-showy way, not only by the theatres and opera houses that are its

raison d’être, but also by the restaurants, bars and hotels that are testimony to the

continuing commercial as well as cultural power that theatre produces in the early

twenty-first century” (Ibell xiii). Taking into consideration “that more people attend live

theatre every week than attend football matches” in England (150), mainstream taste

among the audiences is only to be expected.

2 “Theatreland” is another name for West End.

Kačer 15

And commercial mainstream theatres adapt well3: “There is very little today that

ventures beyond traditional theatrical parameters. [...] Broadway has maintained a

markedly conservative bent for many years. Some cultural pundits interpret this trend as

the triumph of mainstream Americana in an elitist sector; others, as the dumbing down

of Broadway” (Adler 12). This reference to a certain “dumbing down” is a sigh which

may be understandable for a lover of artistic progress (searching for new forms,

stepping beyond boundaries and breaking the norm), but on the other hand, mainstream

theatre may be also considered as a vast testing-ground. The mainstream practice is

ordained by “a commercial imperative” (Wilmeth and Bigsby 10), which means that it

is obliged to make the best of the norm or be conformist to accepted ways of writing

drama and doing theatre.

Another critical term used to describe this movement towards the lack of

sophistication is “Americanization”. Although it may be disputed to what degree it is

possible to Americanize something inherently Anglo-American4, this term is widely

used in critical theories based on the study of the popular culture (be it Marxist,

Frankfurt School or post-modern criticisms), which sees the American production as a

3 Let us leave aside the complicated issue of the relationship between a commercial

project and its sales to audiences in the theatre business. Both Ibell and Adler quoted

in this chapter give clear account of the process with all its components.

Nevertheless, it is worth returning to Jan Mukařovský’s Aesthetic Function, Norm

and Value as Social Facts and note that from this perspective, the deviation from the

norm is minimal in the commercial mainstream in order to meet the mainstream taste

of the audience.

4 In contrast to the Continental or German or director’s theatres.

Kačer 16

hegemony, which shakes all other approaches into a neat standardized box. Thus, in the

American context, Broadway as a former leader in American theatre is now said to be

“dumbing down” even deeper – towards the mainstream: “Some practitioners believe

that Broadway is now attracting an audience whose makeup is considerably more

“middle-American,” a term that none too subtly implies a lack of sophistication”

Kačer 17

(Adler 10). Similarly, West End is becoming Americanized, which is to be understood

as “dumbed down”:

It is not just American actors and actresses who are popular in London: British

theatre directors and audiences can’t get enough of American playwrights. The

three classic writers whose plays seem the most popular are Arthur Miller (who

in later life seemed to prefer the West End to Broadway), Tennessee Williams,

whose over-the-top and quasi-operatic plays appeal to the English sensibility

for the romantic underdog, and Edward Albee, whose brilliantly witty dramas

produce devastating one-liners against a backdrop of sour and stormy

dysfunctional relationships. (Ibell 59)

This unification of theatre production of the two biggest theatrical areas is depriving

them of artistically innovative approaches. Centres of progressive Anglo-American

theatre and drama are moving elsewhere both in the UK and the USA. Nevertheless,

studying the mainstream helps to understand what the popular (generally accepted and

understood) features are.

Typical features of a quality commercial mainstream production play that would

meet the criteria of stageability in Broadway/West End (from the perspective of offering

it to the mainstream audiences expecting their positive reception) are the following. The

plays are full-length. That is to say, they last between one and half to two hours

including an intermission (usually one) halfway through the performance. Other lengths

and organizations are highly suspicious and considered experimental by the mainstream

audience. In Stoppard’s The Real Inspector Hound, Birdboot makes fun of this

convention in the opening speech of the play: “if it goes beyond half-past ten it’s self-

Kačer 18

indulgent” (10)5. This is related to the poetics of such a play. There are typically two

acts designed as before and after the intermission with a standard development of

raising and falling down of suspense in almost Aristotelian fashion. The first act usually

ends with a cliffhanger (or, climax if you like) while the second act progresses towards

a resolution of the dramatic conflict (or, a catastrophe).

There is a double logic: on the one hand, mainstream producers select such plays that

comply with this structure, but on the other hand, plays are written in a manner which

subscribes to this conventional structure whose tradition goes back to the “well-made

(problem) play” of the late 19th and 20th centuries. Although well-made plays and

dramatists became largely criticised both in the UK and the USA6 by the 1950s and

although the postwar development of drama has been identified as a divorce with the

well-made play plotting7, mainstream plays have preserved the two-act structure, while

often leaving the prescriptive plot development formulaic style. As a results,

playwrights too write in this “Anglo-American style” if they want to have their plays

produced in West End or Broadway. After all, Anglo-American theatre is often

identified as the author’s theatre and the dramatic text has a specific importance for the

performance (for example, it is very little transformed when adopted for a stage) and

plays for mainstream stages are written in this way. In critical terms, mainstream

authors write for the mainstream stages playing for mainstream audiences and in order

to be successful, they use standardized structures, plot and character developments,

5 It is worth noting that, self-ironically perhaps, The Real Inspector Hound meets the

time and span criteria perfectly.

6 See, for example, Walter Kerr’s How Not to Write a Play.

7 See, for example, Dan Rebellato’s 1956 and All That.

Kačer 19

dramatic dialogue and poetics in general. Looking at the plays by Frayn, Stoppard and

Wilson, a vast majority of plays written by them belongs to this category.

So, why write about these mainstream authors? In other words, the question is: how

does a study of mainstream drama help to elucidate a conventional use of a technique?

The argument is that it poses a departure point for our discussion in connection with

Frayn, Stoppard and Wilson and the issue of the new messenger. For (as the structure of

the argument has it), if their plays belong to the highlights of the Broadway/West End

commercial mainstream of drama and theatre in the English speaking world8, and the

technique of the reportage and the character type of the new messenger are applied in

the mainstream productions of their plays, then the new messenger is a viable,

functional and generally understandable convention of contemporary drama and theatre.

The new messenger has become a generally accepted convention. While the use of

the reportage in Brecht’s epic theatre, for example, had an experimental and innovative

pitch, this attitude has been adopted by the mainstream:

In the 1960s the major influences were two-fold. Firstly were the Marxist

theatrical analyses of Bertolt Brecht with the crucial perception that education

and entertainment were not mutually exclusive in the theatre; indeed he was

8 To illustrate the claim that their works represent quality amongst commercial

mainstream production, see, for West End, the Laurence Olivier Award (e.g. best

new play for Arcadia in 1994, best comedy for Noises Off in 1982), and Critics’

Circle Theatre Awards (e.g. Arcadia 1993, Rock’n’Roll 2006, Copenhagen 1998) ,

and The Evening Standard Award (all available at the Albemarle of London

website), and the Tony Awards, among others, for Broadway (see Tony Awards

website).

Kačer 20

firmly of the opinion that theatre only educated when it entertained. The British

mainstream theatre took up Brecht’s influence as a matter of style and

technique, instantly divorcing the form from the political imperatives which

gave rise to it. The result has been the erroneous application of the tag

‘Brechtian’ to any performance that eschewed the confines of a box-set and its

naturalistic accompaniment. (Prentki and Selman 63)

In other words, commercial mainstream adopted the techniques which Brecht developed

and which, thanks to his contributions to the 20th century drama and theatre, have

become generally accepted and understood as a standard part of the theatrical practice.

The use of the reportage as a mode of delivery belongs here. We cannot but repeat that

the contemporary commercial mainstream Anglo-American drama and theatre are, in a

sense (mainly concerning techniques), following in Brecht’s footsteps.

The (old) messenger introduced by a flourish and as a standardized conventional

character type of the classical drama (from Sophocles to Brecht) has been replaced by

the new messenger – a reporter with a privileged access to facts and events in the

fictional world of the play outside the stage action logic and frame, as well as the actual

world of the audience and its history and social political present.

Kačer 21

2. The Messenger Enters

2.1. The Messenger as Convention

The messenger is one of conventional characters that have been present in drama for

millennia, since the earliest classical dramatic works. The use of the messenger has

several purposes. It makes it possible to shift the perspective when the character of the

messenger introduces new facts or unknown events to the stage. Also, the mode of

delivery changes with an entrance of the messenger, as the dramatic dialogue shifts

towards a narrative.

The aim of this chapter is to introduce the messenger in its traditional forms. For this

purpose, there are three examples of plays that illustrate these various uses of the figure

as well as show a development in the use of the convention. Based on three short

analyses of Oedipus the King by Sophocles, Antony and Cleopatra by William

Shakespeare and Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, this chapter presents a

perspective of what is later referred to as the conventional messenger-figure, or, the

“old” messenger. The chapter also serves as a definition of the traditional messenger by

the way of giving illustrative examples, rather than merely giving a theoretical, general

description.

It deals with one specific function of the messenger in a greater detail, which is its

role to push the action forward. This function is, in my opinion, the primary one as far

as the conventional messenger is concerned. However, as the three case studies show,

the conventional messenger has other roles, too, and their application varies. First, he

comes as an informer about facts and events that take place outside the frame of action

of the stage. In this way, he can report about the distant past (Oedipus the King) as well

as distant spaces (Antony and Cleopatra) or otherwise inaccessible realm of memory

Kačer 22

(Glass Menagerie). Yet all these reports share a certain quality within the frame of the

plays. They are to be considered as reliable reports and the messenger becomes a herald

of “true” news.

It is also possible for the messenger to become a more self-contained character who,

although lacking a name, interacts with other characters in a dramatic situation, as the

example of Cleopatra’s interchange with the messenger shows. Furthermore, the

narrator of Glass Menagerie is a messenger whose presence is so intense, that he

becomes the formant and propeller of the whole stage action. In this case, he

transgresses from being a deliverer of small-scale narratives (i.e. messenger’s reports) to

a teller of large-scale ones.

These examples of the traditional messenger in its varieties will be further capitalized

to illustrate the shift in the use of this convention in the contemporary mainstream

drama. While the contemporary “new” messenger still holds some of the roles and

qualities of the traditional one, in which the convention portrayed in this chapter

survives, he also assumes new features which are radically different from these

examples that it leads to a birth of a new character type – the new messenger.

However, in order to be able to argue for the new messenger, it must be first made

clear what the old messenger is, and this is the purpose of this chapter. Following these

observation, a theoretical chapter will serve to provide this thesis with an argument that,

joint with the views of what the conventional messenger is, will finally make it possible

to identify and define the new messenger, who is the follower of the notorious

predecessors that this chapter deals with.

Kačer 23

Oedipus the King by Sophocles

Oedipus the King by Sophocles (first staged in Athens in c. 429 BC, perhaps 420 BC

(Johnston)) was identified by Aristotle as the best example of tragedy and influenced

Aristotle’s view of the genre in the Poetics immensely. Curiously enough, in the context

of this thesis, it is also a play that employs reportage and uses the messenger to a crucial

degree. Distinguishing temporal levels of the story and the plot of the play, revelations

of the story-past come towards the plot-ending and they are delivered by a messenger.

The moment when Oedipus learns about his past marks the turning point in the play

and it is also this moment that made the play immortal: “Oedipus’ heroic achievement is

the discovery of the truth, and that discovery is the most thoroughgoing and dreadful

catastrophe the stage has ever presented” (Knox 86). It is the turning point, “the moment

Aristotle named the peripeteia, the reversal of fortune moment” (Bloom, “Introduction”

54). The truth about the past is what the play is about, and the epistemological

dimension of learning the truth is also what Aristotle valued about it, among other

things: “The reversal of the tragic hero is singled out for praise by Aristotle because it

comes about through recognition, in this case Oedipus’ recognition of his own identity”

(Knox 81). Oedipus, however, must be informed about his own past. The truth is too

unbelievable to be seen even by the wisest among all men, Oedipus himself.

There are two messengers in the play. “The first arrives at the palace to announce the

death from old age of Polybus, father of Oedipus and king of Corinth, and the related

news that Oedipus will be called as the new king. [...] The second messenger brings the

news of Jocasta’s suicide” (Bloom, “Introduction” 24). The first messenger’s report is a

message about the death of Oedipus’s believed father Polybus, the King of Corinth

(note, it is delivered in dialogical form):

Kačer 24

Jocasta: What are you saying?

Is old man Polybus no longer king?

Messenger: No. He’s dead and in his grave.

Jocasta: What?

Has Oedipus’ father died?

Messenger: Yes. (941-6)

Here begins the spiral of the search for Oedipus’s identity and ancestry. It turns out soon

enough in the following messenger’s speech that Oedipus was not Polybus’s own son.

As soon as Oedipus celebrates that he broke the prophecy of an old woman that he

would kill his father, the messenger announces: “you and Polybus were not related”

(1016), “If you must know, / he received you many years ago as a gift. / I gave you to

him” (1021-2). Thus, the messenger, granted knowledge which comes from outside the

storyline so far and informs Oedipus of a different place (Corinth) and time (soon after

Oedipus’s birth), pushes the action forward towards the ultimate tragedy.

That is Jocasta’s death and Oedipus’s self-blinding. “What does any discerning

reader remember most vividly about Oedipus the King? Almost certainly, the answer

must be the scene of the king’s self-blinding, as narrated by the second messenger”

(Bloom, “Introduction” 8). Jocasta goes offstage to commit suicide after she is

convinced that her husband is her son at the same time. It is the servant of Laius’s

testimony that confirms that the old woman’s prophecy was fulfilled. “The Servant of

Laius is summoned by Oedipus to tell his version of the murder at the crossroads. He

holds the key to Oedipus’s guilt or innocence” (24). But neither the death nor the self-

blinding are presented in a mimetic form, they both take the form of a narrative. Bloom

even suggests that “the scene [is] too terrible for acting out” (9), but it is more likely

that it is in agreement with the classical convention of reporting on, rather than showing

Kačer 25

death. Also, it is the metaphor of seeing events in one’s own eyes (the eyewitness status

of messengers) which multiplies the effect of the second messenger’s report. Seeing is

knowing in Oedipus the King. And it is knowledge that brings Jocasta to death and

Oedipus to punishment, the impossibility of knowing any more: “the text’s vocabulary

of vision and knowledge suggests that Oedipus’s intellectual journey constitutes a quest

for ‘eyewitness’ status” (Barrett 213). The whole scene, as said above, is presented to

the audience in the form of a messenger’s report.

First, the “exangelos [messenger] who enters at 1223 performs on the whole along

familiar conventional lines: he informs the chorus (and the audience) that Jocasta has

died by hanging and that Oedipus has put out his eyes” (194). This is the story in the

whole, but a more fearful capacity lies in a more detailed narrative by the messenger,

which follows soon after. “In response to the next question, ‘How did it happen?’

(1236), the exangelos again qualifies his report as discontinuous with the events

offstage. ‘She died by her own hand,’ he responds (1237)” (195). The messenger and

his report are securing the dramatic effect of the play for the second time. First, the first

messenger’s report began the search for Oedipus’s identity which resulted in offstage

events bringing climax to both characters and audiences, in events narrated by the

second messenger:

Second Messenger: [...] With these words he raised his hand and struck,

not once, but many times, right in the sockets.

With every blow blood spurted from his eyes

down on his beard, and not in single drops,

but showers of dark blood spattered like hail [...]. (Sophocles 1276-80)

Barrett explains that “Sophocles’ Oedipus [the King] offers a parallel example of how a

play may profit from manipulating conventional form” (190). In other words, it is

Kačer 26

possible to substitute the dramatic dialogue and mimesis with a narrative to produce a

dramatic effect.

In the case of Oedipus the King, it is the narrative form and the technique of the

reportage that cause the Aristotelian anagnorisis, or recognition: the “way of

transmitting expository information in the final phases of the text [...] facts [...] that are

new, at least in part, to both the figures and the audience” (Pfister 88). It is because the

reports are a specific type of exposition – information which stand at the beginning of

the story (sjuzet) but is delivered towards the end of the plot (fabula): “Sophocles’

Oedipus the King is an example of a text in which the expository information is

concentrated towards the end of the text” (87-8). The climax (death of Jocasta and self-

blinding of Oedipus) is delivered indirectly to both characters and audiences and it is the

form of the reportage which makes the situation horrific enough to become the epitome

of tragedy. The catastrophe, then, continues in a conventional dramatic form of classical

dialogue.

Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare

As we could see, reports are given by two messengers (death of Polybus and death of

Jocasta/self-blinding of Oedipus) and also by the Servant of Laius (report on the events

on the crossroad). Although the messenger as a character-type is associated with the

reportage technique the most, it is possible for other characters to report, too. Often,

they are variants of messengers, such as the Attendant who tries to tell the news to

Antony at the beginning of Antony and Cleopatra. But he does not get the chance to do

so. An ironic reversal of competences happens. Cleopatra starts mocking news that

usually come from Rome. Although she is not delivering “true” news from Rome, it is

clear that her mockery is a summary of the usual messages they receive. Therefore, the

Kačer 27

effect of the fabricated news is stronger than that of a real one would be. The news that

come from Rome are always the same. Thus, Cleopatra through mockery establishes

well the mode of communication and exposes the type of news that come, thus reporting

on reports coming from Rome. Her angry comment is a summary and also an

abstraction which creates the effect as if there had been some previous news which had

been all alike:

Attendant: News, my good lord, from Rome.

Mark Antony: Grates me: the sum.

Cleopatra: Nay, hear them, Antony:

Fulvia perchance is angry; or, who knows

If the scarce-bearded Caesar have not sent

His powerful mandate to you, ‘Do this, or this;

Take in that kingdom, and enfranchise that;

Perform’t, or else we damn thee.’ (Shakespeare, AC9 I.1)

This opening scene is consistent with Cleopatra’s actions in the first two acts: “In the

opening acts, Cleopatra dominates: [...] playing out comic routines with the messenger,

she is active, and, like the spoiled child or the diva, she needs an audience for her

melodramatic performances” (Hodgon 250). The arrival of news from Rome in the

opening of the play is significant. The play itself is based, among other principles, on

the difficulties caused by the need of long-distance communication and exchange of

news which both affects the noble love and spins the wheels of historical events.

It is not only the Attendant who brings news to Alexandria. Antony and Cleopatra is

a play with a large number of characters and character types (major and minor; with

9 AC – abbreviation of Antony and Cleopatra.

Kačer 28

names and nameless alike) that often fulfil a messenger’ role, that is to say that many

events are delivered in the mode of a reporting narrative, which has an important effect

on the viewer’s decoding of the development of the play and it also influences their

understanding of the plays characters:

Consistently, in this play, what spectators actually see plays beside what they

are made to see through verse that encompasses a vaulting language of display.

And it is not just the minor figures – those unnamed messengers (more than in

any other play) – who arrive bringing news, telling stories which alternately

embellish or deflate the reputations of figures who speak of each other in

hyperbole and who, in performance, inhabit ‘real’ bodies that demystify the

myths they construct. Report also works to read characters’ performances.

(Hodgon 245)

This abundant use of reportage in Antony and Cleopatra may be explained from

several standpoints. One, it is a historical play which draws upon actual historical events

and their interpretations in the history of literature,10 which it approaches with an

original attitude accentuating the emotional over the historical: “Although not

disinterested, Shakespeare is assuredly less interested in the politics that envelop

Antony and Cleopatra than in their love” (Logan 162). It is a convenient method to

implement events from the actual historical world in the style of reportage. This type of

expansion of the fictional world of a play into the actual historical one (drawing upon

facts from actual history) is often used in plays by the authors in our greatest concern –

Frayn, Stoppard and Wilson, as the analytical chapter will show in detail. In other

words, the context is not played out, it is told.

10 For a detailed analysis of artistic sources and influences, see Logan.

Kačer 29

It also follows from Hodgon’s quote that there are the most messenger figures in

Antony and Cleopatra of all Shakespeare’s plays. This fact in itself does not necessarily

mean much and it would be futile to expect to draw any definite conclusions from it but,

all in all, it may serve our purposes and aptly illustrate the second point. The example of

Antony and Cleopatra complements the example of Oedipus the King in showing the

possibilities that an application of reportage and employment of messengers offer.

While there were two messengers in Oedipus the King, and they brought news from the

dramatic past influencing the dramatic present (a dramatized myth) and from the

dramatic present thus accentuating the climax of Jocasta’s death and Oedipus’ self-

blinding (a fictional moral of the story), Antony and Cleopatra stands on the opposite

end. Messengers deliver actual historical as well as fictional news, both from the

dramatic past and the dramatic present. That is to say that messengers and reporters (i.e.

other characters who speak in the manner of reportage) in this play have a much wider

scope of what they cover by their news.

The first examples from Antony and Cleopatra are reports of historical events.

Messenger informs Antony of Fulvia’s involvement in a war against Caesar which she

and her accomplices lost against him and fled from Italy to Greece:

Messenger: Fulvia thy wife first came into the field.

Antony: Against my brother Lucius?

Messenger: Ay:

But soon that war had end, and the time’s state

Made friends of them, joining their force ’gainst Caesar;

Whose better issue in the war, from Italy,

Upon the first encounter, drave them. (AC I.2)

Kačer 30

This is in accord with actual historical facts as described in Plutarch’s accout on the life

of Antony: “Antony [...] was surprised by reports [...] that Lucius his brother and Fulvia

his wife had first quarrelled with one another, and then had waged war with Octavius

Caesar, but had lost their cause and were in flight from Italy” (Plutarch 30.1). Also, the

report of Fulvia’s death of a serious illness delivered by Second Messenger a few lines

later is based on historical evidence in Plutarch (30.3):

Second Messenger: Fulvia thy wife is dead.

Antony: Where died she?

Second Messenger: In Sicyon:

Her length of sickness, with what else more serious

Importeth thee to know, this bears. (AC I.2)

In the two quoted dialogues from AC I.2, there are reports of actual historical facts that

come from both dramatic past (the military campaign) and dramatic present (Fulvia’s

death). In general terms, such reports create the actual historical frame of the story. In

this case, the messenger can be interpreted as an active political agent in the

contemporary society watching the performance, which will become more obvious in

the context of the more contemporaneous production, namely in the dramas by Frayn,

Stoppard and Wilson in the analyses following in the coming chapter, as well as in

Brecht’s theatre as shown above. Here, the reportage on events of actual historical

events in the fictional historical context is a case in point.

But, as mentioned above, Antony and Cleopatra is more (and primarily) a romantic

story than an account of historical events. The mere fact that the plot is situated in

various places – Alexandria, Rome, and Messina – calls for communication between

them. The messengers’ reports thus make present the otherness of the two worlds and

Kačer 31

are a necessary component of the construction of the place where the “other” (both in

the spatial and in the sociological contexts) is present through a narrative.

In the second act, there is one of the most famous scenes with the messenger in the

history of drama. The fact that several conventions are violated, together with an

expression of the passions, anxieties and desperations of love lead to a strong dramatic

effect. As far as the violation of conventions is concerned, it may be divided into two

parts: dramatic and social. For the dramatic conventions, the messenger is immediately

drawn into the action as if a regular, full-fledged character (or, as Ingarden would put it,

a character with a name). Simultaneously, Cleopatra does not allow the messenger to

follow the dramatic convention of the diegetic mode as she constantly interrupts him,

dragging his attention to the scenic here and now instead of the narrative there and then.

The messenger becomes the messenger for Cleopatra, as for him it is the same

individualized character who again returns with yet another piece of news. Furthermore,

the messenger is threatened from the beginning:

Messenger: Madam, madam,—

Cleopatra: Antonius dead!—If thou say so, villain,

Thou kill’st thy mistress (AC 2.5)

Cleopatra is preventing the messenger from delivering his news, threatening him and

creating her own ideas about the report from Rome. First, she is afraid Antony is dead,

but she learns the news that is much worse than this. Antony is married to Octavia. The

messenger becomes the target of her hatred and outrage and he defends only by

appealing to a tradition (which, as we have mentioned, is so prone to be violated in the

theatre in order to cause a dramatic effect based on the dichotomy between expectations

and action) of a peaceful approach to his like: “Gracious madam, I that do bring the

news made not the match” (AC 2.5). Her continuing abuse results in a rather comical

Kačer 32

effect when the messenger refuses to deliver the rest of his message after his life is at

risk and exits only to be promised he will not be killed and to return again:

Kačer 33

Cleopatra: Rogue, thou hast lived too long.

[Draws a knife]

Messenger: Nay, then I’ll run.

What mean you, madam? I have made no fault.

[Exit] (AC 2.5)

In this scene, many of the controversies about the play are condensed. The near-comical

loss of self-control by Cleopatra illustrates the problematic nature of the play as a

tragedy: “In many ways, the play is clearly a tragedy, dramatizing as it does the fatal

errors in judgment leading to the catastrophic falls of two colossal figures. However, in

other respects the play fails to conform to traditional tragic rubrics” (Deats 12). The

burden that Cleopatra is carrying results in actions such as the one in this scene which

make it possible for a multiplicity of interpretation of her character: “in the past three

decades, criticism has created new and intriguing personae for Cleopatra, not only the

temptress, goddess, and noble lover of tradition but also tragic hero, artist, androgynous

queen, fictional prototype of Elizabeth I, and racial as well as sexual Other” (26).

Indeed, there is a sexual tension in this scene as Cleopatra uses all her powers as the

empress of Egypt (“I’ll set thee in a shower of gold” (AC 2.5)) and as an attractive

woman to change the nature of the message (the ambiguous, sexually charged, “Make

thee a fortune from me” (AC 2.5)). By violating the conventions of a messenger scene,

Shakespeare manages to create a richer portrait of Cleopatra who is confronted with

facts from Rome she must accept and a figure of a messenger whose is undeniably, for

conventionally, objective, well-informed and truthful.

Although the conventions are violated as we have seen, it does not mean that they are

not present or inactive. Most of the dramatic effect of this scene is based on the

principle that what is happening on the stage is in contradiction to the expectations

Kačer 34

based on the conventions associated with the messenger and a reportage scene. Such use

of the messenger scene (disturbance of his reportage, threatening, seduction, and

treatment as if he was an individual character) thus underlies the effectiveness of the

technique of the reportage in theatre and drama in use of the classical period. Both

Oedipus the King and Antony and Cleopatra serve as illustrative examples of the

traditional use of the messenger as they dwell on and contribute to the traditional use of

this convention in the history of drama and theatre.

Besides the just mentioned main types and features of the classical role of the

messenger in drama which have been illustrated on the examples from Oedipus the King

and Antony and Cleopatra, it is worth mentioning that the messenger’s dominating

mode, the diagesis, is closely connected to another character type, the narrator. In fact,

there are frequent cases in the history of drama, when these two types cannot be clearly

distinguished. For now, let us stick to the working definition of the messenger’s typical

delivery, the reportage, suggested at the beginning of this chapter, and mainly to the

claim that a reference is made to events and/or facts that come from outside the stage.

Let this point be a limiting factor for the few following paragraphs. The classical

definition of the dramatic art (tragedy) by Aristotle “as an imitation of action” (I.6) is

still valid and appropriate in this context, as it is in opposition to the delivery in the

narrative form. But as narrative naturally penetrates into the dramatic (be it in

characters’ monologues or the messenger’s report), it is a part of the dramatic language,

too (see Veltruský, Drama as Literature and others). Thus, narrators of various scale

appear in drama quite often, be it in a “hidden” manner, such as in the occasional

narratives by characters or in the messenger’s reports or openly, such as in the case of

Brecht’s epic theatre. The example of a canonical text which deserves mentioning in the

context of this thesis, standing on the border between a narrator (substituting action with

Kačer 35

narration on the stage) and a messenger (delivering reports about events and/or facts

outside the stage) is Tennessee Williams’s Glass Menagerie.

Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams

Tennessee Williams’s classic, self-defined as “a memory play” (xvii), Glass

Menagerie represents a point in a case in its use of the narrator on the stage. Written in

1944, the play claims a “non-realistic” stage and the story is a recollection of family

events from the past. Tom, the central character and the audience’s guide steps in and

out of his role as a narrator during the play. His comments shape the point of view and

this focalization is present in all his narratives which serve as supplements to the action

on the stage, revealing the character’s inner state as well as delivering information about

development of the events in the past. For example, in the beginning of scene 3, Tom

tells the story of Mother’s obsession about finding a gentleman for Laura: “After the

fiasco at Rubicam’s Business College, the idea of getting a gentleman caller for Laura

began to play a more and more important part in Mother’s calculations. It became an

obsession. Like some archetype of the universal unconscious, the image of the

gentleman caller haunted our small apartment” (14). This narrative, which is also a

reportage about events from the past, makes Tom distant from the action as well as a

part of it. It will be his own memories and his point of view that will be played out in

the following scenes.

Glass Menagerie shows another typical use of the messenger or, to make the point

clearer, of the reportage and the character who delivers it. Tom is firmly inside the

action for most of the play, both as a character in an interaction with the other characters

or through his voice which he uses to comment on the action from his position as the

narrator. In other words, he is a full-fledged character of the play (the central character

Kačer 36

with a name, for that matter) and its narrator at the same time. In the narratives he often,

as in the example given above, uses the technique of the reportage and becomes, for a

short while, a messenger from the past and from the landscape of his memory, or the

memory of the place which is to be created in the characters’ and spectators’

imagination. Still, the fact of his integral interconnectedness with the dramatic action of

the play serves as an illustrative example of the features of messenger-like qualities

used when a narrator is present in a play as a character.11

However, the genre of the memory play places a theoretical problem before us.

Nolan reminds that in the memory play, “as a particular form, the world of the drama is

the memory of a single character, the narrator-protagonist” (75). What happens when

Tom refers to the past and tells his memory of the events is that the world outside the

stage is shaping the world on the stage, as both are a creation of a single mind, the

“narrator-protagonist”, as Nolan puts it. The two spaces are not independent, they are

re-shaped and re-created interdependently. Even Tom admits that most characters

appearing in his memory narrative are distorted. On the other hand, these distortions are

an integral part of the narrator’s point of view and, therefore, all the discrepancies in

effect illustrate even better insecurities and indeterminacies of the world in the making

on the stage.

11 As we have approached this point from the view of the mode of delivery (diegesis)

and character-type, this claim is valid in this context only and does not aspire to

universal applicability. In other words, it is not necessary for a narrator to use

reportage in the sense as defined above, nor to become a messenger. There are, of

course, endless possibilities for a narrator to be involved in a play.

Kačer 37

Nolan even goes as far as to claim, “[If] the play is true, the memory is true”, which

is based on the genre-based observation that “memory is all the world there is” (75).

Tom’s narrative together with the staged action therefore transgress the time and space

of the stage to such degree that one influences the other and cannot be perceived

without keeping this relationship in mind. The relationship is not mainly logical

(succession of events) or motivational, it is formative. Richardson uses the example of

Glass Menagerie for explaining the use of “generative narration”, where a character

“comes on stage and narrates events which are then enacted before the audience” (152).

A generative narrator such as Tom in this play often also becomes a part of the story.

Although Tom is a full-fledged narrator, he takes advantage of the reportage and in

some scenes may be considered a plain messenger of the facts and events from the

fictional past.

In summary, this chapter deals with the central theme of this thesis – the technique of

the reportage. It shows that the narrative mode is typical for the reportage and explains

how it is a common and widely used mode in drama and theatre, alongside and in

support of the dialogue and soliloquy.

The example of Oedipus the King by Sophocles is one of the key dramas of the

ancient past built up on the convention of the use of the messenger (two of them, as a

matter of fact), who in this case report about fictional events which took place outside

the space created by the stage in the past (Oedipus’s patricide) and the fictional present

(Oedipus’s self-blinding). Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare is an example

of such use of the messenger that helps us to define it as an agent who refers to fictional

events in other places and enable communication between fictional events represented

on the stage and concurrent fictional events elsewhere (Rome, Alexandria).

Kačer 38

The messenger also refers to actual historical events thus informing the characters as

well as the audiences about historical facts the play is based on, creating in principal a

potential for an topical political application of the messenger and his report. The

messenger in Antony and Cleopatra also shortly becomes a full-fledged character with

his own personal properties and qualities when Cleopatra prompts, threatens and

seduces him, and he thence steps out of his character type. Some of the conventions

associated with the messenger are further illustrated on this example. A brief excursus

to the twentieth century presents another use of the messenger and the technique of

reportage which becomes so extensive and vast that it has a shaping effect on the

dramatic structure as a whole, in other words, when it is more appropriate to identify the

reporting character as a narrator rather than a messenger, although there are many

common features – such is the case of Tom in Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams.

The three brief analyses of the classical plays of ancient Greek, Renaissance and

twentieth-century American drama serve in this thesis the following purpose. They are

an expression of the tradition of the use of the reportage technique and the messenger

character type in the history of drama, setting and shaping the conventional use of both.

With another undeniable contribution to this issue performed by Bertolt Brecht which

was studied in the preceding chapter, they thus represent points of reference and

delimiting factors for the further analyses of the more contemporary British authors

Michael Frayn and Tom Stoppard and the American playwright August Wilson. Their

use of the reportage and the messenger builds on the the traditional uses (Sophocles,

Shakespeare), takes advantage of more recent innovations (Williams, Brecht) to arrive

with transformed – while still firmly set in the tradition of the “well-made”,

“mainstream” or “Broadway” drama – applications of the reportage and the messenger.

Kačer 39

Kačer 40

3. Theoretical Background

3.1. The Poetic Tradition

In the field of study of drama and theatre, there is a virtually unlimited number of

possible approaches and theoretical positions and their varieties one may choose from

when setting out for a close study of a particular play or a dramatic mode in general.

This thesis is following the line in the theoretical and analytical approach to drama and

theatre, whose beginnings may be traced back to the antiquity. Aristotle’s analysis of

tragedy has been influential since his “course on poetics, as part of the program of

instruction at his Academy” (Gerould 43) in the fourth century BC. Understandably, this

tradition has not been a universally uninterrupted current, but several crucial

developments took place in the field of theory towards the end of the nineteenth and

during the whole course of the twentieth centuries. Out of these endeavours, it is mainly

the Russian formalism, structuralism and, later, semiotics where the attempt on a

“scientific” approach to the dramatic art in line with Aristotle’s view of poetics can be

traced.

For it was Aristotle who suggested that the study of the components and their

relationships within a work of drama, i.e. the poetics of a dramatic work which was the

classical tragedy in his understanding, leads to a proper understanding of the

mechanisms at work in the given work of art. Similarly, Formalist and Structuralist

approaches come to their observations about a work of drama or its inner mechanism

when they begin their enquiry from a basically identical starting point. To know the

elements is to know the whole.

Although formalism was developed in Russia, Structuralism is considered mainly a

French invention (with a Prague connection, which is of interest here) and semiotics

Kačer 41

took its roots in Switzerland and the United States, these theoretical advancements can

be considered a comeback to the poetic tradition after a few centuries of other

approaches to drama and art in general – or, perhaps, a completely new set-up of

general theory and philosophical approach to phenomena in the case of the United

States. And although the development of structuralist and semiotic enquiries may be

observed in the English speaking countries after the coming of Russian and European

scholars, the poetic approach was not a new or foreign element in the English scholarly

tradition at that time or in the turbulent development in the second half of the twentieth

century there. Given the Aristotelian influence on the English thought through the

Middle Ages12 and the Modernity, it can be agreed with Umberto Eco’s statement that

unlike in the continental thought, “the Anglo-Saxon tradition had continued to take

Aristotle’s poetics seriously and without interruption” (Eco 237). Choosing a method of

analysis within this line of thought thus seems, from this perspective, a natural choice

for the study of dramatic texts written in Great Britain and the United States.

Generally, the theoretical background of this thesis is based on synthetic versions of

semiotics of drama and theatre within the Anglo-American tradition. The two seminal

books on the theory are The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama by Keir Elam and Theatre

as Sign System by Elaine Aston and George Savona. Both books aimed at a concise

overview of semiotics for the English language public at the times of publication. As

such, they incorporate some aspects of the Russian formalism, the Prague School

12 Knowledge of Aristotle’s own writing is disputable at this time, as it took centuries

to rediscover his works via Arabic scholars and other channels. However, his

analytical approach survived in the English nominalist and empirical traditions.

Kačer 42

structuralism as well as the whole course of development of semiotics, where there are

two main currents which meet at various points regarding the drama and the theatre:

(1) “semiology” of Ferdinand de Saussure proposed in his Course in General

Linguistics as a science which “would investigate the nature of signs and the

laws governing them” (de Saussure 15), leading to a semiotic conception of

language as a system of signs (i.e. his theory does not primarily include

phenomena present in the artistic forms of drama and theatre), and

(2) semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce ,who introduced the helpful division of

signs into three types: “There are three kinds of representations. 1st [...] may be

termed Likenesses. 2nd [...] may be termed Indices or Signs. 3rd [...] which are

the same as general signs, and these may be termed Symbols” (Peirce §14).

Both books on semiotics by Elam and Aston with Savona offer a potent tool to approach

both dramatic texts and performance or, if you wish, drama and theatre.

There are also other sources for the theoretical background of this thesis, which are

not explicitly followed by the two books mentioned above but which are nevertheless a

part of the same theoretical current and, as such, are a great contribution to the view of

drama proposed in this thesis. One of them is Otakar Zich’s The Aesthetics of Drama13

from 1931, which is an important study of drama from an aesthetician’s point of view

that follows principles of Husserlian phenomenology and in its approach to components

of drama it fits within the theoretical framework of the contemporaneous structuralism.

Although this work may now seem dated in certain respects and too inclined towards

aesthetic and musicological biases, it is still worth including it among the main

13 An English translation of his seminal work of the original Czech title Estetika

dramatického umění has not been published yet.

Kačer 43

theoretical sources for a semiotic approach to drama. Due to a long-term unavailability

of this work to readers in world languages, some of Zich’s observations were only

available in a mediated form to semioticians who do not read Czech. Zich’s distinction

among the actor, stage figure and character is one of his crucial contributions to the

general theory of drama. It was only after the WWII that this distinction was accepted,

with an unnecessary delay of several decades. Still, it is this particular area which still

remains rather fuzzy both in Elam, and Aston and Savona, where the category of a

“character” often becomes a general term for at least two of these distinctions, thus

merging a character (a spectator’s mental image) with the stage figure (an actor’s-on-

stage physical creation). So, the audience leaves the Old Vic with a mental image of

Hamlet in their minds, as created on the stage by John McEnery during the first

professional production of Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead on 11

April 1967. This distinction helps a more precise analysis of the category of “character”

when studying a dramatic text and/or a performance. This example illustrates how

Zich’s seminal work makes a useful addition to the theoretical background of this thesis.

There is also another source that supplements the two main books on semiotics. It is

now a classic work on the analysis of dramatic text by the German theorist of drama

Manfred Pfister: The Theory and Analysis of Drama. This work also belongs to the line

of a structurally inclined enquiry of drama. It provides a complex overview of analytical

approaches to a whole range of components constituting a dramatic text. It provides

numerous examples of analyses of texts while regarding the fact that dramatic texts

primarily serve as a basis for a performance. It is not a complete theory of drama in its

whole, but it gives powerful tools: “[Pfister’s] interest has not been in drawing up a

comprehensive definition of drama as a whole but in putting together a detailed and

sophisticated description of its structures and textualisation processes” (Pfister xv).

Kačer 44

Pfister’s approach is helpful to this thesis on the new messenger in the following way.

This thesis includes a number of analyses of dramatic texts by several authors, focusing

mainly on the reportage and the transformation of the messenger-figure in plays by

Stoppard, Frayn and Wilson in the second chapter. These analyses are primarily

analyses of dramatic texts and as such they incline toward a lack of a stage-

representation analysis. It is Pfister’s detailed and elaborate approach to drama that

helps to overcome the gap in a satisfactory way. Pfister too remains firmly based in the

dramatic text, but he uses his method of analysis to show the exact effects of a textual

passage on a performance. The assumption that there is a definable and traceable direct

connection between the dramatic text and its representation on the stage is one of the

crucial points that helps this thesis perform the analyses from the point of departure

which lies in semiotics of drama and theatre.

Kačer 45

3.1.1. The Historical Development

As has been suggested, there is an undercurrent in theory that has been

accompanying the analytical approach to works of literary art in the Western tradition,

of which the semiotic approach is one of the most promising representatives. As this

undercurrent is much connected with Aristotle’s Poetics and its influence, reaching back

more than two millennia, it would be overambitious and, indeed, futile to attempt at

grasping the development of this line of the Western thought in its whole here. Yet it

remains an undeniable fact that the history of a systematic study of works of dramatic

art has been accompanying the Western thought since its beginnings. To return to the

sources of the study of literature which aims at a systematic understanding of dramatic

texts in particular is to inevitably arrive at Aristotle’s Poetics. This classic work is “the

foundation stone of the study of literature in the Occidental cultural realm” (Doležel 11)

and as such it still offers a great inspiration for contemporary discussions about drama.

It is the core text that asks how a dramatic text is made, what its constituents are and

what relationships there are among them.

Lubomír Doležel’s Occidental Poetics is a discussion of precisely this undercurrent.

Doležel studies the history and development of a structuralist approach to literature and

finds connections that lead from Aristotle to the contemporary structural poetics, which

he defines as a “cognitive activity grounded by the general requirements of scientific

inquiry” (4). A stress on the scientificity of poetics is one of the crucial elements that

distinguishes it from numerous other approaches. One of the sources for the scientific

nature of Doležel’s concept of structural poetics is his demand on the view of literature

as such: “A science of literature is possible only if literature is recognized as a specific

Kačer 46

artistic activity” (4), where the specificity of the literary production is the key to the

understanding of the difference between the structural-poetic approach and others. The

focus on a scientific nature of the approach to the study of works of literary art is then

based on the assumption that it is possible and necessary to proceed without a bias and

within objectively defined criteria and, vice versa, that there are objective and

identifiable elements within the studied object itself. Based on this assumption it is then

possible to come to definite and convincing conclusions which are a result of a

scientifically based analysis that falls within the well-defined area of poetics.

Doležel continues in his general definition of the scientific nature of structural

poetics suggesting that it is then such “scientific poetics that rejects deterministic and

reductionist approaches to literature” (4). This statement hints upon the position where

Doležel sees the position of poetics vis à vis other approaches, such as those that follow

the tradition of the Romantic view of a work of art as a manifestation of an author’s

creative genius or others that tend to be seen as “speculative” in comparison to the

“scientific” poetics, such as psychologizing attitudes or a hermeneutic branch of literary

analysis. Patrice Pavis similarly considers differences between a precise, scientifically

based semiotic approach to theatre with other traditional types of theatre studies. In the

article “The Semiotics of Theatre” he places theatre semiotics into opposition with the

following approaches to drama and theatre, which he sums under the category of

“theatre studies” (or, sciences du spectacle and Theaterwissenschaft: (1) Interpretative

criticism and performance reviewing; (2) Theatre history, (3) Dramaturgy, (4) The

aesthetics or poetics of theatre, and (5) Theory of theatre which “can only with

difficulty be distinguished from aesthetics” (3-4). While Pavis acknowledges the

scientific nature of poetics when he asserts that it aims at “formulating the laws

determining composition and functioning of text and stage” (3), he overestimates the

Kačer 47

normative outcome of a poetic approach. He considers such normativity inseparable

from poetics, which on the level of the (scientific nature of) the approach does not hold.

This criticism by Pavis, relevant mostly to the fourth category of theatre studies,

deserves a further explanation.

Pavis sets the qualitative difference between semiotics and aesthetic/poetic approach

to drama and theatre on a different level than is relevant at this point of the argument.

While Doležel focuses on the method of approaching literary texts, Pavis’ point of view

is that of branches of “theatre studies”, i.e. specific mode of application. He also

generalizes when he claims that aesthetics/poetics “always aims at integrating the

theatrical system into a larger whole – genre, arts system, aesthetical category” (3). It is

true that the Poetics of Aristotle suffers from this flaw, as it includes analytical,

evaluative, as well as normative parts. “[...] Aesthetic theories of the theatre are most

frequently normative, proceeding from an a priori definition of the ‘essence’ of theatre”

(3), continues Pavis. However, the development of semiotics after Pavis’ article (1978)

in the English speaking context proved that a semiotic analysis can adopt a lot from the

aesthetic/poetic approach thanks to the contributions of the Prague School and later

developments to the semiotic method of analysis of both text and performance. While

Pavis claims that a normative aesthetic/poetic approach cannot deal with Brechtian

theatre, because it does not fit the understanding of drama as a genre based on conflict,

there are a number of 1980s semiotic analyses which subscribe to the aesthetic/poetic

tradition, which study Brechtian theatre (for example, Aston and Savona call this mode

of drama and theatre “radical” and place it side by side with the “classical” and the

“bourgeois”), and which do not place a normative claim. In other words, on the level of

method and approach to drama and theatre in general, semiotics has proven to be logical

follower in the scientific (“structurally poetic” (Doležel)) approach. As Pavis himself

Kačer 48

admits, “[...] semiology, far from conflicting with other “theatre studies’, integrates

them and ingrates with them; this methodological reciprocity should allow us to make

better use of the results of older disciplines, while confirming at the same time their

scientific status” (4). Although Doležel is aware of such normative trap of poetics as he

acknowledges in Occidental Poetics, he yields to the potential of poetics to study

literature in a “scientific” way.

What follows from Doležel’s scientific definition of poetics is, among other things,

the focus on structures which can be defined and subsequently closely studied and

analysed in a work of literary art. This is why Doležel comes up with a specification of

“structural poetics”, accentuating the area within the general field which follows the

structuralistic trend. As a result there are definable relations between individual

elements, which represent one of the cases where the structuralist method and the

interest of structural poetics meet. As any branch of science or the humanities, poetics

too has numerous modifications; if poetics is a way of studying works of literary art in

general, then the line of development which follows Aristotle and stretches to

structuralism and to structurally inclined semiotics is a viable and productive method to

actually do poetics of dramatic works.

Kačer 49

3.1.2. Aristotelian Poetics

What remains inspirational for the later developments in the field of structural

poetics, as Doležel calls it, and in the twentieth century inquiries within the fields of

structuralism and semiotics is mainly that part of the Poetics that deals with the action

of a tragedy. Along with the action, that is what happens in a tragedy and of which “plot

is the imitation” and “the arrangement of the incidents” (Aristotle 1.VI), there are in

total “six parts, which parts determine [the tragedy’s] quality – namely, Plot, Character,

Diction, Thought, Spectacle, Song” (1.VI). Aristotle further explains that “most

important of all is the structure of the incidents. For Tragedy is an imitation, not of men,

but of an action and of life, and life consists in action, and its end is a mode of action,

not a quality” (1.VI). As far as action is concerned, Aristotle is interested in how it is

organized.

Aristotle opts for studying tragic authors who are about a century older than himself.

It is in the works of these authors where he finds the ideal representatives of his view of

what it is that constitutes a true tragedy. He notes that each tragedy which succeeds in

causing the tragic effect, which is in his view the ultimate goal of a tragedy, “has a plot

and artistically constructed incidents” (1.VI). It is crucial how a tragedy’s plot in the

sense of the sequence of episodes is constructed. Aristotle identifies relationships

between the individual parts of the development of the plot (or “action”) and defines

their progression in order to achieve the tragic effect and thus a tragic play. He observes

that any action, being it recognition [discovery] or reversal of the situation [peripety]14

14 In square brackets, there are equivalent terms in English for anagnorisis and

peripeteia, respectively.

Kačer 50

(which are both parts of the Complex action, that is to say elements of the development

in the story of the play) “should arise from the internal structure of the plot, so that what

follows should be the necessary or probable result of the preceding action. It makes all

the difference whether any given event is a case of propter hoc or post hoc” (1.X). In

this fashion, Aristotle comes up with with a complex theoretical definition of what a

tragedy is. In Doležel’s terms: “The representation of tragedy becomes a structural

model. The genre is represented as a composite whole constituted by a set of parts”

(Doležel 22-3). These observations refer to plot and its construction and it is this legacy

of the Poetics that accords with Doležel’s understanding of Aristotle’s founding role for

the Western poetic tradition.

As a matter of fact, Eco too finds the most important element of the Poetics in the

approach to action which, in his view, is this part of Aristotle’s conception that has

remained influential. Eco holds that Aristotle’s observations regarding the construction

of the plot are of a more general nature. From Eco’s point of view, Aristotle in the

Poetics performs a semiotic analysis of the progression of the plot. When Aristotle talks

about various structural elements of action (such as reversal of the situation [peripety]

and recognition [discovery]), he writes about the production of meaning the use of these

structural elements leads to. On the example of Oedipus Rex, Aristotle explains the

meaning-productive effects of reversal [peripety] (which is, along with recognition

[discovery] and suffering, a part of the tragic plot): “Thus in the Oedipus [Rex], the

messenger comes to cheer Oedipus and free him from his alarms about his mother, but

by revealing who he is, he produces the opposite effect” (Aristotle 1.XI). Similarly, he

shows the meaning-production which is at work in the case of recognition [discovery] in

an even more explicit manner which, in principle, is rather close to a semiotic analysis:

“Recognition, as the name indicates, is a change from ignorance to knowledge,

Kačer 51

producing love or hate between the persons destined by the poet for good or bad

fortune” (1.XI). This is, naturally, a present-day reader’s perspective of the Poetics:

“...another, very modern reading of Aristotle, one that Aristotle himself encourages,

pretending to talk about tragedy whereas in reality he is providing us with a semiotics of

narrativity” (Eco 244). This is necessarily a modern reading, because Aristotle’s

understanding of substances supporting his theory of poiesis differs from the present

one and “[we] had to wait for the crisis of the concept of substance to rediscover a

semantics implicit not in his [Aristotle’s] works on logic but in those on ethics, poetics,

and rhetoric, and to think that even the definition of essences could be articulated in

terms of underlying actions” (252). It was in the twentieth century that the inspirations

spreading from the Poetics could be reconsidered, reapplied and further developed, be it

on the level of a general structurally inclined understanding of a literary text or on the

level of a semiotic approach to the analysis of meaning-productive procedures derivable

from a literary text.

The quotes from the Poetics and from Eco show where Eco sees the connecting point

between the Poetics and the whole tradition of Western structural poetics as Doležel

holds it. Doležel’s approach reveals that the Poetics is the founding text of the whole

tradition of the Western approach to literature where the structural analysis is present

and that one of the possible ways to do poetics in the sense of studying works of literary

art is based on a structurally inclined understanding of literary texts; further, Eco points

out that the Poetics includes a tendency towards a general semiotic theory of the

narrative. Based on these two points, it is now possible to proceed further in time and in

the line of explication of the theoretical background of this thesis.

Eco succinctly summarizes the overlap between various stages of development of the

structural poetics that links Aristotle with the development of poetics practised in the

Kačer 52

English language and the Prague structuralists’ findings explicitly: “if Wellek and

Warren’s Theory of Literature (1942) managed to blend the principles of Anglo-Saxon

criticism with the work of the Russian formalists and of the structuralists in Prague, it

was because they referred to Aristotle in almost every chapter” (Eco 237). There are

several findings of Czech structuralists of the first half of the twentieth century that

represent a plausible interpretative and analytical tools for studying dramatic texts and

theatrical performances. Among these findings there are their views of aesthetic and

communicative functions, as well as the view of a dramatic text.

These findings are described in the following chapter. They contribute to the

argument of this theses in the sense that they show how various levels of the use of

language, when viewed from a functional perspective, intertwine and collaborate in a

dramatic work. Namely how the referential and aesthetic functions operate. This allows

us to see that some types of speeches used in drama and theatre, such as the messenger’s

report, are different from the rest of the dialogue. Subsequently, it is possible to come

up with a working definition of the reportage as a specific type of utterance with its

unique qualities and purposes.

Kačer 53

3.2. The Prague School Theory of Theatre and Drama

3.2.1. The Prague School Heritage

Between the Poetics and contemporary semiotics of theatre and drama there is a huge

leap that spreads over millennia from the point of view of the time elapsed, as well as

over several crucial developments in the field of theory. Among these developments

which cannot be left aside for the purpose of the present thesis, there is the influential

inquiry of the Prague School structuralism of the 1930s and 1940s and its further

applications and variations of the 1970s and later, up to present.

The Prague School had a seminal influence on the development of semiotics and its

role within the tradition of the Western structural poetic tradition. Members of the

Prague Linguistic Circle and the Prague School theoreticians in general followed de

Saussure’s ideas on semiology and the theory of the sign, thus participating on the

development of semiotics in the 1930s and 1940s. After the disruption in their work by

historical and political circumstances, their heritage was revived in the late 1960s. At

this time, their works also became better known to the broader academic public, as

translations of Czech works became to appear more frequently and helped to overcome

a gap caused by the language barrier, which kept some of the early findings of the

Prague School inaccessible to non-Czech speaking readership. The semiotic study of

drama and theatre gained a new strength and viability when it continued in this line of

research and capitalized on the Prague School findings in the second phase.

Beginning in the 1960s, it was now possible to compare, contrast and merge the

ideas of the Russian formalists and representatives of the Prague School together with

the newly born French and Italian perspectives on semiotics. The process of a

rediscovery of the Prague School semiotic approach by authors writing in English was

Kačer 54

under way in the 1970s and the application of semiotics on the study of drama and

theatre fully blossomed with Elam’s volume after the 1980 (see Aston and Savona

5-10).

First, some of the consequences of the language barrier should be mentioned and put

into context. The Prague School structuralism has been generally accepted as one of the

key sources of inspiration for the development in the field of semiotics of theatre and

drama among contemporary authors writing in English, despite the fact that the

availability of the seminal texts has remained problematic. In her article on the current

state of semiotic theories with respect to the influence of the Prague School, Veronika

Ambros provides her readers with an overview of authors writing in English who

acknowledge their sources among the Prague School structuralists. She is critical of

their competence to see the Prague School influence in details: “All authors I want to

talk about here, except Quinn, are grounded on a greatly limited selection of Prague

School’s texts. In most cases it is texts published in the anthology Semiotics of Art [...]

prepared by Ladislav [Matějka] and Irwin Titunik” (22). This anthology “is a book with

three aims” (Clark 363). Besides being a selective anthology of texts by Prague School

structuralists, it also “serves as a history of Prague School criticism [… and] most

importantly, it illustrates the applications of semiotic theory to the understanding of art”

(363). Among the authors included in this anthology, there are Mukařovský, Bogatyrev,

Brušák, Jakobson, Honzl, Doležel and Veltruský. Ambros perhaps finds this anthology

an insufficient source of the Prague School theory because, as far as it is concerned,

“[one] would like to know more, for example, about the viability of the Prague tradition

in its present scattered state” (365) as claims Clark, the volume’s reviewer, supporting

Ambros’ critical view of the volume.

It follows from Ambros’ note that Quinn’s book The Semiotic Stage represents the

Kačer 55

most complex source of the Prague School theory concerning semiotics of theatre and

drama in the English language. It is also true that besides English and Czech, some of

the Prague School writings are also available in other languages. However, from the

authors writing about semiotics who concern Ambros, it is, with the exception of Quinn,

only Elam’s The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama that refers to these sources. “One of

the most important contemporary texts on the semiotics of drama is a 1980 book by

Keir Elam, which is grounded in the above mentioned sources in English (i.e.

[Matějka], Titunik and Steiner) as well as some translations of Prague School works

available in Italian and French” (23), writes Ambros.

As these comments about the Prague School writings and their accessibility to the

English audience suggest, there is no concise single overview of the Prague School’s

findings, a seminal all-encompassing text written by a member of the School. Still,

Quinn claims that:

In retrospect, the theoretical orientations and analytic achievements of the

various Prague School writers on theater appear remarkably complementary.

Though there is no consensus on certain points – a situation that would

probably signal a lack of individual initiative or a limitation in perspective –

the Prague School theater writings can in my view be conceived as a coherent

body of work. (1)

For the study of the Prague School’s influence on the development of structuralism and

semiotics of drama and theatre, one must do with individual studies by Prague School

members and followers, with Matějka and Tinunik’s anthology and with Quinn’s

summarizing book. Passages in the studies of the semiotics of drama and theatre that

quote Prague School’s observations in various fields already filtered and applied to the

particular area within the semiotic theory, are also helpful.

Kačer 56

Members of the School subscribed to one method of approach to works of literary

art. Following the inspiration of the Russian Formalists (whose work and approach is

well manifested, for example, in the works of Vladimir Shklovsky and particularly in

Vladimir Propp’s Morphology of the Folk Tale)15, with a great influence of important

Russian émigré scholars such as Roman Jakobson and Nikolai Trubetzkoy. The Prague

School’s inspiration in Russian formalism was very productive for the future

development of the field of semiotics of art and structural poetics, because “Russian

formalism has a pivotal place in the history of modern poetics: it is a culmination of

nineteenth century morphological poetics and of the Romantic conceptions of poetic

language and, at the same time, a deployment of the theoretical base for twentieth

century structuralism” (Doležel 124). Together with the Russian formalists, de

Saussure’s Course made an impact on the Prague School. It was Jakobson again who

promoted de Saussure’s ideas about structuralism. Matějka remembers: “[Jakobson] at

first made famous de Saussure’s Cours de linguistique générale in his linguistic and

literary studies to reject all de Saussure’s basic propositions at the end of his life”

15 A. The “morphology” in the Proppian sense together with Greimas’s subsequent

actantial theory are explained in a sub-chapter below; they serve as the basis for a

formal analysis of the messenger figures and for the proposal of the definition of the

“new messengers” concept.

B. Also, Propp can be seen as the predecessor of “narrative grammar”, which

developed among theoreticians based in the French discourse in the 1960s, including

Tzvetan Todorov, Claude Bremond (La Logique du récit [1973]) and A. J. Greimas,

who all paid special attention to the relationship between the narrative and the

character. See a sub-chapter below.

Kačer 57

(Matějka n.p.). Together with Jakobson, who “of course contributed the most to

spreading Slavonic poetics around the whole world” (n.p.), after his move from

Czechoslovakia to the United States, Jan Mukařovský can be considered the most

important figure of the whole Prague School as of the 1940s.

The term “Prague School” is a general name for theorists who followed the ideas of

the linguistically inclined Prague Linguistic Circle and these two terms sometimes tend

to be viewed as synonyms. However, for a better understanding of the usage of the two

terms in the present context, it is helpful to mention that the Circle, which was

established on 6 October 1926 as an informal group, is a platform for scholars who are

primarily oriented on the study of language and linguistics (Hoskovec). It holds for

many of these members of the Circle, such as Vilém Mathesius, Roman Jakobson,

Nikolai Trubetzkoy and many others, that they published linguistics papers, which were,

for example, collected in English in the anthology The Linguistic School of Prague: An

introduction to its theory and practice compiled by Josef Vachek in 1966 (“Prague

Linguistics – Linguistique de Prague”, web). Their findings in the field of structural

linguistics influenced a whole generation of structurally inclined thinkers. The Prague

School is a more general label than the Circle, although the overlap is immense (not all

subscribers to the Prague School way were members of the Circle). It refers to authors

like Mukařovský and Jakobson (both also members of the Circle) as well as their

followers and collaborators. But, perhaps more importantly, it refers to their methods,

approaches and views of literature and art in general.

After this brief note on (1) the complicated nature of accessing the Prague School

texts in English and the lack of a total, unifying theory thereof, and (2) issues about the

term “the Prague School”, this thesis needs to proceed to some of the theoretical

Kačer 58

observations that relate to the topic of this thesis. They are namely the Prague School

views of signs and their interrelations, and language and its functional nature, where the

aesthetic function becomes an important contribution. These then help to identify

various linguistic features of a dramatic work and see how the sings involved work as a

system.

The Prague School had an enormous influence on the later development of the study

of drama and theatre, especially in the field of semiotics, because it analysed dramatic

works with respect to the structure and meaning-productive processes initiated by

dramatic and theatrical signs. The basic principle of the Prague School approach to a

performance – that is to say that each emitted signal (verbal, visual, and auditory

gestures) was to be received as a sign and thus accordingly available to study – “was

restated in 1968 by the Polish semiotician Tadeusz Kowzan [(Elam 20)]. Enlarged into a

book which came out in 1975, it heralds the second wave of theatre semiotics. The

driving-force was partly Parisian (post)structuralism and partly Italian

semiotics” (Shepherd and Wallis 237). The source of this lies in 1931.

Elam finds 1931 as an “important year” for the later development of theatre studies,

and Quinn mentions the fact that the inquiry of the Prague School had a consistent and

long-term nature: “Because of its long-term development of a specific theoretical

approach, the Prague School theater theory holds an important, still largely

unacknowledged place in the history of theater study” (2). Thanks to the publication of

Mukařovský’s article “An Attempted Structural Analysis of the Phenomenon of the

Actor”, “[the] year 1931 is an important date in the history of theatre studies” (Elam

Kačer 59

4).16 In this paper, Mukařovský analyses acting as a sign. He shows that it is not just

language that can be accessed from a semiotic perspective as a meaning-productive

activity with a set of rules. Acting too has its rules and structures that can be studied.

Mukařovský shows on the example of Charlie Chaplin’s acting that there are various

types of actors that he approaches as phenomena; thus he can observe that various actor

types lead to a production of various meanings which are dependent on an actor’s

actions as well as the whole context of the given performance as a whole (Mukařovský,

“An Attempted Structural Analysis”). The step that Mukařovský takes in his essay is

crucial for the history of semiotics. Mukařovský shows that there is also another level in

a performance that can be studied as a sign or a series (or system) of signs.

The semiotic analysis of drama and theatre is not limited to what an actor says and

what he or she performs on a stage. Costumes, stage design, sounds, spatial relations

between objects and characters – these are all to be analysed as signs and combined,

they create a sign-system of a play. It is important for a textual analysis of a play to

acknowledge the fact that a play-script serves as a basis for a stage representation or, in

Elam’s words, it is “a mode of fiction designed for stage representation and construed

according to particular (‘dramatic’) conventions” (2)17. Generally speaking, it was the

ability to see through the limitations of one’s area of research, such as the structural

16 In the same year, Zich’s Aesthetics of Drama was published, which also makes the

year 1931 an important date, as Elam mentions (4).

17 Elam thus distinguishes between “theatre” and “drama”: when Elam talks about

theatre, he addresses the “complex of phenomena associated with the performer-

audience transaction” (2) and while referring to drama, he resides within the realm of

written fiction with specific conventions as quoted above.

Kačer 60

analysis of language, which is among the reasons why the Prague School’s ideas about

drama and theatre have become so influential.

The Prague School made it possible to connect various findings form the study of

structural linguistics with aesthetic approaches to the arts. In this sense, “Prague is an

indispensable link in the chain leading from Moscow to Paris” as René Wellek put it

(quoted in Quinn 3). For one thing, the Prague School theorists saw the opportunities

offered by formalist and structuralist perspectives in the sphere of performing arts. For

another, they were able to apply their findings from one area of research on another,

taking into consideration wider aesthetic and social contexts, while rigidly observing the

principles of inquiry of the former during the application. In this sense, their endeavours

may be regarded interdisciplinary and still topical:

the Prague School provides one of the first sociological models for critical

understanding in which the interdisciplinary arts and scholarship of the post-

modern era can be seen as more of a gain than a loss, more like a return to

common sense than the sometimes strange separation of the arts and other

human activities into disciplines – the forced, “organic” closures that more

dogmatic theories had achieved. (Quinn 6)

The study of drama and theatre from the Prague School’s perspective was concerned

with the structural elements within the work of art as such as well as the context and the

whole line of development in which the artefact exists. Its study of drama and theatre

can thus be viewed as a study of the whole artistic institution, which according to Quinn

is an anticipation of “the institutional studies of Michel Foucault, like The Order of

Things” (6, footnote). This broad sphere of interests of the Prague School also enables

them to reformulate and change their predecessors’ views: they follow the Russian

formalists’ morphological branch and they made additions to de Saussure’s linguistics,

Kačer 61

for example as in the case of Jakobson’s identification “of the diverse functions of

language [which] could not be accommodated within the Saussurean non-functional

linguistic model” (Portis-Winner 124).

Jakobson and Mukařovský’s theory of language functions in the field of linguistics

and literary studies is the most important one for the purposes of the present thesis. The

theory serves as a basis for the study of the role of the reportage technique in drama in

general and in the technique’s various applications in the works by Frayn, Stoppard and

Wilson, as it helps to define the main mode of speech of the messenger, the reportage.

Jakobson distinguishes between several main language-functions which, in specific

types of use, determine what happens in the plays. In other words, an interplay of

various language-functions on the stage brings about various sings and, in effect,

produces specific character-types such as the messenger-figure.

Jakobson worked on his theory of the functions of language for several decades. He

left the phenomenological standpoint according to which “an object’s essence

supposedly inheres in the object itself” (Quinn 24) and started exploiting the

relationship between the object and the subject in his communication model. He added a

structural element to the phenomenological approach to language. He studied “factors of

communication, that are necessary for communication to occur” (Hébert 1). In a unit of

language, the specific functions are present in the relation between the subject partaking

in the communication process and the main factor of the communication object, that is

to say the main orientation of a given message. “Communication can thus be analysed

from the standpoint of its functional orientation, with at least three perspectives on

meaning inherent in any utterance. Some utterances serve primarily to clarify the

sender’s position, some describe reality, and some orient the receiver” (Quinn 25).

These three forms of functional orientation are originally Bühler’s invention.

Kačer 62

However, the Prague School theorists of language supplied this three function model

with a fourth aspect, because they also included the message itself into their inquiry:

The contribution of the Prague School to the functionalist approach to

communication lies in Mukařovský’s invention of a fourth aspect, the aesthetic

function, which dominates the others especially when the focus of

communication centers on the sign itself rather than its referentiality. [...]

These four remain the essential principles of mature Czechoslovak structuralist

aesthetics. (Quinn 25)

During the process of elaboration of the main four functions of language ((1) emotive,

or expressive; (2) conative; (3) referential, or cognitive; and (4) poetic, or aesthetic

functions) in the 1960s and 1970s, Jakobson supplemented the four function model with

two additional factors and functions of language: “At this time Jakobson added two

more factors in speech communication: (5) the code that is common to speaker and

addressee, and (6) the contact between them, the medium by which they communicate”

(Waugh and Monville-Burston XXIII), namely the metalingual (or metalinguistic), and

phatic functions. It is, in accordance with Quinn, the aesthetic function which remains

the most important invention of the Prague School in this area.

3.2.2. The Aesthetic Function

In case of dramatic art, it is the aesthetic function that dominates the communication

event between the sender and the receiver. However, other functions of language may

remain present, but they are hierarchically subordinated to the main, aesthetic function.

This is particularly important given the fact, that at any event when an artistic use of

language is applied, such as in a theatre performance or in a dramatic text.

Kačer 63

The Prague School approaches literary communication as a part of the general

linguistic communication. It does not see it as an isolated artefact which exists

independently on a situation. The approach, as it follows from the functional attitude of

Jakobson and Mukařovský, is relational. This means that the understanding of what it is

that constitutes the “aesthetic” is based on the understanding of the communication

model where a message is necessarily coded and decoded.

The aesthetic then lies in the relationship between the code and the receiver where

the subjective component (Mukařovský’s model) is dominant in the communication.

This functional understanding is a wider model of understanding the literary art, as it

focuses on communication in the whole rather than selectively on a tradition of

literature or the accepted canon. However, and Mukařovský stresses this point, the

aesthetic function can at times become dominant even in other types of discourses that

the ones, which are common-sensically viewed as “literary”. In Aesthetic Function,

Norm and Value as Social Facts he explains that there is no strict boundary that would

separate the literary from the non-literary in an impenetrable fashion: “Thus we only

subscribe to the opinion that there is no solid boundary between the aesthetic and non-

aesthetic area; there are no objects and actions that would be the carriers of the aesthetic

function disregarding the time, place and evaluator, nor are there others that would be

necessarily excluded from its reach given their real set-up” (Mukařovský 19). Seen from

a different perspective than in the above paragraph, the aesthetic function does not

determine what a work of art is (or, where an artistic bit resides), but it depends on the

communicative situation. It is not definitive and inert, it is dependent on the context and

subject to development. As Quinn puts it: “Instead of aesthetic function serving to

define the art object as such, art exists as a particular occasion of aesthetic functioning

in certain subject/object interactions. In artistic communication the aesthetic function

Kačer 64

usually dominates [...]” (27). An analogical situation holds for the other three18 main

functions.

The Prague School structuralists did not regard upon works of art as independent on

the social context. For one thing, the aesthetic function may be present in any linguistic

context, as Mukařovský begins his Aesthetic Function: “The aesthetic function has an

important place in lives of individuals and the whole society. The circle of people

coming into immediate contact is limited […]; but art, by the consequences of its

activity, also has impact on people who have direct relationship with it” (18).

Mukařovský is aware of the potential accusation of panaesthetism, so he refutes this

reservation by showing how linguistic functions combine in all kinds of social

discourses – for example, scientific discourse may include aesthetic moments and, on

the contrary, a work of art may make use of other functions than just the aesthetic one

(although it remains the prevailing one in this case).

Further, Jakobson describes how the aesthetic function penetrates into a general

social discourse on the level of ideology19:

Similarly to the poetic function’s organising and directing a work of poetry

without necessarily standing out and hitting the eye in a billboard-like fashion,

a work of poetry equally does not protrude in the overall totality of social

values, it does not predominate over the other values, but it still is a substantial

and ambitious organiser of ideology. True poetry protects against automation

and against rusting our formulations of love and hate, resistance and

18 Or the remaining five, if we accept the development in the 1970s as an organic part

of the theoretical concept.

19 That is to say the prevailing social discourse.

Kačer 65

reconciliation, belief and denial. (“Co je poezie?” 32)

The functional model is a potent way of portraying the multilevelled communication

between various uses of language as well as social situations. Literary art is one of the

instances of such communicative activity – or, in Mukařovský’s terms, between a

sphere of aesthetic and/or artistic phenomena.

Norms, which rule judgements about whether a work belongs to the artistic realm or

not, are not universal and timeless. They depend on the current state of affairs. It is view

of the aesthetic function that brings a theoretically founded argument for this claim. The

aesthetic function does not reside intrinsically within a work of art, but it is present in

the sender-receiver communication, where the orientation on the receiver’s subjectivity

prevails in the case of the aesthetic function. Mukařovský’s Aesthetic Function, Norm

and Value as Social Facts thoroughly develops this idea of the socially constructed

view of what art is in relation to art in general and concrete forms of art (for example,

besides literature, in film and photography), as well as other creative activities (such as

crafts like jewellery) and non-creative ones (such as industrial production) in. For the

purposes of this thesis, it is necessary to zero in the general ideas in Mukařovský’s

paper to drama, which by its nature is a multi-craft institution, or, in the semiotic terms,

a conglomerate of various signs, or sign-systems.

In the course of communication between a sender and a receiver of a linguistic

message, it is the aesthetic function of language that directs the understanding of the

message as a work of art based on the prevailing social norms that say what is to be

understood as a work of art, that is to say to accept the aesthetic functions’ dominance

over the other functions which are present. Quinn summarizes Mukařovský’s point

about the dynamism of the norm:

Because collective opinions change through time, norms are not fixed rules,

Kačer 66

unities of the type advocated by neo-Aristotelian theorists of drama, but are

rather expressions of a kind of social agreement as to what constitutes the

current standard of judgement; i.e. the Prague School would historicize such

normative projects, and point out that the rules produced are not essential to art

but are instead products of a local idea about art at the time. [...] Norms are

merely guidelines made, like all communicative procedures and rules, to

generate meaning when either fulfilled or violated. (29)

The generation of meaning in drama and theatre takes place within a complex sign-

system, which each piece encompasses. On the level of the dialogue, the norm has been

continually developing.

This dynamism explains the possibility of the shift of the use of language in drama,

as well as changes in the use of certain conventions. The functional perspective and the

notion of the aesthetic function with its relationship to other functions is an important

influence on the present topic. The thesis claims that there has been a shift in the use of

the convention of the messenger and identifies the messenger-figure in terms of mode of

communication and its use in contemporary mainstream drama. Following from the

above stated, it can be claimed that the messenger’s arrival is signalled by a shift of

mode of communication when the referential function of a narrative prevails over the

aesthetic dialogue. Similarly, the dynamism of the norm explains how it is possible to

discard a convention and introduce new ones. It was Brecht’s contribution to the

development of drama and theatre that caused a radical shift in the norm. Given the self-

referentiality and the outspoken self-awareness of his epic theatre, the norm shifted as

some conventions became too transparent. The convention of the deus-ex-machina and

the messenger are among them. Since Brecht, the aesthetic norm makes it difficult to

use a messenger in its traditional form. A new messenger needed to be introduced, one

Kačer 67

that would still capitalize on the referential function (as his primary mode of

communication is the reportage), and simultaneously one that fits the new norm of a

higher level of theatrical self-awareness and its reception by the audience.

Given the messenger’s dependence on the referential function, this language function

should be mentioned as a part of this preparatory stage for the further analysis, too.

3.2.3. The Referential Function

The functional view of the use of language in general, as Jakobson’s contribution to

linguistics and literary research establishes, and the application of this perspective on

the study of a dramatic text and/or classification of speeches in a theatre is an important

point of reference in the further distinction of the messenger’s report in this thesis.

Within the dynamic relationship among the functions of language, it holds that in a

work of art the dominance of the aesthetic function of language is at times supported or

supplemented with the referential function. The primary aim of the referential function

of language is based on its orientation on the content, in other words on what is

supposed to be communicated. Here, the sender of the information is primarily

conveying a factual piece of information to the receiver in the communication process.

When analysing a dramatic text or speeches of a performance, it is sometimes the

case that a character needs to speak about facts or events, that is to say that he is not

primarily engaging in a dramatic dialogue that constitutes the action, but rather focuses

on a delivery of a message – a narrative.

Pfister sees the referential function as dominant in those parts of dramatic texts that

are mainly aimed at setting up the context (expositional remarks) or messengers’

reports. He writes that in classical and naturalistic drama, these tendencies which are

Kačer 68

necessary in theatre “in the purely verbal form of the narrative which, for economical or

technical reasons cannot be enacted directly on stage” (106). This certainly holds for the

dramatic and theatrical genres which aim at avoiding literarization or, as the

development of the twentieth century theatre shows, epic tendencies such as in Brecht

and in a way most drama after him.

If this kind of narrative report is only given a referential function in the

external communication system because the information it conveys is

redundant in the face of the addressee’s existing level of awareness in the

internal communication system, then the result will be a tendency to produce

epic communication structures. Even if the reporting figure does not go so far

as to step outside his role or address the audience directly and explicitly, the

receiver will still regard himself as the primary addressee in view of the

absence of a referential function for the report in the internal communication

system. (106)

Pfister’s analysis certainly applies to most of the history of drama, as his remark about

avoiding epic tendencies suggest.

However, the topic of this thesis focuses on contemporary, post-Brechtian

production. The chapter on Brecht’s heritage below shows how the influence of his

contribution to the development of drama and theatre is indispensable. In short, Brecht’s

epic theatre shattered to a degree some of the conventions that had been used before for

the whole history of drama and theatre; among these conventions, there is the

convention of the messenger as a minor character without a name whose sole role is to

produce a narrative about a fact or event outside the current frame of action on the stage

(hence, the dominant referential function of its speech). The structural aim of enacting a

messenger is to push the action forward by disclosing new information, previously

Kačer 69

unknown to the others, all this within the logic of the internal communication system of

the particular play.

Brecht’s radical influence in this respect lies in the fact that his Epic theatre steps out

of this communication system, disrupts it and calls in various other systems of

communication such as a direct address (tearing down of the fourth wall), real-life

reference (disruption of theatrical illusion), and so on. Since Brecht, the referentiality of

a messenger’s report becomes problematic, because the messenger has been forever

uncovered as a convention whose applicability is problematic. It is Brecht’s radical use

of the referential function in his Epic theatre that lays bare to the contemporary audience

the convention of the messenger and questions his authority as a dramatic agent. In

other words, the messenger becomes as untrustworthy a convention as that of the deus

ex machina. This is not to claim that the messenger is not used any more (or the deus ex

machina, either, for that matter). Quite to the contrary, it opens up new ways for using

the referential function when it is necessary for whatever reasons to deliver information

and focus on the content in a course of a play.

Knowledge of facts and events outside the frame of action and possibility to refer to

the actual world is partly taken over by other characters. As soon as these characters

(major characters with a name) meet certain criteria such as having an occupation which

grants them access to outside of the frame of action and makes their stepping out of

their role possible to switch to the narrative mode and report (primarily journalists,

teachers, scientists and many others), the road opens for them to take over the

messenger’s roles. The main formal aspects are dealt with in the chapter on the

reportage. Various applications and the types of the new messengers are the subject of

the case studies.

Kačer 70

3.2.4. Some Later Developments

It is not the purpose of the chapter on the Prague School to grasp it in its entirety. For

one thing, it is necessary to identify the Prague School as one of the most important

followers in the structural poetic tradition in the Western literary-theoretical frame of

thought as Doležel outlines it. Among the basic achievements of the Circle, there was

the functional view of language in works of art, including drama. A number of the

School members then continued in applying their structuralist and semiotic perspectives

on drama and theatre, in fact they were the first to do so in a concise and innovative

way. Their basic achievements described above have become an inseparable foundation

of the later structuralist and semiotic studies. For the purpose of this thesis, they also set

up the coordinates and limits within which the analyses will take place.

Yet it would be a mistake to rest on the basic field of the game, as it has been marked

out. To at least illustrate the continuity of this direction of thought, it is necessary to

mention some of the later crucial developments that are relevant to the field of study of

this thesis. Among them, there are mainly Honzl’s concept of the dynamic sing,

Veltruský’s study of drama as a literary work, and last but not least, Osolsobě’s

ostension.

Jindřich Honzl was a Czech avant-garde director – an important case in point to

mention concerning the background of the Czech theatre theorists showing that there

were also practitioners who found the structuralist approach fruitful. Honzl’s works

include dozens of performances, but there are at least two essays by him which have

remained influential for the future development of structuralist and semiotic studies of

Kačer 71

theatre.20 They are “Dynamics of the Sign in the Theatre” and “The Hierarchy of

Dramatic Devices”, both published in English by Matějka and Titunik in their Semiotics

of Art. It is primarily the former 1940 essay emphasizing the dynamic element of the

sign within the performance sign system, which marks an important shift in the study of

the performance.

In his work, Honzl focused primarily on the element of acting in the theatre. Still he

recognized it as one of the complexity of signs operating within the system of signs

during a theatrical performance. However, observing that theatricality is “collective”

(Honzl 91), that is to say that all its components are perceived inseparably and in

cooperation, he concludes that there is an ever changing current over time.

This temporal continuity was identified by Jindřich Honzl as being

synonymous with the principle of action. By action Honzl did not mean the

simple orchestration of actor movement, but rather the forward motion of the

play’s form and – usually more importantly – its story. (Quinn 57)

Honzl then stresses the element of action which unfolds during time and within which

various components dynamically interchange their dominance within the sign system as

the central point of the performance: “Action, taken as the essence of dramatic art,

unifies word, actor, costume, scenery and music in the sense that we could then

recognize them as different conductors of a single current that either passes from one to

another or flows through several at one time” (Honzl 91).

20 Honzl’s concept of the dynamic sign which stresses the temporality of the

interconnected system of signs in a theatre performance can also be viewed as a

uniting element between semiotics and phenomenology of theatre, or at least a step

in the middle of the two.

Kačer 72

Veltruský criticizes Honzl’s lack of rigour in pursuing this perspective. Veltruský

mentions Honzl’s metaphorical use of the concept, for example: “He [Honzl] did notice

that there is some sort of polarity between each sign and the function it assumes in the

context of the continuous action, but he dealt with it in purely metaphorical terms,

assimilating action to an electrical current, and the words, actors, costumes, scenery and

music to the conductors through which the current flows” (Veltruský, “The Prague

School Theory” 231). Honzl develops his electric metaphor of action developing over

time as a “current” in a following way:

Now that we have used this comparison, let us add that this current, that is,

dramatic action, is not carried by the conductor that exerts the least resistance

(dramatic action is not always concentrated only in the performing actor) but

rather theatricality frequently is generated in the overcoming of obstacles

caused by certain dramatic devices (special theatrical effects when, for

instance, action is concentrated solely in the words or in the actor’s motions or

in off stage sounds, and so on), in the same way that a filament fiber glows just

because it has resistance to an electric current. (Honzl 91)

Quinn even compares Honzl’s view of the centrality of action of a theatrical

performance to another key concept of the Prague School theory of art, Mukařovský’s

semantic gesture: “Action, then, is the most common theatrical example of the focusing

aspect of art works that Mukařovský called their semantic gesture” (Quinn 58). Honzl’s

stress on the dynamics of the sign, which is expressed in the passage of the flowing

time, is an important contribution to the theory. It presents a tool to see various

components of the performance (dramatic text, its on-stage production, character,

costumes, props, music, and so on) in the development over time, when each of them

wins or loses its dominance over the others.

Kačer 73

Another important achievement that the later development of ideas of the Prague

School lead to was Veltruský’s study Drama as Literature, where he delimits the

dramatic text as a genre in itself along with the lyric and the epic, not as a mere

component of the theatre performance. He claims that the two approaches are not

exclusive. Drama can be viewed as both. He refers to Zich when he reminds that “Some

theoreticians have even excluded drama from literature and stated that it is merely the

verbal component of theatre” (Drama as Literature 8). He does not deny that often this

is so, but he reminds that:

all plays, not only closet plays, are read by the public in the same way as

poems and novels. The reader has neither the actors nor the stage but only

language in front of him. Quite often he does not imagine the characters as

stage figures or the place of action as a scenic set. Even if he does, the

difference between drama and theater remains intact because the stage figures

and scenic sets are then immaterial meanings whereas in theater they are the

material bearers of meaning. (8-9)

From this starting point, Veltruský aims at defining drama as a genre in itself with its

specifics, independent of theatre.21

His other starting point is from the opposite direction, when he notes that it is not

always a dramatic text that makes the textual component of the theatre: “drama is not

the only literary genre which provides theater with the texts it needs” (9). However, he

does not mention that there are viable theatrical forms without any, or pre-written

21 He acknowledges on all possible occasions that he is well aware that the primary role

of drama is to serve as a component of theatre. This needs to be stressed once again.

Kačer 74

textual components.

He finds several characteristics of the genre and explains them on the basis of his

semiotic approach to text. The study deals in depth with the dialogue as the principal

constituent of drama and shows how it generates content and context. Besides other

observations, he observes that it is drama which, as a genre, makes the principal use of

the present tense when it constructs meanings.

The topic of textual components which are not dialogue or monologue, such as the

characters’ names (speech prefixes) and stage directions are also studied. As far as

characters’ names are concerned, these are parts of the text that give characters their

identity in collaboration with other aspects and also create the context for the reader.

Stage directions also make an integral part of the text for the reader and cannot be

understood as mere distractions. He writes, “if author’s notes really were a mere

comment on the play, rather than an organic part of its structure, they would inevitably

disrupt the unity of the literary work” (42). On the other hand, this does not mean that

they are equally important. He observes that “in relation to the direct speeches they

occupy a subordinate position […] they are never more than auxiliary” (47). Further, he

observes that while dialogue is the dominant mode in drama, direct speeches can consist

of a variety of modes (quasi dialogues, monologues) and there are also other

possibilities of literarizing (to use a Brechtian term) theatre. On the contrary, “dramatic”

modes of communication such as dramatic dialogue often appear in the lyric and the

epic.

Veltruský’s study is inspiring due to its ability to step out of conventional

understanding of drama as mere pretext for a performance. Although in this thesis such

a radical step is not taken and all dramatic texts will be viewed primarily from the

perspective of their staging potentialities, Veltruský’s observations about the

Kačer 75

constructions of contents and contexts in dramatic dialogues and monologues are

helpful when identifying literarizing and narrativizing tendencies.

The last of the later developments capitalizing on the Prague School writings I need

to mention in this introductory chapter about the theoretical background is Ivo

Osolsobě’s contribution to the understanding of the role of ostension in theatrical

communication. His approach complements the semiotic principal focus on the sign,

which by its nature is a “thing” that stands for something else and is an object of

encoding and decoding in communication. In their approach to drama and theatre,

centring upon their nature as a system of signs (linguistic signs in the case of drama and

a whole array of signs in theatre), structuralism and semiotics leave out the otherwise

obvious fact that there is a whole variety of “things” on the stage that are present there

for themselves and as themselves. Osolsobě even speaks of a “monopoly of the sign” in

(semiotic) theory: “The theory of ostension […] disrupts the yet untouched monopoly of

the sign in the area of human communication” (Osolsobě, “Balnibarbi” 35). A revived

interest in ostension is a return to some of the older theories of communication (pre-

sign-centred ones), but also a natural turn towards the most simple, yet working and

used, communicative means which is also the core element of any performance,

“showing” things as they are for what they are.

Such is also the main characteristic of ostension. As Eco writes:

Nevertheless, there is a way in which this presence is different from the

presence of a word or of a picture. It has not been actively produced (as one

produces a word or draws an image) – it has been picked up among the existing

physical bodies and it has been shown or ostended. It is the result of a

particular mode of sign production. Ostension has been studied by medieval

Kačer 76

logicians, by Wittgenstein, by contemporary theorists of theatre (for instance,

the Czech, Ivo Osolsobě). Ostension is one of the various ways of signifying,

consisting in de-realizing a given object in order to make it stand for an entire

class. But ostension is, at the same time, the most basic instance of

performance. (Eco, “Semiotics of…” 110)

Eco and Osolsobě are in agreement here that ostension is the core of theatre

(performance), which is primarily communication between the stage and the audience.

Of course, there are limits to the use of ostension precisely for the reason that it does

not operate on the level of symbolic communication. Osolsobě points out that:

[It is] only possible to communicate by ostension that what is at hand and such

as it is, nothing more. Ostension is at every moment limited to merely those

things (phenomena, events) that currently exist at the moment of

communication, to things which are present, present in the temporal as well as

spatial sense of the word, to what is “here” and “now”. (Osolsobě,

“Balnibarbi” 25)

This observation holds for the entirety of communication among people, of which

performance makes a relatively small part, although some theoreticians would claim

that all communication among people is in a sense a performance, and all people’s

actions are just role-playing on the stage of the theatrum mundi.

Yet Osolsobě holds that in interpersonal communication, as well as in the more

specific theatrical communication, there is a gap in its theoretical assessment. Not all of

its components are signs in the semiotic sense. He holds that the revival of the term

ostension will make it possible to escape from the limiting view of everything as a sign

which needs to be read and decoded: “The term ostension makes it possible to describe,

name and map a certain area in the sphere of communication and thus fill in a gap in the

Kačer 77

theory of communication, of communication among people. […] ostension is an

important, not at all negligible, and only unjustly neglected kind of sing-free

communication” (Osolsobě, “Balnibarbi” 34). More specifically, ostension, claims

Osolsobě, would be helpful to a better understanding of theatre, too:

[The term ostension] could render outstandingly useful service to the theory of

theatre: it could help to set free this theory from its present derivation from

theories of literature, from its present dependence on them. Due to its

character, theatre is […] the most related to ostension of all arts. What is shown

in theatre – or better said, what should be shown in theatre – yet are not actors

themselves, but again a model created by actors themselves of actors

themselves (Osolsobě, “Balnibarbi” 41)

Here, he speaks of an ostensive communication when “models” are present on the stage,

in this case created by actors. However, this idea applies to other things on the stage,

too, which primarily do not have the nature of signs. In other words, a gun stands for a

gun, and seeing it as a model gun is closer to the nature of human communication than

reading it as a sign of a gun. Osolsobě also speaks about “tokens” or even “token-token”

communication. Although he does not oppose understanding a performance as a system

of (theatrical) signs, he also accentuates the communicative aspect present in each

performance and applies to it the basic element of any human communication, that of

ostension.

This concept is helpful in some of our analyses in the thesis, such as in the chapter on

the Voice from the Gadget. Here, the stage environment is based on the ostensive

principle of communication when a radio (The Real Inspector Hound) and a newspaper

(Democracy) stand for themselves. These objects have their specific role in our culture

as heralds of information, inanimate messengers of news. As such, these objects on

Kačer 78

stage by their mere presence as themselves create a whole set of associations and

expectations in the audience without a further need of encoding as signs which would

stand for something else.

Kačer 79

3.3. Morphology and Theory of Actants

There is another tradition in the history of the development of theoretical approach to

the structure of literary works which is helpful to our consideration of the new

messengers and their application in the contemporary mainstream drama. It goes back to

the famous study by Vladimir Propp, The Morphology of the [Russian] Folktale. What

Propp did in his influential work was that he approached Russian traditional folktales

from the Formalist perspective and presented an abstracted overview of all character-

types present there. Thus, he is regarded as one of the pioneers of what is now called

narrative grammar. Aston and Savona summarize that, “in respect of the application of

semiotic methodology to character, an important legacy from the early structuralist and

formalist approaches has been the concept of the functions of character” (Aston and

Savona 36). Similarly, Fořt stresses that, “what makes Propp’s model valuable for

further research is the introduction of the category of function” (Fořt 23). For our

purpose, it is then expedient to follow this line of thought and look at the messenger in

an abstract way as a function in the structure of the narrative, or as a role attributed to a

character. But before we conclude this chapter with the identification of differences

between the function of the messenger and that of the new messengers (which will also

explain the structure of the analytical chapter of this thesis), a brief recapitulation of the

basic principles of Propp’s method and its later developments applied to drama follow.

Morphology itself is limited as to its direct applications on other genres. What

matters in the context of this thesis is the line of thought that this approach represents.

First of all, Propp focuses on characters from the perspective of their function in the

narrative structure of the folk tales: “it is primarily important for the future development

that he used the functional aspect of acting characters which he applied on his research

Kačer 80

of Russian miracle folk tales. This way he offered a system which helps to see general

narrative schemes as well as the layer of concrete embodiments of these schemes” (Fořt

21). In other words, Propp’s approach shows the way to approach a narrative (or, a set

of narrative related stories) from a specific perspective, which is the functions and their

realizations as characters in the structure of a story.

Further, he looks for patterns underlying the folktales he analyzes. This way, he

produces schemes of various folktales. What is important in this achievement is the fact

that he observes a limited number of character functions employed in the Russian

folktale, which are all based on a set of basic functions of acting characters, each with

several variations. There are a total of 7 basic functions (spheres of action) according to

the acting characters (see chapter 6, Propp 72-5) and 31 functions of “dramatis

personae”, the acting characters (see chapter 3, Propp 24-59).

He attributes a name and a letter to each of the functions: for example, “separation” –

β, “prohibition” – γ, etc. Further, he labels these functions when they are materialized in

an acting character, including the variations of the seven basic types: for example,

“villain” – A, “hero” – H, etc. This notation makes it possible to create the abstracted

schemes. This is not to say that each character is limited to only one function: “It is

clear that these abstracted roles are metalinguistic narratological entities and that there is

a fundamental difference between abstract roles and ways of their embodiment” (Fořt

21). Certain characters may fulfil various functions in the course of the action, which

lies in the core of the developmental dynamics of a tale.

However, what is often forgotten when discussing Propp’s seminal contribution to

the area of narratology, study of character and narrative grammar as a method of

analysis of a story, is the fact that his study is rigidly grounded in a singular genre – that

Kačer 81

of the Russian (magical) folktale. It would be misleading to infer a general conclusion

from the Morphology and claim that there are only a total of seven spheres of action (the

villain, donor, helper, sought-for person, dispatcher, hero, and false hero) (Propp 72-3).

Although it is true that a lot of these may be found elsewhere, it is the method as such

that calls for a further utilization as a potent tool for an analysis of a narrative. To repeat

the crucial point in Fořt’s phrasing: “Both roles and functions are abstract entities” (22).

The characters are their carriers. Still, the challenge of finding a generally applicable list

of abstract functions has been accepted by several in the history of the development of

the structuralist thought, including applications on character-functions in drama. Among

them, the most successful attempt is the model presented by A. J. Greimas in his theory

of “actants” presented in his Structural Semantics in 196622.

3.3.1. The Propp Inspiration

The inspiration from Propp is acknowledged, as Greimas recognized the potential of

Propp’s abstracting attitude as a possible general theory of the deep structure of drama.

22 Let us note that Greimas did not only follow Propp and his Morphology of the

Russian Folktale, but he also adapted a model of the “dramatic calculus” as

developed by Etienne Souriau in 1950. Elam even describes Greimas’s Structural

Semantics as “Souriau married with Propp” (118). For our purposes it is enough to

state that Souriau, too, identifies six functions (The Lion, Sun, Earth, Mars, Scale,

and Moon) which basically correspond to Greimas’s actantial functions and he also

sees them as roles, which may be realized in characters. As in Propp and Greimas,

according to Souriau some characters (figures) may fulfill more than one function

and, vice versa, a function may be carried out by more than one character (figure).

Kačer 82

“While Propp’s narratology is limited to the Russian fairy tale, the notion of linking

spheres of action to character offers an important insight into character and the dramatic

text” (Aston and Savona 36-7). Greimas, however, chooses a different starting point

when he, unlike Propp, derives his narrative-grammatical categories from syntactic

categories (Fořt 22). He identifies six such universal roles which he names actantial

roles that characters may play (subject/object, sender/receiver, helper/opponent). His

actantial roles, “that is, universal (oppositional) functions analogous to (and indeed,

supposedly derived from) the syntactic functions of language” (Elam 114), are the

building stones of the deep structure, the underlying grammar, of a dramatic narrative.

He is looking for “the possible principles of organization of the semantic universe”

(Structural Semantics 199, qtd. in Aston and Savona 37).

Once a character assumes a role, he becomes an actant (“a subject with an assigned

predicate, or activity” (Fořt 25)) and the actant’s concrete embodiment as an individual

character is an actor (acteur). “One actant can be embodied into several various actors,

just as an actor can represent several actantial roles at once” (25). This is to say that the

assignment of the abstract roles may find various application in drama depending on the

complications and constellations among characters in each individual play.

In Greimas’s case, the term “grammar” is very appropriate, as “he understood actants

as elements of a narrative syntax (narrative level) and actors as their concrete

embodiments in language (discourse level)” (26). His method, however, has a serious

drawback when compared to his predecessor Propp. While Propp derived his 31

functions and seven spheres of action from a comparative study of a serious body of

works, Greimas focuses on linguistic features. Although he was searching for a

generally applicable model, he in fact ends up facing the same limit as Propp – there are

Kačer 83

only certain types (genres, if you like) of drama where his model holds. “Whatever its

precise form, the actantial model has a certain utility in accounting for the basic

structure of the fabula in those plays founded on the protagonist’s obstacle-laden quest.

As a universal code of dramatic structure, its claims are far more questionable”

(Elam 118).

Therefore, we now have a twofold reductionism that such an approach does. First, on

the theoretical level, as we could see, there are the limitations leading to a mechanistic

view of characters as mere embodiment of a closed set of possible functions. This

perspective contains a hidden premise of an opposition to a psychological interpretation

of “individuals” which Elam identifies as a post-Romantic interpretative approach to

literature in general and drama in particular (119). As such, it represents another

extreme method which excludes, for example, other types of motivations than those

required of a certain functional type. Therefore, it remains closed in its own limited field

of looking at a narrative as a set, inflexible phenomenon. However there are other types

of narratives than “the protagonist’s obstacle-laden quests,” as Elam critically put it

(118), too. This type of grammar thus cannot meet its initial aim (at least in Greimas’s

version) as a universal grammar of dramatic action.

Second, in practical terms, while such approach does offer insightful help as a tool of

studying a narrative structure of a work of art (even in theatre), it falls short as a

practical tool for an analysis of the whole process in which a dramatic text finds its

realization on the stage23. It exclusively focuses on character, disregarding other

23 We still subscribe to the approach to the dramatic text which regards it primarily as a

source for the subsequent staging. In this process, however, there is a complex

Kačer 84

constitutive elements of the dramatic and theatrical structure. In other words, it reduces

the possibility of interpreting action in drama and on the stage on other creative levels

than the character-role in a narrative. A character, and more explicitly so in its

realization on the stage, also includes other levels that are at play during a performance.

Generally, there is no need for a play to follow any pre-established narrative structure in

the first place. And also, there are other roles that a character has in a play than those

expressible by the narrative-grammatical categories, such as various significatory ones

both on the level of drama and of performance. While on the dramatic level, a character

may serve as a metaphor (e.g. of a social situation) or a metonymy (e.g. of a social

class), as well as a fictional referent (e.g. of a historical figure – “individuation”) and a

character-type per se (e.g. a Commedia dell’Arte abstraction – “collectivisation”) (see

Aston and Savona on Ubersfeld 38-42). This is to say that an analysis of dramatic and

theatrical characters is by no means reducible to a strictly narrative-grammatical

approach.

3.3.2. The Messenger as Character-Function

The main aim of what has been criticised here, has been to show the limitations of

the application of such abstract model to dramatic texts. Nevertheless, as was noted in

the beginning of this chapter, this tradition is useful if applied with caution (and is

inspirational due to its abstract mode of thinking about narrative as a collective of

functions and roles and their materializations in characters). For the purpose of this

system of dramatic and theatrical components at play built upon, or independent of,

the narrative.

Kačer 85

thesis, let me say that Propp’s and Greimas’s approaches offer another perspective to

look at the issue of the messenger and, analogously, the new messenger.

For, the messenger and, consequently the new messenger, too, operates on the level

of the narrative as a function primarily. Its presence in the plays is rarely motivated by

other needs than as a constituting part of the narrative structure. Even the embodiment

of this function in the traditional dramatic text and on the stage is so conventionalized24

that the character gives out he is (to put it in the extreme) nothing but a bearer of this

function. What matters is the communication of the news from another space and/or

time that is a part of the fictional world outside the stage-action.

To stick to the narrative-grammatical terminology used above, the messenger is a

dramatic role in the abstract sense and the structural element of the syntax of the play, in

parallel with the discussed Greimas’s model. The concrete figures are mere actors of

this role (in the Greimas sense – figures as concrete bearers of roles, and actors as

carriers of function).

As I said before in agreement with Aston and Savona’s view of the narrative-

grammatical reductionist attitude, and developed further in the criticism of it, what these

theories prove as very helpful to a critical study of narrative is the fact, that they are

very inspirational when dealing with common features of an array of characters from a

collection of genre-related narratives on a certain level of abstraction, thus coming up

with a view of a type of character who is a manifestation of a function hidden behind

the structure of the narrative. Therefore, I take the liberty to identify the messenger as a

certain function with its own standing in a narrative. As we saw, the applications of both

24 For a study of this convention, its classical uses and transformations, see chapters

“The Reportage” and “The New Messengers”.

Kačer 86

Propp’s and Greimas’s models had their limitations; thus, I believe that it will not be

held against this argument that the messenger-function is not present in either of the

two. It is present in those types of narratives that we are dealing with in this thesis,

though, i.e. those kinds of dramatic narratives, where substantial amount of action takes

place outside the framework of the stage and the dramatic dialogue, where there are

many references to facts and events outside the stage, both in the fictional and actual

worlds, such as in the case of historical and political drama. But, to lessen the boldness

of introducing a new general, abstracted function of the narrative, let me say that: the

messenger is a function/role of the kind which is in correspondence with the line of

thought introduced by the classics of the narrative grammar and the respective

functional/actantial models.

What is, then, the messenger’s primary function and what is the messenger-figure’s

primary role that he plays in the plot? To put it plainly, it is to push action forward –

what makes it different from other character-functions and means, is the fact that the

messenger does it by bringing the news (reporting about a fact or event) from a part of

the fictional world which is not acted out on the stage, primarily for spatial/temporal

reasons, and that this information is otherwise out of reach of other characters; this is

associated with certain conventions, such as the change of the mode of utterances

(switching from action to narrative). It is no coincidence that in classical drama, the

messenger as function and as character share the name, as there is no need for the logic

of development of the narrative to develop a full character. As the chapter on the

reportage shows, the typical example would be the two messengers in Oedipus the King.

This reporting on facts and events which pushes the action forward is then the

primary and most typical function of the messenger. This function (or, roles as applied

Kačer 87

to various messengers in the concerned plays), will thus constitute the topic of the first

part of the analytical chapter dealing with the new messenger, as it is shared by the

messenger and the new messenger. Two more functions or roles are associated with the

new messenger, though, which are delivery of information and interpretation. The

difference from the first case is that, the new messenger for various specific reasons (see

chapter on the New Messenger and the case studies) is entitled to bring information that

has little or no effect on the action of the play, serving what we may call the purpose of

this general account, an “educational” role – teaching of other characters (and

consequently, to the audience) as well as exclusively the audience. This information

may refer to the fictional world as well as actual one. This function or role will be

studied more closely in the second part of the analytical chapter below.

Thirdly, the new messenger’s role is to interpret facts or events in the actual world by

reporting on actual events and expressing his ideas about the actual world. Typically,

this is the case with reporting figures in plays that are primary political or historical in

the sense that they aspire to work as a political forum for the audiences. This “political”

role of the new messenger will be discussed at some length in the third part of the

analytical chapter.

To conclude, Propp’s and Greimas’s abstracted functional/actantial models of the

character-functions in a narrative come with limited sets of seven and six, respectively,

abstract character types, which work as functions of the narrative. Inspired by this line

of thought, and based on observations of the body of texts by Frayn, Stoppard, and

Wilson as the topical case-studies of this thesis, the messenger (and consequently, the

new messenger) has been identified as a certain character type with specific roles in the

Kačer 88

plot and its development and specific associated conventions (the reporting mode and

access to information outside the stage action frame). Finally, this chapter states that the

new messenger informs other characters and audiences about facts and events that push

the actor forward, bring information with little or no connection to the development of

the plot and interpret the actual world, thus becoming political agents.

But, before more may be said about the new messenger, it is necessary to briefly deal

with a specific type of drama and theatre that has had such a heavy influence on the

further development of this art that it is impossible to continue the study concerning

reporting and political outreach without it. The topic of the following chapter is, of

course, the theatre of Bertolt Brecht. Without Brecht, the context of the later writings

dealing with social topics and using the type of the messenger would not be complete,

and perhaps even possible.

Kačer 89

4. Brecht’s Heritage

The Anglo-Saxon dramatic tradition is unthinkable without one author, and the

playwrights in our concern in this thesis are unthinkable without him, too, and one more

to that. The former being Shakespeare, of course, who outstands the Anglo-Saxon

tradition of playwriting becoming himself a unique category within the literary canon of

the whole Western world. Harold Bloom in his The Western Canon sees Shakespeare as

the “center of the canon” (see Bloom 43-71). It is unimaginable to think an English-

writing playwright disassociated completely from Shakespeare. The affiliation consists

of various levels. There is the intimate knowledge of Shakespeare in the English

speaking (and writing) culture, as well as the uncountable implicit presence of his plots

and seminal characters in contemporary artifacts.

The latter is Bertolt Brecht. Although his universal influence on contemporary

playwriting in English may be doubted, his influence in the field of our concern is

unavoidable. The heritage of Brecht is directly connected with the main focus of this

thesis, the messenger figure. The influence is present on at least two levels – those of

the topic and technique. These, as a matter of fact, often find a union in Brecht’s work

and theoretical writings. Still, the influence on the level of topic is more important here

especially in connection with political issues and their depiction on the stage. Brecht,

one of the most original and resourceful contributors to approaching political issues in

the theatre, remains an ever-present inspiration (and perhaps an obstacle, too) because

his approach had been so radically specific that it appropriates the arena of the

contemporary political play. A majority of political plays thus enter a dialogue with

what we call here Brecht’s heritage.

First, let me consider some specifics of Brecht’s concept of the theatre with a focus

on the connection between the ideology, topic and technique, then move to their

Kačer 90

possible realizations in the plays by the authors in my concern and, lastly, attempt on a

comparison of the use of Brecht’s heritage in the context of Stoppard’s and Frayn’s

political plays in contrast to Wilson’s Cycle. Brecht’s heritage is more clearly outspoken

in the English tradition when compared to the American, Broadway-style theatre.

Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) made his distinctive mark in the history of drama and

theatre as a playwright and author of several modern classics which have, too, entered

the Western canon as proposed by Bloom (namely with his plays The Threepenny

Opera (1928), Mother Courage and Her Children (1939), and The Caucasian Chalk

Circle (1948) to mention just the notorious ones). Furthermore, his influence on later

theatre practitioners laid in the fact that he also produced several theoretical writings

about his aesthetic concepts, which he practised in his career.

4.1. The Epic

Following contemporaneous theoretical findings and theatrical practices which he

adopted, developed and re-worked, he became best known as a proponent of a new

theatrical style which he developed together with mainly Erwin Piscator and others, and

which he labelled “Epic Theatre”. The discoveries of his time found their easy way to

his theatrical practice, because “science and knowledge [were] not grim and dreary

duties but first and foremost sources of pleasure” (Jameson 2), that is to say belonging

naturally to the aesthetic realm. Armed thus with new knowledge and residing in the

socially troubled environment of the Weimar Republic, he gradually began to make his

way towards the unification of the theatrical and the political.

There are several levels within the movement, the ideological approach, the content

and the form. The most general ideological level, which Jameson calls the doctrine

Kačer 91

(referring thus to Brecht’s Lehre), may be seemed generally as Marxism as there is a

constant tendency to depict the suppressed masses in class struggles within the historical

tumult of the bourgeois society, but still “[if] it is simply ‘Marxism’, and even if the

question of tendency is resolved [...], the works seem to stage a good deal more than

that” (Jameson 35). The problem with Brecht’s ideology is that while it may be to a

certain level of certainty deduced what his doctrine was founded on (from both his plays

and theoretical writings), its is difficult and near impossible to summarise the outcome.

“Brecht has generally been characterized as the champion of an intellectualistic theatre”

(36). Theatrical entertainment, understood as an aesthetic pastime activity, is the main

feature of the “theatre” as the traditional genre which need further development. Brecht

defines the old aim of the theatre in these terms in §1 of his “A Short Organum”:

“‘Theatre’ consists in this: in making live representations of reported or invented

happenings between human beings and doing so with a view to entertainment” (180). If

the idea is not to entertain but to present something else on the stage, the emphasis of

the work shifts. The aesthetic converges with the political here.

Brecht’s idea was to portray current society on the stage which is supposed to “tell a

story” of societal types (the worker, the barricade fighter, the strikebreaker) and teach

the audience about the world they live in. In order to do so, he saw it necessary to

transform the theatre as he knew it: “It is understood that the radical transformation of

the theatre can’t be the result of some artistic whim. It has simply to correspond to the

whole radical transformation of the mentality of our time” (Brecht, “The Epic Theatre”

23). Social conditions and the social transformations go hand in hand with

transformation of the theatre and they present new sorts of demand on the theatre.

Brecht attributed an important role to the Epic Theatre. In his view, it was not only

supposed to reflect the society, for example as a document, but it was also supposed to

Kačer 92

change it – and, supposedly, make it better: “...it is precisely theatre, art and literature

which have to form the ‘ideological superstructure’ for a solid, practical rearrangement

of our age’s way of life” (23), writes Brecht. So, the society of the Weimar Republic has

a direct impact on the creation of the Epic Theatre but, at the same time, there is an

ambition that the Epic Theatre would influence it back. Entering the political sphere

with the theatre means participating in politics.

The portrayal of the present society has aesthetic aims as well as political ones, such

as an educative impact on the audiences: “The stage has to be instructive. Oil, inflation,

social struggles, the family, religion, wheat, the meat market, all became subjects for

theatrical representation” (Brecht, “Theatre for Pleasure” 71). In these topics, the

ideological meets the topical. If Brecht wanted to be instructive, to teach his doctrine,

he had to distance himself from the tradition of the theatre as it was done prior to his

days: “...the theatre, while encouraging the production of new plays, gave absolutely no

practical guide. Thus in the end the new plays only served the old theatre and helped to

postpone the collapse on which their own future depended” (“Shouldn’t we Abolish

Aesthetics?” 21). Brecht saw the new role of the theatre in its political involvement. In

order to break free from the old norms, he started to deal explicitly with social and

political issues. From this perspective, one may view Brecht as “the German

‘documentary’ dramatist” (Brockett 642). The inspiration lay all around Brecht and

Jameson identifies its sources in the shattered material and social conditions of the

Weimar Republic:

The first genuine historical level, then, is clearly enough Weimar itself and the

tropes of cynicism: the emergence of the great demonstrandum of the

Brechtian paradox and sarcastic reversal; of the cynicism, not of the writer, but

of reality itself: the rawest, desecularized version of capitalism, without any of

Kačer 93

its French, English or Italian cultural veneer, beginning from the zero point of

the war’s end and the collapse of the state and of authority. (9)

The country was on its knees and it deserved an impulse for the better. Brecht’s

“ambitions are cast as widely as Aristotle’s, which seek the Good in its most august

classical city-state form” (20). The new Epic Theatre is bound to deal with pressing

contemporary social issues even at the risk that they are not to be universally

understood, that is to say that they will not meet the “aesthetic norm” of the current

artistic discourse (in Mukařovský’s sense of the norm) nor the universality of a topic:

“The works now being written are coming more and more to lead towards that great

epic theatre which corresponds to the sociological situation; neither their content nor

their form can be understood except by the minority that understands this. They are not

going to satisfy the old aesthetics; they are going to destroy it” (Brecht, “Shouldn’t we

Abolish Aesthetics?” 21-2).

This is not to say that it is exclusively Brecht who lets the social environment

influence crucially his plays and then represent the social on the stage, thus inciting or

entering a dialogue in the public domain – it is understood that theatre as a social

institution cannot be done in any other way and that it always, necessarily and

inescapably does reflect “the sociological situation”. Of course it does. But Brecht’s

take on this fact was so ferocious that it changed the understanding of possibilities of

depicting the social/political on the stage radically from his days onwards. The ferocity

rested in the technique (which he derived from the ideology connected with the

instructive aim). It resides in how the Epic Theatre is to be done.

Here, Brecht’s theatrical technique comes into question. The technique of the Epic

Theatre is what made Brecht famous and what connected him, as the most prominent

proponent of the epic style, with what we understand now as political theatre and drama.

Kačer 94

Thus the impossibility to evade Brecht when dealing with political theatre and drama on

the topical level and when dealing with the messenger figure and its characteristics and

role.

The epic style and its characteristics are the main focus of the following paragraphs

in which we will succinctly summarise the most important features and thus illustrate

why Brecht’s concept is so crucial and influential for future development of any

Western drama which gives reports about the actual world and which tackles political

issues. As it has become clear from his comments about the state of the drama and

theatre at his time, Brecht decided for a new approach in the ideological (doctrinal) and

topical (documentary) dimension of the Epic Theatre. In order to be able to meet his

aims, he also needed to adopt several technical devices of dramatisation, direction and

staging. Among them, there were the use of certain literary, theatrical and technological

elements. These were the reportage, the alienation effect and distinctive props.

As far as the literary element of the epic theatre is concerned, it may be considered a

step in the direction of non-theatricality, as the “literary” in the epic sense belongs to the

area of storytelling rather than drama or theatre. In classical drama, the literary

(storytelling) element is often played out by the chorus. Brecht adopted this chorus, but

“modernized” it – he often included songs into his plays and the singers then had a

similar role in the epic performance as the chorus used to in classical drama. Brecht’s

use of the song is further specific for the following reason: “A modern equivalent of the

chorus is the song, of the type propagated both in theory and in practice in the

dramaturgy of Bertolt Brecht. In contrast to the traditional type of song in drama,

Brecht’s ‘songs’ do not remain entirely within the internal system of communication,

but break or transcend it by addressing the audience directly” (Pfister 79-80). Still, there

are also other techniques of dramatization and staging that are specific for Brecht’s epic

Kačer 95

way of dealing with the political realm that make his drama and theatre so different

from “political” or “historical” plays by Frayn, Stoppard, and Wilson. The differences

in their incorporation of storytelling into the dramatic frame is just one of them, and

neither of the three British and American authors attempt to merge the literary and the

dramatic in a way which leads to the epic theatre. Their mainstream plays resist such

radical approaches as Brecht’s epic approach.

Yet, merging of storytelling and drama may turn out to be highly productive if it is

done with a sense of purpose and measure. Indeed, Brecht who took performance as an

experiment, reflected upon the use of literary elements in theatrical performances and

strived for such balance which would support rather than diminish the theatrical

potential of his performances. He was aware of the specifics of theatre in comparison to

a mere dramatisation of a primarily literary texts, as he claimed that “[t]he theatre

apparatus’s priority is a priority of means of production” (Brecht, “Literarization” 43).

What he had to do, then, was to incorporate the literary into the theatrical.

On one level which is seen as the most primitive one, the literarization of the theatre

happens through a presence of short messages in the written form on the stage. These

can be banners, posters and flyers, but most typically and in accordance with Brecht’s

use of modern technology, they are projected on a screen in the form of titles. Silent

films which are undergoing a tumult development and are extremely popular at the time

are the obvious inspiration.25 But Brecht sees this in his essay “The Literarization of the

25 This is a bit paradoxical, perhaps, as film lacked recorded speech due to technical

inadequacies and used titles to make up for this fact. On the other hand, theatre

naturally disposed of sound and use of titles is thus illogical. Yet, Brecht was

presumably aware of the difference between the impact of a spoken word (temporal

Kačer 96

Theatre”, “titles and screens” on the stage are “a primitive attempt at literarizing the

theatre” (43). There are other ways of literarization, which are of a more profound

nature.

Among such ways, there is the merging of the literary with the dramatic in actual

speeches of characters. “Literarizing entails punctuating ‘representation’ with

‘formulation’; gives the theatre the possibility of making contact with other institutions

for intellectual activities” (43-4). When a character “formulates” his or her opinion or

utters a commentary, he or she extracts him- or herself from the realm of the classical

theatrical (the “representation” or mimesis). As the quote from Brecht himself suggests,

it is a way in which his theatre can enter the domain of public debate.

One of the possibilities to “formulate” is to use the technique of the reportage onto

the stage. In the case of the Epic Theatre, the use of the reportage has a specific aim.

The reportage serves as a “formulation” of opinion about the world of the play which

has the intention to change or channel the audience’s opinions about their actual

(historical) world. This is one of the reasons why Brecht’s use of the reportage has been

so influential. However, it is a very specific use of the technique, which is closely

connected to Brecht’s view of the theatre as the experimental arena for a formulation of

opinions about the situation in the society whose intention is to bring about a change in

the society. The main reasons why it is necessary to mention Brecht and the Epic

Theatre in this thesis have been illustrated.

But, there are many features of the Epic theatre which are equally important for a

clearer understanding of it and which in effect distance Brecht immensely from the

and aural sign) and a written one (permanent and visual sign). A further development

of this idea is unfortunately beyond our scope.

Kačer 97

scope of this thesis. They still, however, are connected with the literary, theatrical and

technological elements of the Epic Theatre.

As we will see, these other features of the discussed elements distance Brecht from

the main focus of this thesis even further. Let us include them to finalize this sub-

chapter on Brecht’s heritage in a satisfactory way and to show explicitly why it is hardly

possible to analyse him directly next to the three chosen authors under the condition that

the same analytical and comparative tools should be used.

The reportage as a technique of stage representation has been connected with Brecht

in another context, too, than is the one we focus on primarily in this thesis – as a way of

introducing information from outside the the stage frame of the fictional world of the

play or from the actual world. In the Epic theatre, besides the use of the reportage in this

sense, it is also employed as a specific technique of acting. An actor is supposed to be

able to distance himself or herself from the character he or she plays and act as if

“reporting” about his or her own character. In the development of this technique, Brecht

followed Stanislavsky with his concept of “identification” (or, in Brecht’s words, “total

transformation”) and added another dimension to it, that of a back reflection of the

identity of a character. “[T]he actor speaks his part not as if he were improvising it

himself but like a quotation” (“Short Description” 138). Thus he or she reports about his

or her character. In semiotic terms, it is possible to distinguish between these two levels

as different sign-systems: “Brechtian epic theatre made great play with the duality of the

actor’s role as stage sign-vehicle par excellence, bound in a symbolic relationship which

renders him ‘transparent’, at the same time that it stresses his physical and social

presence” (Elam 8). It is worth noting that such approach consciously attempts to break

Zich’s triad of the stage figure, actor, and character (dramatis persona).

Kačer 98

This also takes effect on the level of the text and becomes another means of

literarization of theatre: “Given this absence of total transformation in the acting there

are three aids which may help to alienate the actions and remarks of the characters being

portrayed: 1. Transposition into the third person. 2. Transposition into the past. 3.

Speaking the stage directions out loud” (138). As the quote suggest, such reporting on

actions (third person narrative) rather than acting them (first person theatrical speech,

and so on) is one of the ways to produce the alienation effect, probably the most

significant and influential contribution of Brecht’s to the future development of drama

and theatre.

4.2. The V-Effekt

The alienation effect is a concept that Brecht adopted from Shklovsky whose term

ostranenije is sometimes translated as “defamiliarization” or “estrangement” (Pavis,

Dictionary 18). In short, what Shklovsky sees as the most important feature of the priem

ostranenija (the alienation-effect device) is that it functions as a signal to the reader26

that what he reads does not stand for itself as a well-known, familiar, object, but as

something which calls for attention and needs to be focused on and further understood.

Such devices thus carry a potential for the texts being self-aware of their artistic

qualities and consciously creating an aesthetic perception of the given text. Brecht

applied this concept on his own version of this effect which was to function in the

theatre. He transposed it from the level of text to all levels of theatrical performance

(Musilová 26): characters and their actions, events, sets and plots, to name just a few.

26 Shklovsky dealt with the ostranenije and its function in the aesthetics of literary texts

(fiction).

Kačer 99

He also introduced the German expression Verfremdungseffekt into the international

vocabulary, which is often abbreviated as V-effekt and thus in English, the A-effect.

The A-effect is one of the key techniques and devices in Brecht’s theatre. It meets

Shklovsky’s view in the sense that it functions as a marker for the audience that what

they see is not to be taken for granted as generally understood but that it yet needs to be

discovered and learnt. In accord with Shklovsky Brecht says that the “aim of this

technique, known as the alienation effect, was to make the spectator adopt an attitude of

inquiry and criticism in his approach to the incident” (Brecht, “Short Description” 136).

For example, when an actor-on-stage introduces himself or herself with his or her actual

name, the dichotomy of a character (as the mental concept in a viewer’s head), the

stage-figure (the concrete realization of this concept in a given time and space) and the

actor is clearly signalled: “The actor does not allow himself to become completely

transformed on the stage into the character he is portraying” (137). The audience is thus

aware of watching an illusion and that the performance is also aware of this fact. One of

the main constituents of the dramatic illusion (or, a convention operating in the case of

the mimesis), “the idea of total transformation is abandoned” (Brecht 138)27.

27 It is perhaps worth mentioning here, that Brecht was a genius of transforming

theories of others according to his own needs and projects. Among other things, he

was strongly affected by developments in Russia (the Russian Soviet theatre –

theatre of agitation – and theory – Russian Formalism) and he made use of them.

Brecht’s take on Shklovsky’s ostanenije is described below; here it is necessary to

remind the reader that he was also influenced by Stanislavsky’s acting technique:

while Stanislavsky (in the earlier and the most influential period) proposed the total

empathy of the actor in his or her character, Brecht took this concept and made one

Kačer 100

When the “fourth wall” is shattered28, it is possible to realize that the performance is

taking place in a given social context and that it reflects this context – it can, indeed,

communicate with the actual world outside the walls of the theatre building efficiently

and, thus meet one of Brecht’s aims pointed out above. It is the key concept for the Epic

Theatre which only then could be instructive and activist: “V-effekt is the key term of

Brecht’s reform of the theatre. It is an epic-producing technique (such that makes an

epic representation possible). Estrangement from a represented event can be created on

levels of all constituents of a theatre performance” (Musilová 26). The audiences are

constantly reminded that they are not being entertained but taught to29. This means that

more step. The intimate knowledge of a character enables the actor to distance

himself or herself from the character or, in other words, play this character in a way

that produces the A-effect.

28 Brecht finds it crucial to tear down the fourth wall: “It is of course necessary to drop

the assumption that there is a fourth wall cutting the audience off from the stage and

the consequent illusion that the stage action is taking place in reality and without an

audience” (Brecht, “Short Description” 136).

29 Some sources (Brockett, Musilová, Pavis) identify Brecht as the follower of the

Soviet “activistic” theatre of the post-1917 revolution era, while (Jameson) focuses

more on the contemporaneous situation in the Weimar Republic and the Marxist

world-view as present in what he calls Brecht’s doctrine as emphasized above. I

rather subscribe to Jameson’s view as it is not my aim to cover the various

development stages of the Epic Theatre here, but rather to focus on some of the most

important features that mark Brecht as one of the greatest influences on the

Kačer 101

Shklovsky’s ostranenije gains a new dimension as Shklovsky’s and Brecht’s

expectations of the device differed: “While Shklovsky’s ostranenije was a purely

aesthetic concept, concerned with renewal of perception, Brecht’s Verfremdung had a

social aim [...] Brecht wished to strike not merely at the perceptions, but at the

consciousness of his spectators” (Mitchell 74). The audience of the alienated Epic

Theatre does not watch a drama (play) in the “old” sense of entertainment (as Brecht

saw it, see the quote above) or that which leads to an aesthetic pleasure. It is necessary

to sympathize with characters but be also made aware of the emotional involvement. A

complete identification is not an aim because “the technique which produces an A-effect

is the exact opposite of that which aims at empathy. The actor applying it is bound not

to try to bring about the empathy operation” (Brecht, “Short Description” 136). The

Epic Theatre is the social theatre, not an intimate personal one.

Besides reporting on a character by an actor-on-stage which has been mentioned,

there are several other techniques that lead to the A-effect. Brecht describes them

among others in his essay “Short Description of a New Technique of Acting which

Produces an Alienation Effect” and in “A Short Organum for the Theatre”. The latter

work identifies various levels on which the A-effect may be established. As Brecht and

his techniques are not the primary interest of this thesis, a succinct summary of the most

important features for such acting as presented by Pavis (quoting from “A Short

Organum”) in his Dictionary will be sufficient:

1. The fabula tells two stories: one is concrete and the other is an abstract and

metaphorical parable of it.

twentieth-century dramatists dealing with social issues, politics and also borrowing

from Brecht’s arsenal of theatrical devices.

Kačer 102

2. The scenery presents the object to be recognized [...] and the criticism to be

made [...].

3. Gestures provide information about the individual and his social status [...].

4. The diction does not “psychologize” the text by trivializing it, but restores

rhythm and artificial construction [...].

5. Through his acting, the actor shows the character he plays, rather than

incarnating him.

6. Addresses to the audience [...] also [...] break the illusion. (Pavis,

Dictionary 19)

From these rules or guidelines we can see, that the resulting form of Brecht’s

performances is very specific. The A-effect is an instrument which, among other things,

helps to establish communication between the theatre and its audience, because it offers

to the audience a different type of theatre than they were used to, and therefore destroy

the idea of theatre as entertainment, which can be forgotten once the curtain comes

down (or kept as a pleasurable memory). The logic which lies behind such approach

was implicitly present in the opening paragraphs of this sub-chapter: the aim of the Epic

Theatre is not to merely entertain, but to change the society. In order to do so, it must be

different from older theatrical forms. By picturing the political differently, a specific

type of communication with the audiences is established and the political message is

adopted by the audiences, who can subsequently “change the world”.

Neither Frayn, nor Stoppard, nor Wilson have such ambition with their dramas. Their

communication with their audiences is different from Brecht’s although they are well

aware of all techniques that he used before them and they are his followers in the sense

that they often report on the social and the political. But they do not shatter the fourth

wall and they do not expect to redefine the mental maps of their audiences’ social or

Kačer 103

political realities. If their plays come any near to this, then as the aesthetic artefacts

rejected by Brecht, pleasurable memories of artistic experiences at the theatre which

become a piece in the broader debate about society and politics on which drama and

theatre participate to a lesser or greater degree.

Kačer 104

5. The Reportage

The reportage is one of the oldest techniques used in drama. In the millenia of the

history of drama, there can be found epochs where the use of this technique gained a

certain prominence and the application of the reportage became an inseparable part of

numerous types of plot constructions. Dramatic executors of this technique (or, bearers

of the informative or storytelling function) can be identified as “incidental” reporters or

they can be specific types of characters whose main and sole role in a play is to report.

As far as the incidental reporters are concerned, there are no specific restrictions or

requirements that would limit the character choice as far as their ability to report is

concerned. Plainly said, it is in general any character (or character type) that may bring

some news to the play and take advantage of the reportage. When we are to consider the

other group of characters, that is to say those characters whose primary role in any play

is to report, we for the most part encounter a messenger (or an equivalent).

As it is the messenger figure that is the central theme of this thesis, the variability of

such a character’s presence in a play as well as the variability of the development of

messengers’ roles will become clearer in the following analytical chapter dealing with

“new” messengers in the dramas of Frayn, Stoppard and Wilson. For the purpose of this

general introduction to the phenomenon of the reportage and the corresponding

executive character – the messenger –, let it be mentioned that the importance of a

messenger’s contribution to the development of a play’s plot is crucial for a global view

of the development of drama from the perspective of the use of this technique.

A messenger and his appearance in a play may easily become a target of criticism for

lack of dramatic invention on the playwright’s part. For there is a certain amount of the

“deus ex machina” quality in the presence of a character that brings news which then

Kačer 105

changes the course of the plot development in an important, often substantial way.

Indeed, an arrival of a messenger who makes use of the reportage does bring new

information to other characters of the play (and, usually, to the audience, too), thus

shifting the context of previous actions and setting a new course of development. What

is problematic from a critic’s point of view is that the information conveyed in the

reportage does not always follow from the logic of the action. The development of the

plot is not created by a character’s deed (acted in gestures, delivered in a dramatic

dialogue, resolved in a soliloquy) but a non-dramatic speech.

Controversially, perhaps, a strong claim may be made: the reportage is storytelling,

and not dramatic acting. Still, it is a very effective technique, which makes it possible to

bring information to the stage. For this reason, it has been an almost indispensable tool

applied in many epochs and dramatic genres. As an illustration of this claim, three

representative plays have been presented earlier. They are Oedipus the King, Antony

and Cleopatra, and Glass Menagerie from above.

On the other hand, there were eras where the reportage was used only marginally or

not at all for various reasons. As the reportage, which has been noted above, thrives in

the communicative function (reference to events, etc., which are not present on the

stage), it follows that its use has not been as wide in those eras and styles where

characters’ actions are primarily put forward by their dramatic speeches, that is to say

where speaking is acting. Then especially, such a general claim may be made of such

dramatic genres as psychological drama or, even more recently, “kitchen drama” where

the majority of motivations for characters’ actions spreads from what is delivered in the

dramatic dialogue which draws upon the melodramatic plot based on the relationship

between the characters. That is not to say, of course, that there is no room for the

Kačer 106

reportage in this type of drama, the point that we are trying to make here is that the

reportage is not a principal action pushing force.

The reportage has been linked to the most typical bearer of the function in the history

of drama, the character of the messenger. Such character can be even identified as a

specific character type for whom it is typical to lack name. The messenger is a sufficient

identification of his role in the drama and due to the tradition of this role it is sufficient

to call such character as the messenger only as it in itself is a meaningful sign.

Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, the messenger fulfils the following role. He

comes, delivers the news, and leaves.

A proper messenger’s delivery causes a radical change in the course of the

development of the storyline. This way, his news – of which most part usually is in the

form of the reportage – enters into the dramatic dialogue with other characters who

understand the information as a certain type of action in respect to the dramatic plot.

However, it is not the messenger’s role to deliver his news in the style of the dramatic

dialogue. Information is usually in the narrative form (storytelling) rather than dramatic

one (action through speech).

Besides, the messenger rarely has an opportunity to participate in a full dramatic

dialogue, as it is a good convention that being his news good, the messenger happily

exits, while being his news bad, the messenger exits nonetheless – in flee of horror, as a

courtesy on receiver’s side, or with his feet first. It is also in this sense that the

Messenger’s remark: “The nature of bad news infects the teller” (Shakespeare, Antony

and Cleopatra I.2) may be understood, and which is consciously drawn upon in the

Kačer 107

play30. It is understood that the messenger is not the only character in a play that

delivers news. Practically any dramatic character (both main and episodic) as well as

other no-name characters may fulfil the mediating function and use the technique of the

reportage.

The account of the technique of the reportage will be limited by the following

definition, which will help to create an account of it from the functional perspective. Let

it be defined for the purpose of this thesis that the reportage conveys information which

regards events and/or facts about a fictional world of a play or an actual world related

to a context of a play, and comes from outside the stage. The source of the information

conveyed by the reportage thus can lie in the fictional world of the play and be its part.

In this case, the reportage makes it possible to implement various features such as

characters, events, and facts into a drama through other means than the dramatic

dialogue and, perhaps more importantly, without the need to look for a suitable dramatic

or theatrical representation. When the reportage is applied, neither spatial nor temporal

limitations apply any more. It is possible to skip in time back and forth, travel infinite

distances and include a discretionary number of other characters. In other words, the

reportage allows the fictional world of a play to expand immensely. It is one of the

techniques which bring new elements of the system of signs in a play on to the stage.

30 Yet, one may argue that an identification of a bearer of the news (the messenger or

the mediator) with the news itself is rather a cultural/historical phenomenon than a

dramatic device; and it is this cultural knowledge that the play alludes to rather than a

dramatic convention. On the other hand, drama is the mirror of culture and from this

perspective, deaths of messengers bringing bad news are not unexceptional.

Kačer 108

But the source can also be in the actual world, which creates the cultural/historical

context of the play. Such is often the case of what may be labelled as “historical” or

“political” drama. This label does not necessarily mean that a play is activist, that is to

say, that its purpose is to change the audience’s view of historical events or political

situation and bring out action on the audience’s part. Quite to the contrary, and

especially in the case of the drama by Frayn, Stoppard and Wilson, the reportage on

events etc. from the actual world context of the play is addressed to the audience rather

than characters.

It is in the very nature of theatre to play out dramatic texts with direct or indirect

references to the contemporaneous context. Much of comedy and comical effect lies in

this feature of theatre. Theatre often refers to the actual31 context in performance, and,

according to some, it is even impossible for the theatre not to. For example, it was

common for Shakespeare to refer to his audience’s world: “The plays can also awaken

images of the off-stage space in which members of an audience lead their various and

often unremarkable lives” (Brown 186). Although it is now, after several centuries,

often difficult to trace back what exactly the references in Shakespeare were, it still

holds for the present-day audiences of Shakespeare what is true about his plays

performed at his time:

A play can then engage with the social, moral, and political forces that actually,

31 The term “actual” in this context is used solely in the meaning of “the world of

actuality”, i.e. the world we live in; it should not be confused with the structuralist

term aktualisace (foregrounding) which expresses the quality of a text to make-

strange where an artistic expression attracts the reader’s attention to itself rather than

to what it the content, and presents itself as a literary work of art.

Kačer 109

in real life, control how its audience lives. By reaching out from the stage into

the audience’s own environment in these ways, a theatrical event can

participate in the on-going processes of life. (Brown 187; for a more detailed

analysis of this phenomenon in relation to Shakespeare, see 180-96)

Semioticians often approach the topic of the reportage through the prism of language.

The reportage has a different form than the dialogue. Also, its function differs.

Therefore, to say that the reportage operates as an intrusion of a non-dramatic linguistic

form into a dramatic text is in agreement with the basic differentiation between fiction

and drama, more specifically with their defining modes of presentation. The difference

was expressed by Aristotle. Elam summarizes Aristotle’s view thus: “The distinction is,

indeed, implicit in Aristotle’s differentiation of representational modes, namely diegesis

(narrative description)[...] versus mimesis (direct imagination)” (100). Both modes serve

to tell a story while the former does so through storytelling and the latter by acting it

out.

Pfister does not study the reportage at large, but he pays attention to it in the passages

where he either studies the coexistence of the two modes just mentioned on the stage

and speaks about the difference between monologue and dialogue, or where he

discusses the exposition in detail. From a linguistic point of view, reportage often has

such a form and content that it fulfils the informative function of language. However,

the transfer of information is a complex phenomenon in a play. Pfister thus calls such

instances “structures of epic communication” which include “a mediating

communication system” (76). This view reminds us of Mukařovský’s understanding of

the language functions as a hierarchy and coexistence of several functions at once,

where there is one dominant function guiding the discourse. In this case, the dominant

function of the dramatic language is the aesthetic function. The reportage performs the

Kačer 110

referential function, but it is subordinated to the main aesthetic function of the whole of

the play and the dramatic discourse as such. Pfister confirms: “The referential function

dominates strongly in the conventional forms of dramatic report such as the expository

narrative [...], the messenger’s report [...] and teichoscopy [...]” (106). Further, Pfister

considers characters (“figures”) that deliver (“mediate”) information to other characters

and their relationship to them. He states that such communication “is created by figures

situated inside rather than outside the dramatic action” (76). In the Prague structuralists’

wording, we can state that an informative speech (a reportage) with its informative

function takes place within the frame of an aesthetic discourse.

Formally, two main forms may be distinguished as present in a dramatic text on the

level of the main text32. They are dialogue and monologue. It is worth noting at this

point that the reportage may take form of both dialogue and monologue. The preference

for a form of a reportage is rather a matter of a dominant convention rather than an

intrinsic quality of the technique. Thus, dialogue (or, a duologue, rather) and monologue

are equally used as the form of the reportage in classical drama, while monological –

epic – passages are quite often employed in the present, especially when modern

communication technologies and media are used in a play (a newspaper, radio, TV –

32 The term “main text” here refers to characters’ speeches, i.e. that part of a dramatic

text which is intended to be spoken out. It is a direct translation of Roman Ingarden’s

term Haupttext. It is worth noting that the counterpart to Haupttext is, in Ingarden’s

terms again, Nebentext (a possible translation: “auxiliary text”), which is that part of

a dramatic text which is not intended to be spoken out, such as characters’ names

introducing each speech, stage directions, and Acts/Scenes markers. For a concise

overview of the Haupttext-Nebentext relationship, see Aston and Savona 51-9.

Kačer 111

these media make it impossible to partake in an active dramatic dialogue). Here,

Mukařovský’s observation from an essay serves well to distinguish between what can

be understood as the monological (epic) narrative within a dominant dialogical structure

of a play. Mukařovský explains that at least two contexts must intertwine in a dialogue

(the context of the speech which is the interaction of dialogue participants, i.e. the “here

and now” in the utterances, and the context of the subject matter which is currently

discussed). A monological speech has one uninterrupted context (see Mukařovský,

“Dialogue and Monologue” 86-8). In the context of a dramatic text, these are the

passages when the narrative is not interrupted by the context of a specific situation in a

play33. Mukařovský further explains: “Monologue can [...] narrate events severed from

the actual situation by a temporal distance (in literature, the narrative)” (“On Stage

Dialogue” 113). In the case of narrative on the stage, what holds for dialogue hold for

on stage monologue, too, that is that “to all the direct participants of the dialogue is

added another participant, silent but important” (113), the audience.

Also, it is important to distinguish between two levels on which the reportage can

enter a play. They are either from within (internal) or from the outside (external) of the

action, which is to say that it does not necessarily follow from the development of the

plot so far. In the context of communication of information, Pfister comments: “In the

history of drama, the external and internal variants have generally been roughly equal in

importance as far as the prologues and epilogues are concerned” (78). We can see that

Pfister sees the “structures of epic communication” as best explainable on the example

33 Let me stress that interruptions such as “really”, “what next?”, “wow” etc. are not

dialogical from this point of view as they do not bring a second context to the

monologically delivered narrative.

Kačer 112

of exposition – which has two meanings. He distinguishes between exposition in the

classical Aristotelian sense of the word and an “expository function” in a drama. Pfister

explains:

What we understand as the transmission of information at the beginning of a

play largely coincides with the classical theoretical concept of the exposition

[...]. If, however, we define exposition as the transmission of information to do

with the events and situations from the past that determine the dramatic

present, then it becomes immediately clear that, on the other hand, exposition

is not restricted to the introductory phases of the text and, on the other, the

transmission of information in the initial phase of the text is not necessarily

confined to serving some sort of expository function. (86)

In this sense, what Pfister calls generally an expository function in this context may be

more or less applied to the reportage on this level, as they both may be looked at as

“transmissions of information”. Yet, they are not identical, as not all expositions

necessarily have the form of reportage or include one (still, the reportage is often a

convenient part of exposition in the classical sense and often has the “expository

function” in this sense).

The fact that reportage often has the referential function referring to events and/or

facts about a fictional world of a play or the actual world, as proposed above, it

participates on the world-making process. Through its reference, both fictional and

actual entities enter the world of the play, thus enlarging it. “It is sufficient for the

referent to exist as what is commonly called an object of discourse” (Elam 136). Once

such object of discourse is created through speech, it is a valid and undeniable part of

the fictional world of a play: “It is clear that the universe of discourse is more extensive

than the dramatic world as such, as constructed by the spectator [...] Whatever the

Kačer 113

speaker refers to or ostends, including himself and his context, is, unless we learn

otherwise” (137). Reportage does not necessarily have the form of speech only – as

utterances suffer from a certain degree of informational and referential

“incompleteness” (129). In such case, “the role of gesture is often crucial” (129). Even

in the case of reportage, a gesture can be worth a thousand words.

Kačer 114

6. Introducing New Messengers

Above, the most typical forms of the general type of the messenger were described

and introduced. Also, some of the most illustrative uses of the messenger were analysed

and explained on the examples of Oedipus the King, Antony and Cleopatra and Glass

Menagerie, which are the canonical dramas that established, (re)defined and developed

the convention.

One of the common features of all these uses of the messenger is that they enlarge

the stage. By the use of narration (be it a limited short report or a story-framing point of

view), the fictional world of the stage broadens and gets new dimensions. These

dimensions may be spatial and temporal if we are relating them to the physical

properties of the stage, as well as contextual if we are relating to the narratological

aspect of the story/plot construction.

Furthermore, they bring information which is of a greater relevance to the audience

than to the characters, that is to say, such reports that do not have a direct influence on

the development of the plot or that do not contribute to any motivations. However, all

become a part of the fictional world of a given play, while the dominant mode of

delivery is an utterance. That messengers operate primarily in the linguistic sign-system,

the verbal component of theatre. While the fact that they usually do not have a name

and that they may possess attributes (a traveller’s costume or props such us a letter)

works on the performance level as an easily decodable signal, it is in the first place the

switch from action to narrative that signals their arrival. This is a commonly accepted

convention.

It seems that some characters and character types have an unquestioned right to step

out of the action and turn to storytelling. The messenger is the most typical example

Kačer 115

and, perhaps, an exclusive one34 – there is perhaps an exception in the classical drama,

though, where there is a universally accepted analogue to the messenger: “Choruses,

both tragic and nondramatic, might seem a more likely analogue for the messenger. Not

only do they often incorporate narrative into their performances; unlike gods and

prophets, choruses also acquire little, if any, authority from their identity. They, like the

messenger, in fact, are nameless” (Barrett 50). This analogue affects all the recent uses

of the chorus (such as in the Brechtian tradition) that revive this classical convention.

Still, there are also a number of other roles that the chorus plays. The main difference

between a messenger and a reporting chorus lies in the fact that: “the chorus can act as a

kind of companion to the audience: a shock prepared for is a shock mitigated just

enough to keep people in their seats. Generally the chorus stands (like the audience)

outside the action, but (unlike the audience) makes comments and often has a stake in

the outcome” (Bloom, “Introduction to Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex”, 17). In other words,

the chorus is strongly motivated to report, as its reporting co-determines its own fate. In

this sense, the messenger has little or no stake in the action to which he contributes35. A

34 There are, of course, various other cases of utterances which do not reside in action

in the classical dramatic forms, including prologues and epilogues, morals,

summaries, calling-outs and songs. We are primarily interested in such a change that

leads to delivery of new information, and thus to enlargement of the world of the

stage.

35 Let us remind, that Cleopatra’s threats to the messenger (i.e. an immediate outcome

of the messenger’s action) is a case in point rather that a denial of the claim because,

as I explained above, it is the breach of the convention to not hold messengers

responsible for the nature of their news which is played out in Antony and Cleopatra.

Kačer 116

messenger’s motivation (as little or nothing takes place in drama and on stage

unmotivated) lies elsewhere – not in his own fate but in pushing the action forward

when other characters are “stuck” in their well-being, in creating context for the events

of the play, or in presenting ideas or facts from the actual world (historical, political and

scientific “lessons”).

Further, the exclusivity does not, by any means, lie in the fact that no other character

would be allowed to become a messenger or a narrator – quite to the contrary, as the

following parts of this chapter will show: one of the most typical properties of the new

messengers lies in the fact that they are transformations of characters with a name. It

lies in the lack of the necessity to create motivation for the change of the mode for the

character. While all other characters must prove by action or speech their exclusive

access to a certain fact or event from outside the stage, and thus motivate (defend) the

temporal shift in their role, the messenger is equipped with this privilege without the

need to explain why he can (or must, wants to) report. It is an integral part of this

character to bring new information and report about it.

In other words, and in connection with what has been said above concerning the

narrator in the particular case of Glass Menagerie, the arrival of a messenger or the

temporary transformation of a character with a name into one is the signal of an

appearance of a narrator of a small scale. While Tom of Glass Menagerie is a narrator

in the sense that his narration has a point of view (as he focalizes the story by

(re)creating it from his memories), messengers (on arrival and after temporary

transformation) do not focalize in this sense36 as they mostly belong to the thematic

36 Cf. pp. 7-8 of G. Genette’s “Fiction and Diction” concerning who narrators speak for

(author) and who characters speak for (themselves) which is a reason why Genette

Kačer 117

aspect of the drama.

For a convenient differentiation between a narration which serves, among other

things, as a source of the point of view and these “small” narratives which are

deviations from the dominant dramatic mode, let me suggest in correspondence with

Barrett, that the distinction begins with the identity of characters. While characters with

a name, “main” characters, focalize the story, it is the “small” characters that appear

within these larger frames created by the greater characters. As a small character

(without a name), the messenger “offers a narrative that in general is conspicuously

disassociated from any particular point of view. His narrative, in short, often appears to

‘tell itself.’ These practices distinguish the messenger from the others onstage, while

freeing his narrative to a considerable degree from the partiality that defines the speech

of the other dramatis personae” (Barrett xvii). Let me just add for the matter of clarity,

that the “telling itself” of these small stories makes sense in the larger frame of the plot

construction of a particular play.

places narration and drama in opposition, while we are including narration as one of

acceptable (even canonical) modes of drama and theatrical realization.

Kačer 118

6.1. Further Details Concerning the New Messenger

For a better take on the issue of messengers’ role within a plot, I will turn to the

reportage, which is dealt with in detail in a chapter which capitalizes on the theoretical

background. The reportage is a typical form of delivery of the messenger’s speech.

Also, it holds for the messenger as a character-type that a delivery of such report is a

messenger’s primary and foremost function.37

It is a characteristic of reports that their validity is not doubted by other characters as

a convention. This is to say that messengers are to be seen as reliable narrators,

trustworthy for other characters to whom they deliver their news, as well as the

audiences. What makes their stories “true” in the context of the fictional world of a play

is that the reports add new information as a missing piece of a puzzle in the larger frame

of the story, or cause a new development of the course of fictional events in the play,

thus being in a non-contradictory relationship with all other thematic elements of the

story told by the play, yet developing them. This convention is necessary for various

reasons. The function of enlargement of the fictional world of the stage requires non-

contradiction with that of the stage, as these two are cooperating in the course of the

play on an imaginative level and often motivate the actions on the stage.

Messengers’ reports are held as reliable.38 Although they may, from the

37 The concept of viewing the messenger as a type with its specific functions is

developed in the chapter “The Messenger as Character Function”, which follows the

overviews of Propp’s morphology and other narrative-grammar approaches to the

structure of a dramatic text, cf. below.

38 Let me state here that I am purposefully using the opposite term to Wayne C.

Booth’s unreliable narrator, who in his The Rhetoric of Fiction deals with an

Kačer 119

narratological point of view, establish the unreliability of another character’s point of

view (for example, by presenting disruptive or inconsistent facts with another

character’s promoted narrative, thus altering the present meaning of the story or the

character’s role which has been dominant so far)39 in themselves, they do not contain

contradictions or inconsistencies.

The messenger’s authority is a key issue. A messenger with no authority ultimately

fails to play his role. The question which arises is, where does his authority come from?

In classical drama, the source of his authority lies most often in the fact that he claims to

be an eye-witness of the event he is reporting similarly to a narrator who serves as the

literary substitute for the bard in the classical epic. As it was described in an earlier

unreliable narrator who is “is mistaken, or he believes himself to have qualities

which the author denies him” (159). Such narrator leaves hints to the reader or

audience (even fictional audience, as in the case of The Arabian Nights, for example)

of his unreliability in order to be “revealed”, and thus restructure the understanding

of the narrative as such. When there are traces in a narration signalling unreliability,

often in the form of contradicting elements in the storytelling, it is for the reason to

let the reader/audience discover the “true” version of the story which is different

from the one presented. Thus, the unreliable narrator manages to deliver two layers

of the story (the presented one and the “true” one). Motivations for unreliability may

be numerous and it is not the aim of this footnote to give an account of them – for the

purpose of this thesis it is important to note that the reliability of messengers’

narration concerns the “small” narrative reports, within which it is practically

impossible to leave the signals of unreliability.

39 As will be shown in the study of Copenhagen by Frayn.

Kačer 120

example, the messenger informs about Iocasta’s death and Oedipus’s blinding of

himself and his voice is given the authority to speak precisely because he announces

that he delivers what he saw. Another source of authority of the messenger’s report lies

traditionally in the fact that he often serves as a deputy of another, absent figure who is

equal or higher in rank to the receiver of the message (in the dramatic sense – another

equally or more important character of the play –, or in the social sense – a character’s

superior). In such case, the messenger’s authority is founded in being a substitute for

another (a king, a queen or any significant nobleman), or even a deity, mediating his or

her words.

As far as the structure of such a report is considered, the information about the

authority of the messenger’s speech either precedes his appearance on the stage (he is

introduced by another character) or it is a part of the opening of his speech. At this

moment, the messenger is still partaking in the dramatic dialogue as a part of the plot. It

is after the authority of the news is established through the standing of its bearer, that

the messenger may switch his role. He becomes the storyteller, the informant, and he

performs a narrative function.

Now, it is important to set out what sources of authority for the messenger’s speech

there are in the case of new messengers. It is to state the obvious to say that the

convention of the use of the messenger has survived. In other words, that these basic

and well-established sources of authority of the messenger’s voice have remained in

use. The new messenger is often a witness or a herald. However, these two identities

need to be commented upon, as their status has changed. The word eye dropped out of

the eye-witness compound, as new messengers have many other means of observation.

Kačer 121

Given the state of the present day epistemology40, there are many other means of

observation that empower the new messenger with authority. Among them, there is

various technological equipment and, often, the media. Therefore, the new messenger

has a wide range of possibilities to claim authority. There are various issues at play: for

reasons of expediency, let us create a reverse pyramid of its sources. There are a number

of issues involved such as the following five.

One, the authority is founded in speech and closely connected to the use of language

(in the case of a performance, often accompanied by a signal within a system of

theatrical signs such as costumes, the conventional “flourish” of trumpets, and the like).

The most typical signal lies in the switch from acting out to storytelling, as it was dealt

with at some length earlier. This change in the mode of delivery from the large dramatic

narrative to a small one lends to the messenger the authority of a small-scale narrator.

Two, it is the utility of this device for dramatic/theatrical expression, as far as the use of

the literary/dramatic convention is concerned. The authority of such character lies in his

particular function in the “narrative grammar” of the plot-construction, where he

appears as a certain type, the one that brings the news. Three, a reporting messenger as a

device of the narrative has a power to contribute to the development of the story and his

words affect what happens further in the plot. His authority is thus granted to him by

other characters and confirmed by the development of the story. Four, reports have the

ability to transgress the fictional and the actual and, as such, they often play the role of

40 I am alluding to the indeterminacy principle where a “true” observation of a sub-

atomic particle is principally impossible as the observer influences the observed

object, which is an idea developed at large in Copenhagen by Frayn and Hapgood by

Stoppard, to give examples from the plays in our concern.

Kačer 122

the “hooks” on which a story is hanging. It need not be a metaphysical dimension

(explanation of rules valid in a certain fictional world), it is often the contextual

references to the actual world that contributes to an understanding of the meaning of the

story. And, last but not least, what matters is its grounding in the social reality outside

the frame of fiction – our actual world, where the audience and the stories played out

meet in a playhouse. In other words, it is a linkage between fiction and the society. The

messenger’s authority in this context is borrowed from authorities valid outside the

fictional frame.

This fifth issue, the broadest and transcending the realm of fiction, is the principle

which underlies the rebirth of the messenger from the “old” (classical, realistic) type to

the “new” one. The fact that the social reality has found a suitable character type to

project itself into and penetrate into the narrative frame, makes it possible to leave aside

the messenger as a witness or a herald and create a “new messenger”. The difference

between the two lies primarily in this: for the “old” messenger, his role is at the same

time his own occupation. It is his (only) job to learn a piece of information and deliver

it. The new messenger is no longer labelled as “messenger”; it is in the nature of his

other occupation (the one which is grounded in the social reality) to learn things and

only then, with the authority of this other occupation, report about them to others. In

other words, the old and the new messengers share first three sources of their authority,

but the new messenger self-assuredly borrows it from the fourth and fifth as well.

It is what has been introduced as the “other occupation” that makes it possible, of

course. Deriving from what has just been said, the new messenger’s authority is rooted

in the fact that some occupations are privileged in their access to information and their

possession of this information is taken as granted, trustworthy and undisputed. Who are,

then, the “new messengers” that this whole thesis is, in principle, about? They are a

Kačer 123

multitude (and this list is by no means limiting): journalists and reporters41, politicians

and their assistants42, scientists and teachers43, detectives and police officers44, historical

characters45, (perhaps not surprisingly) dramatists and literary scholars46, as well as

many others, imagination being the only limit. And, as it is people’s occupation that

may give authority to a report (and create a new messenger), it may also be technology,

such as the media (newspaper, radio, and TV) or any other “gadget”.

41 For example, Alphabetical Order and Night and Day.

42 For example, Democracy.

43 For example, Hapgood, Arcadia and Copenhagen.

44 For example, The Real Inspector Hound.

45 For example, The Twentieth Century Cycle, Rock’n’Roll and The Coast of Utopia.

46 For example, Arcadia and Afterlife.

Kačer 124

7. New Messengers on the Stage

7.1. Applications of the New Messenger

In the previous chapter, it was established that there are various possible approaches

to the issue of the new messenger. The dissertation as such begins with attributing its

affiliation to the line of thought which approaches drama and theatre as a system of

signs, in other words, it claims to be a continuation of the semiotic tradition of analysis.

That is, the stress on how a meaning is produced is of equal, if not greater, importance

as what the meaning is. The linguistic approach to the dramatic text and to the

performance, as a legible complex structure, as initially introduced by the Prague

School with its functional approach and later developed in areas such as theories of

action, that is a focus on what is being said and how it is being said will be the essential

component of the case studies that follow in the next Chapter 8. Chapter 7 thus serves as

introduction to Chapter 8, which is divided into three parts. Each of them focuses on a

different aspect of the new messenger. In the first part, he is mainly the agent of the

action. His presence is called for and justified by the needs intrinsic to the story. In

cooperation with dramatic and theatrical conventions, the new messenger functions as a

propeller of the action, substituting for limitations of other characters within the logic of

the development of the play. Here, the new messenger is, as a type, to a great extent

identifiable with the original messenger. His reports give information to other characters

in order to push the action forward.

The second part covers a very important aspect of drama and theatre, as it is in this

part where the new messenger plays the dramatic/theatrical as well as social roles in

full. As a connecting point between the world of the arts, the fictional universe, and the

actual world wherein the readers/audiences factually reside, he becomes the political

Kačer 125

agent. This happens through his interpretative skills, as he is able to comment on facts

and events from both fictional and actual worlds.

The third part looks at the new messenger from the point of view of his ability to

implement facts and events from the actual world and act as a teacher who informs

about it. As we can see, we have followed the new messenger’s path from just the

fictional to fictional and actual to just actual worlds, which explains why the political

role precedes the didactic one, although (and this is primarily the consequence of

Brecht’s influence) the role of the theatre as the political arena may seem to many the

most important.

But it needs to be noted that the authors in concern here are not revolutionaries in a

Brechtian sense, nor do they perform social experiments on the stage in the way Brecht

did. Rather, they are reporters about events of fiction and observers of the actual world,

focusing alternately on its history, politics, and findings. For this reason, it is in accord

with the material of this thesis that the didactic role of the new messenger comes last

and proves as point in the case. It is worth noting at this point that the three layers are

not purely exclusive and they often overlap.

The case studies in focus here, i.e. plays by Frayn, Stoppard and Wilson offer good

material for such an approach, as they work both on the level of the dramatic text as a

pretext for the performance and the performative level where meaning is produced by

employing a wide scale of types of collaborating signs.

7.1.1. A Remark Concerning the Case Studies

As this dissertation primarily focuses on the analysis of dramatic texts, it works with

them as pretexts for staging. Therefore, as part of the methodological approach to the

Kačer 126

texts, each of the close readings pays attention to possible, yet deductible from the text,

realizations. In other words, it also takes into account properties directly following the

speech (such as the change in the tone, style of expression and so on, working as signs

of the shift to the new messenger in characters for the audiences), as well as aspects

such as proxemics, passing of time, and use of various other components of the

performance in collaboration with the dramatic texts.

The stance here is the same as Jenkins’, who introduces his collection of essays on

Tom Stoppard with the reminder, which is also valid for the following parts of this

chapter: “The purpose of this introduction is to remind readers that a text, whose words

appear so weighty on the printed page and assume still more freightage from the critics,

is accidental both in its creation and, even afterward, in its re-creation on stage”

(Jenkins, Critical Essays on TS 2). The text, although a primary source of the analysis,

is not the only material, as it is subject to various changes and re-creations on the stage.

Various other components, albeit following from the text directly or indirectly, are taken

into consideration. In other words, the pragmatic element of the ever-present dialogue

going on between characters and audiences, which is done not only on the linguistic

level, but also on the level of various other constituting signs of the theater, is taken into

account.

Copenhagen by Michael Frayn

Frayn’s Copenhagen opened at the Cottesloe Theatre, Royan National Theatre,

London, on 28 May, 1998, with the design by Peter J. Davison and lighting by Mark

Henderson (Copenhagen 2). The stage was nearly bare: just three chairs and a circle of

light.

As the play develops, the design comes to correspond with the information contained

Kačer 127

in the speech. Bohr, one of the characters, is a fictional representative of the Danish

physicist Niels Bohr, an inventor of one of the theories of the composition of the atom

and the stage design illustrates his model. It also visually expresses the core theory that

influences the play (both structurally and content-wise): the indeterminacy principle or,

the uncertainty. The characters/electrons rotate within their given paths, never to reach

the core and, most importantly, never to be sure where they are or at what speed they

are travelling at the same time – this is a visual metaphor, too, as they strive to get to the

core of the mystery, why the (Nazi) German Heisenberg came to visit Bohr, his teacher,

colleague, and a Jew in 1941, and their travel speed stands for getting to the answer.

The closer they are to it, the more dubious it becomes and vice versa. Then, their quest

for revealing the true purpose of Heisenberg’s visit must begin anew.

In this sense, the stage is a parallel to the uncertainty theorem of quantum physics.

Frayn says in an interview, “it seems to me that there is some kind of parallel between

physical uncertainty and epistemological uncertainty. It is extremely difficult (not to put

it more strongly) to know why people do what they do, and it’s also extremely difficult

to know why one does what one does oneself” (Wu 214). This atomic circle created by

stage lighting (which is not prescribed in the dramatic Nebentext) works as a permanent

presence “out there” of the facts of science and life otherwise expressed in the “here and

now” of the spoken lines. If the search for the historical truth of the visit is, in itself, a

parallel to the uncertainty principle in the dramatic text of Copenhagen, then the stage

design is a unifier that brings together this underlying principle of the development of

the plot with the informative aspect of the play showing how the theory works in action.

Kačer 128

8. New Messengers in Action

8.1. New Messengers Pushing the Action Forward

On the level of the narrative structure of a play, the new messenger keeps the most

important function of the conventional messenger up to a level on which the two are

virtually undistinguishable. As a matter of fact, it is attributes such as social identity of a

character with a name which allows it to step out of its role and become the new

messenger for a short period of time. At this moment, the purpose of his action becomes

equal with that of the conventional messenger, which is to inform about facts or events

from outside the frame of the on-stage action in order to push the action forward.

Among the most typical features of the messenger there is the switch to the narrative

mode in the form of the reportage. From the perspective of the action, one of the most

effective uses of this technique lies in its application in the beginning of a dramatic

action when it composes the dramatic exposition in the sense of the dramatic

introduction (see Pfister 86-8). When it comes to reporting in the introductory phase, the

purpose is different from classical drama, where the aim of the exposition is to set off

the action (by posing a problem to be solved). The exposition is a part of an enclosed

dramatic situation. In the case of the new messenger, it often means feeding in of

background information about characters and/or events, providing social-historical

context, which in its entirety is not necessarily related to the action on stage. Also,

references to the actual world are common – addressing primarily the audience and

setting their context to illustrate rather than motivate the actions of the characters.

Democracy by Michael Frayn

Frayn’s Democracy begins with a rather complex, structurally intertwined scene,

Kačer 129

where at least three levels merge: a document, the birth of a fictional dramatic situation

which develops later into the main plotline, and the reportage. The play begins with a

Voice announcing a successful election of the new West German chancellor: “Ladies

and gentlemen, I declare the result of the vote to be as follows. Those in favour: 251.

Those against: 235” (3). This line is delivered in a “documentary [mode] of

presentation, allowing events themselves to speak to the audience in a direct and

immediate style” (Kritzer 155). In this scene, Brandt, who is also present on the stage,

participates in a dialogue with the Voice, thus re-staging the historical event. Brandt

says: “Yes, Herr President. I accept the election” (Democracy 3). Meanwhile,

Guillaume and Kretschmann begin to unfold the main plotline, which revolves around

personal relationships among Brandt’s closest collaborators and unravelling

Guillaume’s motivations for becoming a Stasi agent under Kretschmann’s commission:

Guillaume: […] Willy Brandt had finally done it!

Kretschmann : And you were there in the Bundestag to see it. (3)

At the same time, both characters are describing the events following immediately after

Brandt’s election, building a vivid image of the political situation of that time and

personalities involved. Kretschmann, for example, reports about events and comments

on Guillaume’s thoughts from that era: “You never seriously expected to see Willy

Brandt elected Chancellor. Not in your wildest dreams, though, can you have imagined

that three weeks later they’d be sending for you to join him” (4). Although this line is in

the second person, it is a statement and a description facts. Neither does it add to

building a dramatic situation as Guillaume never responds, nor is this line developed.

It is, again as a document, merely demonstrated in a scene where Guillaume meets

his new collaborators Ehmke and Wilke for the first time. This documentary scene has

dramatic features as it is able to express the nature of their characters, but it is

Kačer 130

nevertheless filled with “estranging” self-introductions which are rather artificial and

too-informative. “Characters are identified like trains coming into the station” (Brustein

31) and, most importantly, repeated each time a new character appears on the stage.:

Ehmke (with Guillaume): Ehmke. Horst Ehmke. Willy’s chief of staff.

Running the Chancellor’s office for him. Getting the whole enterprise up

and running… (With Wilke and Bauhaus.) Thank you, Uli. Very helpful.

Over there, if you would, on the desk…

Wilke: Not over there, if you please, Herr Bauhaus! Not on the desk!

(Democracy 4)

As the play begins to develop further, Guillaume continues his brief reports from the

past and about his new workmates, as well as Brandt. His insider’s information describe

details from working for the Chancellor, the social atmosphere and he also mentions

historical facts. Especially the latest are clearly unmotivated – whether he says them in a

commenting mode to himself or in a quasi-dialogue with other characters, they are all

too obvious for all present on the stage, while their only role is the creation of context

for the audiences. The most obvious – dramatically absolutely unnecessary – being:

“When the Wall went up in sixty-one no one in Bonn lifted a finger” (10).

The turning point after all necessary contextual feeding-in, finally sets the action

going again in the form of a report about past activities of former East Germany agents

(described by Guillaume) and the message from East Berlin (delivered by

Kretschmann):

Kretschmann (with Guillaume): Now, here’s how we’re going to work […] All

photographs or photocopies of documents you’ll hand over to your wife.

She’ll be your courier.

Guillaume: Poor Christel. She was the star of the show, not me!

Kačer 131

Kretschmann: She did very well.

Guillaume: A job in the Hesse State Chancellery in Wiesbaden! What more

could anyone hope for?

Kretschmann: One in the Federal Chancellery in Bonn.

Guillaume: Pure blind chance, Arno! A gift from the gods! [...] (11-2)

The two spies recount the past activities of the East German intelligence service in the

West Germany so that they can move on to the next, more important mission.

Kretschmann stands in between agent Guillaume and the East German Ministry of State

Security (Stasi), handing him directions and orders from “Mischa”. Here though, at the

beginning of the action, Guillaume is already “split by conflicting motives and seems to

have no dominating ideology” (Brustein 32), as his use of the familiar form of Brandt’s

first name suggests:

Kretschmann: Nevertheless, all written material to Christel. What Mischa

really wants from you, though, is all the things that politicians and civil

servants don’t write down. The gossip. The background. The smell of

things. The way they think. Who’s in, who’s out. Who’s got their knife into

whom. Copier and camera, certainly. But, above all, eyes and ears.

Guillaume: Willy keeps saying he wants to open their working procedures to

public scrutiny.

Kretschmann: Here’s how we can help him. And of course what we want to

know about most of all is…

Guillaume: The Eastern Policy. (Democracy 12)

In this expository situation, Frayn manages to reawaken concepts from the history of the

Cold War, namely of Brandt’s “Ostpolitik policy of reconciling West and East

Germany” (Brustein 32). This frame of action, together with an atmosphere of distrust

Kačer 132

and treason, which goes together with the world of espionage, is “to remind us of a time

when political leaders were driven by humanitarian concerns rather than military and

religious obsessions; and when the left was energized by the courage of its convictions”

(33). For doing so, recapitulations of historical facts and exchanges reports between

what happens in the Chancellery in Bonn and in the Stasi headquarters, together with

insights into characters’ thoughts, are necessary.

All characters throughout the play become on various occasions new messengers,

when they bring in information about events or facts from this historical period, which

is now mere history. In the connection of their narratives, which relate to the historical

world of the audience, lies the difference between a dramatic exposition in the

traditional sense. While the “old” messenger, as in the case of the chorus in the

exposition of Oedipus the King, may allude to the actual history, the aim is different. In

this case, the connection works by allusion (reminiscence of the Peloponnesian war, the

plague in Athens and moral decay) and leads to the possibility of creating a parallel with

Oedipus’s story. In Democracy and similarly cut historical drama, the new messenger

on the one hand presents historical facts from the audience’s actual world to make up

the context for the actions of the fictionalized characters, and on the other hand assumes

the role to transcend the fictional frame and reach out to actual history. In Democracy,

the new messengers have access to extrafictional contents.

Arcadia by Tom Stoppard

In the context of pushing the action forward, reports have a specific role. As the

chapter on Oedipus the King, Antony and Cleopatra and Glass Menagerie shows, the

traditional messenger appears as a conventional tool to bring a new impulse and

perform a “push” in the development of the on-stage action, when he comes and

Kačer 133

announces new facts from out there yet unknown to other characters. As far as the new

messenger is concerned, he does not appear as another character, who is without a

name, but he forms a part of existing characters, who as a rule have their names. It is

rather attributes of these characters that enable them to become messengers or that

involve the ability to become new messengers when the action needs it, because they

guarantee them, among other things, a privileged access to information outside the

frame of action on the stage.

Such is the case, for example, in the final scenes of Arcadia by Stoppard. This play is

full of potential (and actual) new messengers as it deals with scientists and researchers

from various fields who often lecture to one another (or, independently on one another

directly to the audience for various reasons) about their areas of expertise or discoveries.

In the time line, which develops in the present and intertwines with the other from the

early 19th century, Bernard Nightingale – a literary scholar – is a rude and annoying

character who hopes he has discovered a new fact from lord Byron’s life – namely that

he killed a young poet named Ezra Chater in a duel which took place at Sidley Park, the

venue where both time lines take place. This “split time frame” makes Bernard a kind of

detective “who search[es], discover[s] and tr[ies] to make sense of the events that

occurred in the house two centuries before” (Rousseau, par. 4). Hannah Jarvis is a writer

doing her research on the hermit of Sidley Park. She dislikes Bernard and she found a

conclusive proof that Chater could not be killed in a duel as he died of a monkey bite in

Martinique later. Her research activities give her an exclusive access to various

materials dealing with the past of Sidley Park, such that other characters have a limited

access to (or, to put it in better words, she has access to materials in her field while other

characters access materials from theirs). In this way, Bernard builds his theory upon a

piece of information acquired from the British library:

Kačer 134

Bernard: […] There’s only one other Chater in the British Library database.

Hannah: Same period?

Bernard: Yes, but he wasn’t a poet like our Ezra, he was a botanist who

described a dwarf dahlia in Martinique and died there after being bitten by a

monkey.

Hannah: And Ezra Chater?

Bernard: He gets two references in the periodical index, one for each book, in

both cases a substantial review in the Piccadilly Recreation, a thrice weekly

folio sheet, but giving no personal details. (Arcadia 35)

This passage shows a tricky feature of the reportage. On the level of its references, it is

difficult to identify whether they refer to fictional or extrafictional contents. However,

in this passage, historicity of the database entry and the monkey bite that killed Chater is

irrelevant to the development of the story. In other words, it is sometimes irrelevant for

the logic of the plot whether the reportage is referring to the actual historical world or

only pretending to do so (as may well be the case in Arcadia – or not).

Rousseau writes, “Arcadia postulates the unreliability of the written sign. Bernard’s

deciphering errors are evidence of the impossible transparency of texts which are

always subject to various interpretations” (Rousseau, par. 16). When Bernard publishes

his misinterpreted “discovery” about Byron, Hannah can disprove it with expert

knowledge from her field:

Bernard: […] Am I fucked? What do you think, Valentine? Tell me the truth.

Valentine: You’re fucked. […]

Bernard: Show me where it says. I want to see it. […]

Hannah: (Reading) “[…] The dahlia having propagated under glass with no ill

effect from the sea voyage, is named by Captain Brice ‘Charity’ for his

Kačer 135

bride, though the honour properly belongs to the husband who exchanged

beds with my dahlia, and an English summer for everlasting night in the

Indies.” (Pause.)

Bernard: Well it’s so round the houses, isn’t it? Who’s to say what it means?

Hannah: (Patiently) It means that Ezra Chater of the Sidley Park connection is

the same Chater who described a dwarf dahlia in Martinique in 1810 and

died there, of a monkey bite. (Arcadia 125-6)

Reconstructing from various sources and building up on her expertise as a researcher

and writer, Hannah becomes the messenger of the bad news for Bernard, as her message

is well-evidenced and in effect indisputable.

At the same time, this scene is the final push of the action in “the present” time frame

of the play, leading to the conclusion where the two temporal worlds meet on the stage

in a dance of waltz which, as the audience knows, ultimately leads to death by burning

of Thomasina, the main character of the 1809/1812 plot time frame.

In short, in pushing the action forward, new messengers play the same role in the

structure of the narrative of a drama as the old conventional messenger. The difference

lies in the fact that the new messenger is a function acquired by one (or more) character

with a name that has specific qualities, namely a justified exclusive access to

information outside the frame of the onstage action. Such are Guillaume and

Kretschmann as officers of the Stasi recapitulating old secret service operations and

planning new ones in Western Germany of Democracy, and Hannah Jarvis, a writer and

researcher with an experienced analytical mind enabling her to reliably reconstruct

events nearly two centuries old. These two examples briefly illustrate one structural use

Kačer 136

of the new messenger which builds upon the main function of the traditional one, which

is to push the action forward.

Kačer 137

8.1.2. The Voice from the Gadget

Stoppard’s 1968 play The Real Inspector Hound opens with a dialogue of two critics,

Birdboot and Moon, waiting for the beginning of a play-within-the-play to watch. As

soon as they lead the audience into the action by introducing in a Brecht-like fashion the

entering character of the play-within-the-play, “Mrs Drudge the Help” (Hound 13), a

parallel action opens by a line delivered by a technological device – the radio.

Upon being switched on, the radio announces: “We interrupt our programme for a

special police message” (13). The announcement catches Mrs Drudge’s attention who

hears in horror the follow-up warning that, “The search still goes on for the escaped

madman who is on the run in Essex” (13). Here, in the opening scene, the radio voice

establishes itself as a messenger that will reappear to change the course of events and

inform the characters about developments “out there” throughout the entire play.

This chapter describes deanthropoligized characters such as various technological

devices and means of mass-communication that subscribe to the messenger function in

the concerned plays. It focuses on identifying their common features with a personified

messenger as a side character in a storyline as well as differences. Among the shared

features, there are, for example, the convention of privileged access to information

outside the stage and the accepted truthfulness of the delivered message.

The greatest difference between these two types of the messenger is the structure of

the dialogue with the protagonists, where a personified messenger actively interacts

with the receiver of the message, while the dialogue between an inanimate messenger

and protagonists is structured so that it is seemingly passive. Another difference lies in

the fact that while personified messengers are understood as representatives of a specific

Kačer 138

character type, inanimate messengers such as a newspaper and the radio are present on

stage as ostensions and therefore relate to the audience’s everyday experience and

associations with these media. In other words, there is yet one more step between the

reliability of a personified messenger as a witness from the part of the fictional world

beyond the stage, and of “written” or “aired” words as definitive statements about it.

This is connected with the stylistics and pragmatics of such reports, which are entitled

to be more factual and to the point, seemingly escaping the aesthetic dominant entirely.

The last point made in this chapter will be connected with such deanthropoligized

messengers whose humanity depends on the perspective – they are perfectly human

from the point of view of the developments of the plot, but not so much in comparison

with other characters as these are ghosts or dead persons talking from the past and the

like (unless we are believers in the supernatural, of course). These ghostly messengers

belong to the chapter about gadgets as they are not supposed to be materialized on the

stage by an actor “under a sheet”, to put it bluntly, but rather as a pre-recorded voice

heard from an object or a hidden place (the piano and the attic in The Piano Lesson).

The Real Inspector Hound by Tom Stoppard

The Real Inspector Hound uses the messenger in the gadget, the radio, in the most

conventional manner and the whole play may be read as a play on theatrical conventions

as such. When the play-within-the-play opens, it begins with a straightforward

exposition. This is, indeed, a typical use of the messenger as a tool for a narrative

composition. The radio broadcast sets the here and now on several levels, namely it is

expository information for the audience (it gives the location with its spatial/temporal

specifics), for the critics-spectators Birdboot and Moon (it grants them their position

outside of the play-within-the-play plot) as well as all characters of the play-within-the-

Kačer 139

play, mainly Mrs Grudge, who is listening to the news.

Once the setting and the main plot, the detective investigation to be soon taking place

in the theatrical here and now, “in as realistic idiom as possible, the drawing-room of

Muldoon Manor” (9), are defined by the report on the radio, Mrs Grudge continues the

exposition while talking on the telephone. She speaks to an unknown caller, astutely

further specifying characters and the setting and time: “Hello, the drawing-room room

of Lady Muldoon’s country residence one morning in early spring?” (15) followed by

short descriptions of characters present at the residence including their brief

characterizations, among others of “Magnus, the wheelchair-ridden half-brother of her

ladyship’s husband Lord Albert Muldoon who ten years ago went out for a walk on the

cliffs and was never seen again” (16). The radio broadcast and the telephone call are

two instances of the use of technology which are mirroring one another as far as their

speeches are concerned: the radio is seemingly a monological utterance coming from

the gadget while the telephone call is seemingly a monological utterance going into a

gadget.

The radio speech takes on the form of a report and it imitates the stylistics of a police

radio message, which is in accordance with the content. It avoids the necessity to go

into details about the hunt by simply claiming that “the search goes on” (13), which may

explain the interest of the Help to listen to the news. It states that the madman was seen

“in the desolate marshes around Muldoon Manor” (13). At this point, Mrs Drudge

responds with a “fearful gasp” (13) and this wordless reply works as an indication to the

audience of the fictional location. At the same time, her fearful gasp is a reply to the

radio and an incentive to continue. The radio gives more details to the imaginary

listener, but more specifically to the flesh-and-bone Mrs Drudge and, via the pseudo-

dialogue between the radio and the Help, to the audience.

Kačer 140

What follows is an example of dramatic irony. The radio describes the suspect and

the focus on the recipient of this news shifts from Mrs Drudge to the audience when, “A

man answering this description has appeared behind Mrs Drudge” (13). This scene is

ironic as “Mrs Drudge does not see him” (13) before “He creeps out” (13). As a matter

of fact, there is a double-layered dramatic irony at play, as there is a corpse lying in the

middle of the stage which is visible only to the audience, and not to any of the other

characters on the stage, including the critics. “It is often the audience, rather than the

characters, that ultimately puts the puzzle together” (Rabinowitz 62).

This scene is parodic of possible expositions utilized in well made plays. The setting

is traditional, a parlour. Still, it is added to by the presence of the two critics, thus

admitting its artificiality. Their presence, the too-condensed content of the expository

messages, and Mrs Drudge’s histrionic reactions give away the fact that the mode of the

speeches is ironic, thus parodying expositions of well made plays or parlour detective

stories such as those of A. Christie, to which The Real Inspector Hound clearly alludes

(Jenkins, Theatre of TS 50). It is worthwhile to note at this moment that the irony is

obvious and the parody too easily understandable to the audience, thus calling for the

criticism on the basis of simplicity:

The problem with Hound, and why it seems the least satisfactory of all

Stoppard’s plays, is that the theatrical whodunnit tends to be transparently

banal in the first place, so that to parody its emptiness simply restates the

obvious. The plot of the actual Mousetrap appears so contrived and its

characters such ludicrous stereotypes that audiences have for years taken the

play as a comic send-up of the genre. (51).

This criticism may be averted in several ways. One is offered by Turner: “The Real

Inspector Hound presents what might be called a ‘play between the play’: the easy

Kačer 141

target of criticism, the spoof of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap […] is placed between

the first acting area, where critics Moon and Birdboot are sitting, and the audience”

(“New Frames and Old” 115). The parody remains valid because it is both up to the

audience and the fictional critics to see the lack of artistic qualities of the play-within-

the-play.

Another point draws upon the use of the messenger in the gadget, which in itself is

an intruding device coming from outside the action on stage (not as much the gadget

itself, but the “voice” it sends out, of course). As a device of information transfer from

outside the action, the gadget seemingly has the capacity to deliver any news – even

stupid and illogical. This lack of logic, for beyond any reasonable odds, is present in the

madman’s description which only stands out in contrast to the presence of a character

perfectly corresponding to the description. This parody of radio news is based on the

discrepancy between its objective reporting style (“We interrupt our programme…”

(Hound 13)) and its perfect – and perfectly inappropriate – fitness for the action on the

stage (“A man answering this description…” (13)).

The telephone is another device used in the exposition of the play. It rings shortly

after the radio message is over. This time, it is up to Mrs Drudge to perform the

complete dialogue, as the voice on the other end of the line is not heard and must only

be deduced in the retrospect from her responses. This time, the muted questions from an

unknown caller are untold, yet they lead to an equally inappropriate situation as the

radio message. The result again produces an ironic joke played about a Mousetrap-type

exposition, for Mrs Drudge answers the phone very much in the manner that gives a full

description of the place and time, the house and the characters who are present.

The end of the telephone conversation serves, in correspondence with one of the

classical uses of exposition, to introduce newly appearing characters. After calling out

Kačer 142

the names of all other inhabitants of the house, Mrs Drudge finishes the call: “Should a

stranger enter our midst, which I very much doubt, I will tell him you called” (16). She

can suddenly see the character corresponding to the radio description. He, however,

introduces himself, and Mrs Drudge goes into describing who is doing what at the

moment rather than deliver the message. In this, too, the play shows that the use of the

radio and telephone is, besides other functions, a joke played on some of the

conventions of well-made plays than a serious part of the dramatic plot. The caller, Mrs

Drudge, fulfils the expository role on one level (details about the initial settings), but her

mode of delivery is ironic of this type of exposition and in effect funny (she gives too

many details).

This comical dimension is highlighted by the following ring of the telephone, which

is now picked up by the suspiciously dressed character who has introduced himself as

Simon Gascoyne. His reply convicts the audience of falling into the trap of the irony.

While the audience is expecting Simon to be the wanted stranger, Simon replies: “Who?

… To whom did you wish to speak? … There is no one of that name here” (18). This

turns the exposition upside down. An expected development is subverted and used as a

signal for the genre: a parody of the Moustrap.

The messenger in the gadget, the radio, pushes forward the action of the play-within-

the-play several more times in Hound. As the play consists of at least two layers (critics

and Mousetrap), the critics’ chatter is seemingly unstoppable. The action of the

Mousetrap is blocked by the critics. Simon thus needs to begin the action and he does so

when “A strange impulse makes Simon turn on the radio” (18) shortly after he hangs up

the telephone. Another police message this time involves one of the critics, Birdboot,

into a comment about the action of the Mousetrap, which finally continues after

another character, Felicity, enters after a tennis ball with the scream: “Out!” (20).

Kačer 143

The next and the last use of the radio in the play follows the patterns of the use as

described above. Again, the voice is formally official and it is done in a reporting style

of a police message. Up to this point, the initial phrase “We interrupt our programme for

a special police message” (13, 28) has established itself as a signalling phrase, with a

variation of “Here is another police message” (18). The programme that is now being

interrupted is the dull dialogue of the beginning of the second act of the play-within-the-

play, which is a parody of Wildean parlour humour known from The Importance of

Being Earnest. The critics have so far spotted the artistic hopelessness of the second act,

which in Birdboot’s words, “however, fails to fulfil the promise” (28) of a well-written

Mousetrap. It is at this point that the messenger comes to save the situation and push the

action forward. The messenger is the voice from the radio, which is just in time turned

on by Mrs Drudge.

Another repeated quality included in the message is the improbable commentary on

the situation on the stage when it advises the public “to stick together and make sure

none of their number is missing” (28). This announcement makes the characters of the

Mousetrap go looking for the missing Simon, to whom the announcements point

repetitively. After this intrusion of the voice from outside the stage, the action of the

play can again develop towards the conclusion on all levels: of the play-within-the-play,

of the critics-spectators levels and for the audience of The Real Inspector Hound.

The examples of the “messenger in the gadget”, as I have taken the liberty to call it,

may seem inappropriate in the light of the analyses to come in the following pages.

Indeed, the first will present a messenger coming out of a newspaper and the second one

from the attic, or, from nowhere at all in particular. Still, the gadget is a viable

metaphor. For, the primary principle this characterization is based upon is, to repeat, the

Kačer 144

following: the messenger does not come in the form of a stock-character (a messenger

whose entry is signalled by the flourish of trumpets) or as a character of the “new

messenger” type (a contemporary character who is a transformation of the traditional

messenger, with an exclusive access to and transmission of information, such as a

journalist, politician, policeman, and the like) but a non-human “character” on the stage,

that is to say, any object which may serve as a source for the voice; under the condition

that this voice brings a report to the stage. The gadget is the first obvious example of

this. We could see that this was not exactly the case with the telephone in The Real

Inspector Hound, as the voice on the other end of the line was inaudible to the audience,

but the imagination at play and the maid’s and Simon’s responses were enough to

reconstruct the questions (and were reports in themselves, too).

Similarly, the newspaper comes with reports. However, the difference from the radio

lies in the fact that it needs a borrowed voice. There are, in general, several ways to lend

a voice to the newspaper in a performance. The newspaper can be speaking with the

help of a technical device such as a speaker in the theatre. In this case, it only little

differs from that what has been told about the radio above. It is a message from the

outside intruding the enclosed space of the action on stage. For there are just minute

differences from the radio (or any other “gadget” utilized in this manner, be it a TV-set,

a loudspeaker in the street outside, or a dislocated narrating voice), on the abstract level,

they all work comparably. A different instance of a dehumanized messenger arises in a

situation when another character is needed to lend his or her voice to the news.

Here, at least two types can be found. The first is the use of the newspaper as a prop

(not in our interest) and the second is voicing of a report (where the messenger in the

gadget comes into life through a mouth of another character). Let me just briefly explain

what I mean about the use of the newspaper as a prop (or any comparable source of

Kačer 145

information, as artistic expression knows no boundaries). Props, as a part of the stage

which is to be interacted with by characters, have numerous roles in drama and

performance. “First and foremost, props are used to reflect the degree of imitative

realism or stylisation and, closely linked to that, to characterise dramatic space and the

dramatic figures” (Pfister 274). As such, a newspaper becomes a quality of a dramatic

figure (character), the source of his ideas and a means to assist his role. When a prop

such as a newspaper is at use, it shapes the character and thus becomes a part of him.

Radically said, there are characters whose only raison d’être is that they breathe life

into inanimate props – as if the role of a marionette and its manipulator were switched:

the thing manipulates the character here. As props “may be instrumental in moving the

plot forward” (274), they often offer what a character is looking for (a proof, an

argument, a missing piece in a puzzle that drives him through the plot toward the

conclusion) which then is used by the character.

For example, a newspaper as a messenger is a kind of a dehumanized character on its

own. It may stand for the other, who is not present on the stage, such as “the public” for

a politician or even for the audience, in case of political drama as it speaks in the

seemingly objective voice of history and events “out there”. Therefore, it becomes a

minor character with features typical of the traditional conventional messenger. It is

connected with a whole set of attributes which establish it on the stage as a trustworthy

and stand-alone “voice” – the reportage.

The voice, however, has several ways of appearance on the stage. It can be present as

text. This is the case which is connected with the use of technology, such as projections

on a screen. Presence of text in form of banners is another typical feature of the

Brechtian staging tradition dealt with in the chapter on Brecht’s heritage earlier in this

thesis. In such cases, it is up to the audience to connect the various means of theatrical

Kačer 146

expression as the news becomes a part of the set design and primarily operates as a

constituent of the drama in the visual sphere. It is only when the audience reads it that it

enters interaction with all other elements. On the other hand, the presentation of a text

has its advantages as it constitutes a presence which is permanent in time, unlike the

case of quoting from the papers, which is an interruption of the dialogue stream.


Quoting headlines is one of the main turning points in Democracy by Frayn.

Towards the end of the play, the pressures on Willy Brandt emerge from various

directions and he finds himself pushed towards resignation on his office as the

Chancellor of West Germany. Besides the main plot line, a presence of an East German

spy amongst his closest collaborators, pressures come from the serious and garbage

press. In a dialogue with Ehmke, Wilke quotes from another politician’s statement for a

newspaper:

Ehmke (with Wilke and Guillaume) : Can you believe he actually said it? Even

Herbert Wehner?

Wilke: ‘What the present German government lacks is a head.’

Ehmke: At a press-conference! In Moscow, of all places! We’ve only just

established normal relations! The entire world waiting to hear what he’s going

to say!

Wilke: ‘The Chancellor’s asleep on his feet. He’s lost in a world of his own…

Quite frankly I have never taken this government seriously as a government…’

(Democracy 74).

In this exchange, Wilke loses his identity as a character at the expense of becoming a

borrowed voice of the newspaper. No matter if he is reading it from the paper or quoting

Kačer 147

it from his memory (this is purely up to the director’s decision as there is no prescriptive

Nebentext included regarding this particular excerpt), the change in Wilke’s role is

indicated. It is visually made clear by the use of the quotation marks in the dramatic

text, but it is also clear from the switch in the register. His response is not dialogical, he

clearly speaks for the newspaper. In his first quote, he is giving another person’s

statement as it was printed in the press. He is quoting a quote in the paper, summoning

the “messenger” of the paper to the stage and lending him his own voice.

When Ehmke continues in his lament (“At a press-conference! […] ”), Wilke does

not respond in order to create a dynamic dialogue that would push forward the action in

this scene. His second utterance is an illustration in support of Ehmke’s claim. Wilke

again gives up his character identity in favour of an informative statement, becoming

the voice of the newspaper which enters the stage for this short moment as the

messenger from a distant space and time, namely from a press-conference in Moscow

some time before (undefined more precisely by the text).

These switches are easily understandable for the audiences at this moment, as they

are from the first lines of the play used to constant switching between situations (action

among characters alternating with commentaries and ideas inside characters’ head) as

well as on-stage referencing to, quoting from or paraphrasing (presumably non-fictional

historical) sources, such as in the case of the newspaper quote, which caused a certain

clumsiness of the American Broadway run of the play. “Frayn’s technique is a fluid mix

of re-enactment and narration, docudrama and memory” (Zoglin 111). This

intertwining language of the play enables Frayn to keep a variety of fictional realities

present together at the same time. Leaving aside the conventional technique of the aside

(pun not intended), as well as reporting, quoting from a source such as a newspaper has

specific function in the play. Not only does it bring in alternative points of view of

Kačer 148

present situations and Willy Brandt (as his circle consist of collaborators who fall under

his spell and admire him at the same time) without a necessity to create conflict

situations for secondary plot lines, it also meets the primary function of the messenger,

which is to bring in reports from outside the frame of the stage. Thus, newspapers, as in

this case, widen the world of the stage by adding context and other views related to, but

not necessarily a part of, the action as played out on the stage.

However, in the plot development of Democracy, there is also space for a meta-

criticism of the newspapers as the carriers of “objective” news from the outside world.

An example of such criticism is the case of the gutter press. Formally, it is brought to

the stage in the same manner as serious newspapers using the corresponding mechanism

just described. However, the framing within the speeches on stage is different this time.

It is not the source of the news or the fact which is reported in the papers as in the

previous example (the comment on a political opponent’s statements given at a press

conference), but it is the press as such, whose style and attitude is criticised:

Wilke (with Wehner and Schmidt): No more than one might expect from the

gutter press, of course. […]

Wehner : ‘Did Brandt Spy Take Sex Photos?’

Schmidt : Where did this one come from?

Wehner : No idea. […]

Brandt joins them. Wilke gives him the newspaper. (Democracy 88-9)

Wehner’s quote of the gutter press headline is another instance where a character leaves

his role in order to lend his voice to another medium, to the messenger in the “gadget”

of a newspaper printout. This time, however, the context is changing the impact of the

message. Unlike in the previous example where the headline and the sentence from an

article are reports from the fictional world outside the stage (and extending to the actual

Kačer 149

historical world in its documentary character), the ability of the gutter press to give any

relevant information is subverted. On the level of a fictional world enlargement, the

headline still works, because it materializes a fictional reality independent of the action

on stage. But this time, the message is not merely informing about facts/events that take

place out there, it is rather its sole existence which is shocking and its content which is

repulsing the characters. Wilke is even apologising for being the messenger (Wilke :

I’m sorry to be the messenger…” (Democracy 89)) when he gives the newspaper to

Brandt, clearly feeling sorry for the explosive content and inappropriate form of the

message, thus retrieving his voice, becoming the character again and commenting on the

news.

The scene plays a certain central role in Democracy, as it illustrates various causes of

the end of Brandt’s career. It brings together a relentless chase from the press in its

worst – “gutter” – form and Brandt’s reputation of a womaniser, which afflicted him at

this time. As the play mainly focuses on his relationship with Guillaume the spy, a

single report from the gutter press is enough to illustrate the injustice done to him by the

press as well as the problems brought about by his temperament.

The Piano Lesson by August Wilson

In Wilson’s The Piano Lesson, there is yet another type of a messenger figure which

is present on the stage as an inhuman character. The house of the Charles family is

haunted by a ghost. Although this is not accepted by several members of the family, and

especially Boy Willie, it turns out that the ghost figure rests in the attic as a witness of

past events, namely a murder of a white former slave-owner and an oppressor of blacks,

Sutter. History remains alive. Sutter and other whites who murdered a group of young

blacks all died later. The rumour had it that their ghosts went out and killed them to get

Kačer 150

revenge, which to many seems more an urban legend than a real story. Most of the

family and especially its youngest generation see it like that. However, “that the white

men who had a hand in killing Boy Charles, their father, have all been murdered is a

probability that the presence of Sutter’s ghost makes a certainty” (Morrison xii).

Appearance of Sutter’s ghost is, in itself, a report on historical events, as it gives a proof

about what happened.

At first, Boy Willie does not believe in the ghost’s existence:

Doaker: She [Berniece] say she seen Sutter’s ghost standing at the top of the

stairs.

Boy Willie: Seen what? Sutter? She ain’t seen no Sutter.

Berniece: He was standing right up there.

Boy Willie: That’s all in Berniece’s head. Ain’t nobody up there. Go on up

there, Doaker.

Doaker: I’ll take your word for it. Berniece talking about what she seen. She

say Sutter’s ghost standing at the top of the steps. She ain’t just make all

that up.

Boy Willie : She up there dreaming. She ain’t seen no ghost. (The Piano

Lesson 18)

Being an entity from the netherworld, the ghost has no voice of its own. Its presence is

“felt” (or unfelt) by other characters, who discuss the past events when the ghost

influences them to do so (they retell the past typically to confirm or refuse the ghost’s

existence). This way, the ghost becomes a medium for presenting the past events from

outside the frame of the stage and the present action. After the story of the murder of

Boy Charles and others by the white men and their subsequent revenge for justice

murders by the murdered boys’ ghosts is told, the ghost’s presence works as a mute

Kačer 151

testimony. In the stage directions, the ghost’s presence is mentioned on several

occasions, such as at the end of the first act: “The sound of Sutter’s Ghost is heard

again. They all hear it as Berniece enters on the stairs” (52). Then it becomes obvious

that to accept the ghost’s existence means facing the heritage of the past, namely of the

racial struggle, including former owner – slave relations, racial murders, and their

solution, so that the past may be laid to rest.

To do so, Boy Willie needs to revive the past. He enters a fight with the ghost:

Boy Willie: Hey Sutter! Sutter! Get your ass out this house! Sutter! (104)

He and the rest of the Charles household try to get rid of the ghost (they even invite

Priest Avery to expel it with holy water) so that they can live on without the presence of

the former slaveowner and a subsequent victim of a revenge murder. A fight is

necessary: “There are loud sounds heard from upstairs as Boy Willie begins to wrestle

with Sutter’s Ghost. It is a life-and-death struggle fraught with perils and faultless

terror. Boy Willie is thrown down the stairs” (105). But it is not physical strength that

can overcome a ghost. It must be a source of higher justice.

“Berniece realizes what she must do. She crosses to the piano. She begins to play.

[...] A rustle of wind blowing across two continents” (105). Berniece’s music is her

attempt to get to terms with the spirits of her ancestors. Through music, she manages to

find peace for those slaves who crafted the carvings on the piano and it is this symbolic

scene of summoning her ancestors which makes it possible to get rid of Sutter’s ghost,

who till then still claimed the piano. In her “piano lesson”, Berniece connects Africa and

America47 and finally exorcise the ghost. The piano thus remains a witness of the

47 It is worth noting that the text of the play includes explicitly this explanation of

Berniece’s song refraining with “I want you to help me” (105-6) in the stage

Kačer 152

Charles family history, its music being a messenger from the past, a connecting point

between the unsolved issues of the past and present alike.

Although the ghost and the piano cannot speak themselves, they are still as inhuman

creatures responsible for reports of the past, as their mere presence makes the other

characters recall and retell history. And as such, they also lead the way to a

reconciliation with the slavery past, at least for the Charles family of 1936, which is

when the story of The Piano Lesson takes place. The tones of music not only revives the

spirits of the original land and the painful past from the present one, its music full of

harmony is a metaphor for a starting point of a future, which can only begin with

coming to terms with the past, however painful it may be. And as the source for such

settlement lies in the sphere of emotions and suppressed memories, it is things and

immaterial beings that may become the messengers of the reconciling message, which

remains beyond common human capabilities.

The above examples of the use of the messenger as a type of character show that it is

not limited to human characters, quite to the contrary, that its application may lie in the

use of “gadgets” that can speak for themselves such as the radio or a TV, inanimate

objects that require a borrowed voice from some of the characters or other way of

making accessible their message, such as a newspaper read out loud or shown to the

directions. The connection of the two continents is not clear, for example, from the

final scene of the film adaptation (directed by Lloyd Richards, with Alfre Woodard

as Berniece), which does not clearly explain how distant ancestry Berniece is

pleading, leaving it to a viewer’s belief that she is calling her American enslaved

ancestry (The Piano Lesson film, last scene).

Kačer 153

audiences, and even in objects that have no voice and whose message is untranslatable

into standard speech and must find its expression, otherwise, usually by a context

explanation by other characters prompted by the object, such as a ghost, or in music, as

it was the case of the piano. Still, it is necessary to stress, that this chapter also serves as

an example of a possible case-study application of the view of the new messenger, that

is to say a certain specific character type which has retained its main function (reporting

on facts/events from out of the frame of the stage action) but has been transformed due

to changes in the understanding of this conventional figure or aesthetics of the stage

representation. In other words, the standing of a newspaper or a TV is radio is in this

sense incomparable to that of a letter, for example, because although on the surface the

letter too is a potent messenger, it cannot do without its sender, unlike the media which

do not necessary have a concrete author behind the news and as such act on their own

account.

8.1.3. It’s All in the Play

At the end of Act I of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (further on, R&GAD)

by Tom Stoppard (1967), upon Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s arrival at Elsinore, the

scene mimics a welcome of the two characters in Hamlet (II.2). In fact, R&GAD quotes

directly from Shakespeare’s play. Hamlet: “My excellent good friends! How dost thou

Guildenstern? […] Ah Rosencrantz!” (R&GAD 39 and Ham II.2). At this moment, the

two main protagonists of the eponymous R&GAD finally and definitely enter the world

of Hamlet, together with its meta-theatrical plot line, which ultimately results in their

death. As R&GAD was Stoppard’s first major success as a playwright in 1967 and this

play, due to its (meta-)literary qualities offers a good potential for a variety of

Kačer 154

interpretations and critical studies, it would be meaningless to come up with an

overview of the preceding body of scholarly and critical work about it. Focus has been

directed towards its formal aspects (intertwining of the world of Hamlet and that of

Stoppard’s play) as well as Wildean (author-spectator relationship) and Beckettian

(existential dimensions) moments.

This chapter adds another aspect (while attempting nothing more than that), viewing

this play from the perspective of the reportage and its use as a vehicle of a meta-

theatrical plotting. In other words, it shows how the reportage works inside the frame of

the play. Besides R&GAD, it takes the example of Noises Off by Michael Frayn (1982)

to show how new messengers work as dramatic agents who push the action forward; it

claims that the (often subtle) use of the new messenger is an integral part of meta-

theatricality on the level of narrative (integrated analepsis and prolepsis); and it

identifies “character” as the agent with the most privileged access to the facts and events

of a play.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard

One of the principal attractions of R&GAD lies in the fact that there are at least two

story lines developing simultaneously, that of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and that of

some scenes of Hamlet. At times, the two plays meet, that is dialogues from Hamlet are

integrated into the text of R&GAD. In short, it can be said for our present purpose that

Act I of R&GAD deals with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s arrival at Elsinore where

they are assigned by King Claudius to observe Hamlet, who he fears is going mad, and

to “draw him on to pleasures and to gather / So much as from occasion you may glean”

(R&GAD 36, Hamlet II.2). In Acts II (in Elsinore) and III (on the boat to England), the

story of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is played out on the background of Hamlet,

Kačer 155

which is developing synchronously, yet most of the time as if behind the curtain, in the

backstage. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern overhear Hamlet’s famous soliloquies, they

comment on the plot of Hamlet, which is unfolding on the background towards the

inevitable death of the two as announced by Ambassador: “Rosencrantz and

Guildenstern are dead” (R&GAD 93, Hamlet V.2), which is the only certainty about the

two interchangeable characters.

Although indeterminacy is among the main topics of R&GAD, the deterministic

course towards the inevitable end announced in the title of the play already is all the

time present in the play. “Stoppard crafted a play that deals with significant

philosophical issues: (1) the nature of truth, (2) role-playing versus identity, (3) human

mortality, and (4) whether life and the universe are random or deterministic – does

chance or logic rule the world?” (Fleming 53). While there are a number of

indeterministic events (such as coin-tossing), its finale is deterministic due to the play’s

fixed connection with the generally well-known developments of Hamlet (or, at least

with a supposed knowledge of its basic frame in mind), which unfolds allusively as a

play-within-the-play in quotations and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s comments:

There is a measure of theatricalization […] in the bare consciousness of the

relation between offstage and onstage; in the consciousness, for example, in

reading or seeing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, that the play we

know as Hamlet is mostly happening offstage. That characters identified as

stage players enter both these worlds, and manage to demonstrate their art,

further complicates our pleasures. (Meisel 26)

Due to this structure, there is a double audience in R&GAD. One is the audience of the

play, while the other is embodied in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern themselves, who

watch and listen to the proceedings of Hamlet from an immediate position.

Kačer 156

The two thus in fact become an audience themselves and as such, they acquire the

legitimacy to share their observations and comments on par with the R&GAD audience

in the house. Meisel states that R&GAD is an extreme case in point due to the scope of

the use of the pre-text and the depth of the level of its incorporation into the secondary

text of R&GAD, for which it holds that, “[a]dding an audience not called for in the text

to the mise-en-scène of a canonical play is now a not uncommon directorial ploy. But

though sometimes enlivening, such anti-illusionist enhancements rarely give scope for

the sort of engagement with the nature of theatre that staging an audience can give when

it is part of the script” (Meisel 101). To enforce their role as audience of Hamlet,

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern on several occasions interact with the audience of

R&GAD:

Rosencrantz: Fire!

Guildenstern jumps up.

Guildenstern: Where?

Rosencrantz: It’s all right – I’m demonstrating the misuse of free speech. To

prove that it exists. (He regards the audience, that is the direction, with

contempt – and other directions, then front again.) Not a move. They should

burn to death in their shoes. (R&GAD 44)

Through this communication, they confirm that in relation to Hamlet unfolding in the

background, they are on a par with their audience.

But this situation is at times also used to produce a comical effect (which rings a

strong Beckettian bell) when the two characters suddenly as if “forget” they are mere

characters in a play and ignore the stare of the audience as well as the technical

equipment of the theatre house. They build several ironical sequences when denying in

words what is happening to them from a meta-theatrical point of view, using words in

Kačer 157

other than theatrical meaning, although they are primarily applicable in this context:

Guildenstern: See anyone?

Rosencrantz: No. You?

Guildenstern: No. (At footlights.) What a fine persecution—to be kept intrigued

without ever quite being enlightened. (41)

These moments of “broken communication” seem to illustrate the existential dimension

of the play and make it a self-contained piece despite its inevitable dependence on

Hamlet. Even in this denial, it holds that “Stoppard is here demonstrating his acute

sense of audience” (Sammells 108) by balancing between instances of addressing and

ignoring it.

While it may be limiting for a playwright to submit his or her development of action

to a frame of a canonical text, Stoppard uses its rigidity to develop several issues

(determinism of a theatrical plot, existence within a prescribed text, and so on): “[…]

for the playwright, staging an audience is hardly ever a neutral act, free of critical

animus or reformist zeal. Like the actor, whose dependence on an audience is both more

immediate and more absolute, the ambitious playwright may harbour a degree of

resentment at how his dependence limits his autonomy” (Meisel 101-2). Yet, in

R&GAD this “dependence” opens a door for the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to enter

the hypotext48 of Hamlet. This connection makes it possible for the hypotext to develop

48 The term “hypotext” is taken from Gérard Genette’s Palimpsests: literature in the

second degree and used in accordance with his definition: “By hypertextuality I

mean any relationship uniting a text B (which I shall call the hypertext) to an earlier

text A (I shall, of course, call it the hypotext), upon which it is grafted in a manner

that is not that of commentary” (5).

Kačer 158

in the prescribed way independently on the proceedings of R&GAD and on its

background. In addition, it secures that Rosencrantz or Guildenstern’s reports from the

backstage (or, the secondary stage of Hamlet) are reliable and verifiable against the

audience’s knowledge of Shakespeare’s play. In a similar way but viewed from an

opposite perspective, this also serves as a way of reminding or reconstructing Hamlet in

the audience’s imagination. However, R&GAD does not operate with the option that

Hamlet is completely unknown (which is probably a correct assumption), quite to the

contrary. In fact, Hamlet is not the only pretext of the play, as Sammells observes when

commenting upon the criticized intellectualism of the deployment:

Stoppard’s ideal target is the same audience: one literate enough to recognize

that in R&GAD he is redeploying not just a Shakespearian pretext but a modern

‘classic’ [Waiting for Godot] too, and, of course, to be flattered to be asked to

recognize these and other allusions. His dramatic strategy is to lure that

audience into a series of more or less challenging ambushes; one of his

principal tactics is to constantly dislocate the audience’s perspective by means

of a critical engagement with their knowledge of the conventions and

limitations of dramatic genre. (Sammells 108)

Still, the primary pretext directing the development of R&GAD is Hamlet and a

connection between these two plays is unremovable.

The connection has several levels. It is on the story level, when R&GAD is

developing upon the structure of Hamlet. It is spatial when characters from both plays

meet to enact anchoring scenes from Hamlet on the stage of R&GAD; and also

temporal, when Rosencrantz and Guildenstern peek into the backstage to “watch” the

synchronous action of Hamlet on the background. But first of all, the plays are

connected through their shared characters: “[Rosencrantz and Guildenstern] exist both

Kačer 159

inside and outside the text of Hamlet” (Fleming 53). They speak in different registers to

distinguish between these two overlaying identities:

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are simultaneously Shakespeare’s characters

(they speak Elizabethan verse and participate in Hamlet), Stoppard’s characters

(who use contemporary English as they spectate, comment on, and ruminate

about the implications of the events transpiring around them), and have a

metatheatrical existence (they espouse lines that indicate their awareness of the

live audience) […]. (Fleming 53-4)

As a matter of fact, their Elizabethan verses are (almost) exact citations of

Shakespeare’s lines. What may differ, are occasional stage directions giving the original

verses a shifted meaning, mostly connected with interchangeability of the two

characters, of which no one else is able to say who is who (and they themselves get

confused on several occasions, too).

In fact, on the level of the storyline developing on the background of R&GAD as

opposed to that of reenactments of Hamlet by quotations from that play, Rosencrantz

and Guildenstern become gradually more and more involved in the world of Hamlet,

slowly leaving the world of their hypertext. One of the key constituents of their

hypertextual world is their communication with the audience, which in the end

disappears altogether from the play, the illusion is lost, and what remains is a notion of

inevitability and loss connected with their death. As Fleming asserts, “Whereas they

begin the play outside of Hamlet, and thus might be seen as representative of humanity,

they, and the play, end completely in Shakespeare’s world, and thus represent characters

not people” (65). They end up enclosed within their literary canonical identities because

they die as they do in Hamlet, despite the fact that they read the letter with their death

sentence on the boat in Act III: Guildenstern: “A letter – yes – that’s true. That’s

Kačer 160

something … a letter … (reads). ‘[…] that on the knowing of this contents, without

delay of any kind, should those bearers, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, put to sudden

death –’” (89). While at the beginning of R&GAD they reconsider their situation, at the

end they disappear only to be announced dead in absentia:

Ambassador: The signal is dismal;

and our affairs from England come too late.

The ears are senseless that should give us hearing to

tell him his commandment is fulfilled, that

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. […] (R&GAD 93, Hamlet V.2)

This quote brings us back to the topic of the reportage, after the short introduction into

the construction of the world of the play, which describes how Rosencrantz and

Guildenstern’s double (or even triple) identity serves them to access directly and

indirectly the world of Hamlet off-stage. Here, Ambassador reports on the death of the

two. The death only takes place in front of the audience’s eyes symbolically by a

“disappear[ance] from view”, as the stage direction instructs (R&GAD 92). Ambassador

serves here as an instance of what I call the traditional conventional messenger. He is a

character without a name (a minor character) whose sole function is to come and inform

in the form of a reportage in order to push the action forward. The mechanism behind

this convention includes his announcement and his conventionally recognized authority,

which is based on his identity as the messenger-figure.

On the contrary, the new messenger (although he, among others, also often fulfils the

function of an informer about facts or events off-stage to push the action forward), who

is a temporal embodiment into a full-fledged character with a name (such as

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in our case), must ground the legitimacy of his access to

off-stage on a different basis than being a messenger-figure. As shown above, the

Kačer 161

primary principle that lies under Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s privileged access to

the proceedings of Hamlet is that R&GAD is fundamentally interconnected with it, the

two simultaneously inhabit both worlds, and Hamlet develops on the background of

R&GAD as its hypotext, thus securing them the right to enter the other fictional world

off-stage and report about it.

During their first meeting with Claudius and Gertrude, Claudius expresses his fears

that Hamlet may be going mad. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern then recapitulate their

conversation and report about Claudius’s concerns:

Guildenstern: We have been briefed. Hamlet’s transformation. What do you

recollect?

Rosencrantz: Well, he [Hamlet]’s changed, hasn’t he? The exterior and inward

man fails to resemble – (R&GAD 31)

They also summarize their assignment to cheer up Hamlet and figure out how he is.

Their dialogue continues:

Guildenstern: Draw him on to pleasures – glean what afflicts him.

Rosencrantz: Something more than his father’s death –

Guildenstern: He’s always talking about us – there aren’t two people living

whom he dotes on more than us.

Rosencrantz: We cheer him up – find out what’s the matter –

Guildenstern: Exactly, it’s a matter of asking the right questions and diving

away as little as we can. […] (31)

These recapitulations of their conversations with characters of Hamlet have a double

function. First, they give sense to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s presence at Elsinore,

which eludes them (as it is not entirely clear from the text of Hamlet in the first place).

And second, it serves as a link to the development of Hamlet, which creates a constant

Kačer 162

awareness of the simultaneous unfolding of its story and serves as a reminder to the

audience of R&GAD about Hamlet. Without this connection, not only the story of

R&GAD would lose its ground, it would also make it impossible for Rosencrantz and

Guildenstern to occupy the two fictional worlds and bring news from the one in the

background.

Another such example of recapitulating conversation is the dialogue which follows

after Polonius’s fears of Hamlet loving Ophelia. It indirectly reminds the knowing

audience of Polonius’s famous advice given to his daughter, “Affection? Pooh! You

speak like a green girl […]” (Hamlet I.3). Rosencrantz is discussing this with Player:

Player: The old man thinks he’s in love with his daughter.

Rosencrantz: (Appalled) Good God! We’re out of our depth here.

Player: No, no, no – he hasn’t got a daughter – the old man thinks he’s in love

with his daughter.

Rosencrantz: The old man is?

Player: Hamlet, in love with the old man’s daughter, the old man thinks.

(R&GAD 50)

On the stylistic level, the language of this dialogue clearly signals that although both

characters are from Hamlet and they discuss one of its key plots (the relationship

between Hamlet and Ophelia leading to two tragic deaths – the unintended murder of

Polonius by Hamlet and Ophelia’s suicide by drowning), they speak in contemporary

English, thus making it clear they are now operating within the fictional world of

R&GAD. Also, the dialogue is not dramatic; it is a comical misunderstanding of

Player’s report (a reported speech in indicative mode) by Rosencrantz, who is radically

confusing the deictic function of the used pronouns he and his.

Looking out into the backstage or overhearing sounds from there and subsequently

Kačer 163

describing what Rosencrantz and Guildenstern can see happening there, leads to similar

instances of reporting from the world of Hamlet (which may or may not include comical

comments, where the comical effect is caused by the audience’s expected knowledge of

the plot of Hamlet). In this mediated way, the audience learns that Hamlet has in

parallel developed to the stage of Hamlet’s soliloquy: “To be, or not to be […]” (Hamlet

III.1). Rosencrantz and Guildenstern cannot clearly decide, whether Hamlet’s

soliloquies are expression of his sanity or madness:

Rosencrantz: He talks to himself, which might be madness.

Guildenstern: If he didn’t talk sense, which he does.

Rosencrantz: Which suggests the opposite. (R&GAD 49)

With similar commentaries, they keep their audience informed what is happening in

Hamlet now and, in effect, give clues about where they are standing within the frame of

development of their own story.

Rosencrantz peeks out into the backstage to see what is happening in Hamlet. He

announces his arrival to Guildenstern after observing that Hamlet is no longer “talking

to himself” now (the catchphrase “talking to himself” when referring to Hamlet repeats

several times in R&GAD after it is announced to be so by Claudius; it becomes a

constant reminder for the audience to remember Hamlet’s sometimes mysterious

behaviour and manner of speech). In this way, in describing what is going on in the

backstage, the worlds of the two plays meet:

Rosencrantz: He’s coming.

Guildenstern: What’s he doing?

Rosencrantz: Nothing.

Guildenstern: He must be doing something.

Rosencrantz: Walking. (54)

Kačer 164

Upon a somewhat lengthier exposé, Hamlet finally enters the stage to enact one of the

scenes quoted from Hamlet, thus synchronizing again the developments of the two plots

and signalling how far the story of Hamlet has unfolded up to this point.

The reporting about Hamlet has yet another level on which it takes place. This is so

primarily in Act III of R&GAD which is set on the boat. In this act, Rosencrantz and

Guildenstern often describe their present situation, thus informing their audience about

their particular fate, which is hinted upon in Hamlet only briefly and must be rather

reconstructed based on several hints, as it does not stand for a crucial sub-plot in the

classic tragedy. In this act, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are already interpreting their

own situation in the mere fact of its description. On the one hand, they report about their

present state but on the other hand, in giving these reports they become co-creators of

these events in Hamlet. Act III of R&GAD is inspired by Hamlet’s sending to England

with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, pirates’ attack on the ship and Hamlet’s escape (and

return to Denmark) and the final death of the two main protagonists of R&GAD. What

happens on the ship is an interpretation of Hamlet already, but it still is in accord with

what the audience know from the play. Thus, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s access to

the world of Hamlet is even more privileged in this case than at moments of their

presence at Elsinore, because in Act III they hold knowledge which is only accessible to

them as characters of Hamlet. And here, in R&GAD, they can share this knowledge by

playing it out and discussing their present and future:

Guildenstern: We’re on our way to England – we’re taking Hamlet there.

Rosencrantz: What for?

Guildenstern: What for? Where have you been?

Rosencrantz: When? (Pause.) We won’t know what to do when we get there.

Guildenstern: We take him to the king [of England]. (76)

Kačer 165

Here, Guildenstern describes one of the few certainties there are about their dramatic

identities as characters from Hamlet – they are the prince’s friends who are sent with

him to England, equipped with a letter. Further on, they continue:

Rosencrantz: […] What are we going to say?

Guildenstern: We’ve got a letter. You remember the letter.

Rosencrantz: Do I?

Guildenstern: Everything is explained in the letter. We count on that. (76-7)

Their debate about their mission and current situation not only informs about their

situation on the background of the development of Hamlet, it also soon becomes a meta-

theatrical commentary. Stoppard builds up a plot which is a superstructure placed upon

another plot, which includes one of the most famous examples of the use of meta-

theatre in history – “The Death of Gonzago” in Hamlet.

As Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are on the one hand aware of the theatricality of

the troupe of players and discuss issues of theatre with Player, they more or less directly

also talk about themselves as pure constructs created from a text. Such construction of

plot is, among other things, self-reflexive. It is in this meta-meta-theatricality, where the

critic finds one of the strongest sides of the play, which is written not as a story but as a

constant rewriting of its own:

[D]isavowal of naturalism allows Stoppard to work his stylistic tricks,

particularly as he constructs the play’s dramatic language from a diversity of

materials from Shakespearian blank verse to subphilosophical disquisition and

Beckettian stichomythia. In this respect, R&GAD is a celebration of theatre –

of the styles in which we can present our world, and present ourselves to it.

(Sammells 111)

In this light, there is a whole range of facts about which Guildenstern may be referring

Kačer 166

when he answers Rosencrantz’s persistent questions:

Rosencrantz: We take Hamlet to the English king, we hand over the letter –

what then?

Guildenstern: There may be something in the letter to keep us going a bit.

Rosencrantz: And if not?

Guildenstern: Then that’s it – we’re finished. (77)

In the light of the multiple reconstructions of plotting on several levels in R&GAD,

Guildenstern’s statement, “we’re finished” is simultaneously read in several ways.

One, it is a statement concerning their mission of bringing Hamlet to the king of

England. Then, it is an expression concerning their future of characters of R&GAD

which embraces the audience, too, as it is a statement about the approaching end of the

performance when they as characters finish their identity and the audience can go home.

And it is also a prolepsis; being characters of Hamlet, they must also know that their

lives are destined to end as soon as their mission is complete. So, in this statement,

Guildenstern is giving a report from the future that he is aware of. He can do so due to

the fact that he is operating within a multiplicity of coexisting fictional worlds, where

there is at least one (that of Hamlet) which functions as the hypotext structuring the

development of the other associated realities in front of the audience’s eyes.

Noises Off by Michael Frayn

For Michael Frayn, his Noises Off from 1982 remained his biggest success until

Copenhagen. This comedy, or even farce, is like R&GAD fundamentally dependent on

switching between two interrelated worlds of the play and the play-within-the-play

called “Nothing On”, which is performed by the characters of Noises Off. Characters of

Noises Off thus also enter the world of “Nothing On” on a similar basis as Rosencrantz

Kačer 167

and Guildenstern described above, but the difference is that “Nothing On” is a construct

written by Frayn specifically as a part of Noises Off and thus does not present a hypotext

of the play. Also, characters of Noises Off occupy the two worlds not by belonging to

both with (almost) unchanged identities as in R&GAD, but by becoming “characters”

embodied by the “actors” – the characters of Noises Off. This way, Frayn manages to

collect and use the comic potential of a performance, which has gone wrong. Private

and fictional lives of the characters of Noises Off intertwine and add energy to the

comedy.

The author describes his motivation to write Noises Off as a kind of revolt against

theatre, which he was writing about for the papers at that time:

So I turned against the theatre, and when I began to write columns in the

Guardian and the Observer a few years later I devoted a fair number of them to

mocking everything about it – the conventions upon which it depended, the

fashionable plays of the day, and the embarrassed anticipation aroused in an

audience that the actors would forget their lines or drop their props. The first

seeds of Noises Off, I see with hindsight, were already there. (Frayn, Stage

Directions x)

His journalistic practice thus helped him collect materials and put together

complications which are mocking theatre as a part of a theatre play; like in most cases

of meta-theatre, this play also exposes the most common conventions (and clichés, too)

to let the audience see how it works, why it goes wrong, and when to laugh.

On the level of the text, it is simple to distinguish between the two plays as there is a

vertical line aside the page to indicate the text of the play-within-the-play. Thus, for

example, it is obvious from the opening scene that Dotty playing Mrs Clackett makes a

mistake when the stage direction for “Nothing On” says: “She replaces the receiver”

Kačer 168

(Noises Off 366). The (standard) stage direction then explains: “Or so the stage-

directions say in Robin Housemonger’s play Nothing On. In fact, though, she puts the

receiver down beside the phone instead” (366). However, this mistake is soon revealed

to the audience of Noises Off, too, when the illusion of the play-within-the-play is

shattered down after Dotty, the actress, steps out of her role to repeat to herself what she

is supposed to do: “And I take the sardines. No, I leave the sardines. No, I take the

sardines” (366). This switch from role to the Dotty-character is a little later more

exemplified in a conversation between Dotty, Garry and Lloyd (the director of “Nothing

On”), which makes it clear that we are watching a rehearsal of a performance:

Garry (embraces her): Don’t worry, love. It’s only the technical.

Lloyd: It’s the dress, Garry, honey. It’s the dress rehearsal.

Garry: So when was the technical?

Lloyd: So when’s the dress? We open tomorrow! (368)

In this dialogue, the use of specifically theatrical vocabulary works as a signal that there

is a meta-theatrical action.

It presents theatre practitioners during the creation process: “Noises Off, as its title

implies and as Frayn has noted, is very much about people at work (Frayn, interview). It

involves actors putting on a play, a director directing it, and stagehands performing the

various tasks that help the show go on” (Blansfield, “World of Work” 121). By

commenting on what they do within the frame of “Nothing On”, the characters of

Noises Off give a variety of perspectives on their work on the creation of a performance.

Due to the range of theatrical occupations they represent, a rather complex picture of the

proceedings of a theatre company is created. During the performance of Noises Off, the

connection between these two levels of the stage action is often fuzzy; however, this

fuzziness is intentional.

Kačer 169

The possibility to distinguish between the two or, rather the inability to do so

sometimes, is one of the key conditions for the comical effect of the play. Blansfield

identifies the connection of the two supposedly strictly separated worlds as the key

element of the play’s humour and success:

The farcical Noises Off (1982), Frayn’s greatest critical and commercial

success, delves into the world of actors and theater personnel both on stage and

behind the scenes, showing the demands and refinements of this profession, the

precision and timing required in farce, and the comic embroilment the

characters’ private lives with their fictional public ones. (Blansfield, “World of

Work” 113)

This “embroilment” builds up continuously during the play. In each of its three acts, the

border between the fictional public life of actors and theatre practitioners is more

connected with the performance of the play-within-a-play.

In Act I, the audience watch a dress rehearsal and the source of amusement springs

from mixing up lines and unsuccessful cues. Act II takes place during one of the first

matinee performances and is portrayed from the perspective of the backstage. “But this

time we are watching the act from behind; the whole set has been turned through 180

degrees” (Noises Off 417), the stage direction at the beginning of the act says. “[It]

integrates backstage behavior and miming with the performance going on out front,

reflecting the confusion between real and stage life” (Blansfield, “World of Work” 124).

Although relationships from the play and the fictional “real” life of the characters

already intertwines, it is in “Act III, a full frontal performance, [when] private and

professional lives of the characters have become inextricably intertwined. Only because

we have have seen the rehearsal can we discern which is which and how terribly wrong

the performance is going. As the increasing chaos indicates, the actors cannot control

Kačer 170

the offstage world” (125). They are already worn by the play, which has been running

for nearly ten weeks by now, and they are looking forward to being done with it.

In this way, a double irony is engaged in Noises Off. On the first plane, difficulties

with creating a successful performance of “Nothing On” are revealed. But this openness

of the structure, by which the author lets the audience see a creation of a play, is also

self-referential as it may be seen by analogy as an open invitation to reconsider the same

process in staging Noises Off. In other words, by unveiling what is behind the work of

the fictional characters, Frayn invites his audience to evaluate Noises Off from the same

perspective, or at least be aware of this permanently possible estrangement. “In a sense,

the audience is also seeing the playwright at work, since the play emphasizes the

technicalities and practical aspects of writing and producing a farce” (Blansfield,

“World of Work” 122). It as a whole becomes a message about the creative process.

The play does it by a non-instructive way, preconceiving no particular interpretation

besides the intention to entertain. It is describing the world of theatre in a comical way.

Frayn says: “So far as I can see, all of these plays are attempts to show something about

the world, not to change it or to promote any particular idea of it. […] In fact what they

are all about in one way or another (it seems to me) is the way in which we impose our

ideas upon the world around us” (“Introduction” xiii). Thus the play in performance

speaks not only about the creation process of “Nothing On” and, self-reflectively itself,

but also about theatrical creative process in general: “[Noises Off] is also about the

institution of theatre, about the familiar Frayn theme of revolution and anarchy, and

about the social interaction of a group of people in a given situation” (Blansfield,

“World of Work” 126). This allows the characters of the play to freely switch their

identities between the distinct levels within the play and thus, in general terms, make a

live commentary about the procedure of making a play from text to performance.

Kačer 171

During the dress rehearsal, the personalities of characters are revealed. Frederick

asks questions about his role, giving away his incompetence and lack of understanding

of how dramatic irony works. He is baffled by the old comical convention of mistaken

identities of two characters played by one actor:

Frederick: May I ask another silly question?

Lloyd: All my studies in world drama lie at your disposal.

Frederick: I still don’t understand why the Sheikh just happens to be Philip’s

double. […]

Lloyd: It is rather a coincidence, Freddie, yes. Until you reflect that there was

an earlier draft of the play, now unfortunately lost to us. And in this the

author makes it clear that Philip’s father as a young man had travelled

extensively in the Middle East. (412)

In this exchange, Lloyd can build up his explanation on the condition that he is the

director of “Nothing On”. He comes up with a surprising news about a lost draft which

explains the current confusion. On the other hand, the use of the convention of mistaken

identities is one of the most frequently used ones in comedy and Noises Off offers

similar explanations of the farce mechanics, which are a source of the audience’s

amusement, because they can then see the mechanism at work.

As the audience has a chance to see the same piece three times, each time from a

different perspective and at a different time, they can easily spot the limitations of the

actor-characters who become more and more undistinguishable from their characters

they are supposed to play. Their inability to step out of the role is building up in Noises

Off. “The actors in Noises Off have fixed the world by learning roles and rehearsing

their responses” (“Introduction” xiii-xiv), Frayn comments about the boundaries that

limit his characters as well as any play/performance when viewed from the point of

Kačer 172

view of its constituting elements. The boundaries of the fictional world prescribed by

dialogue in text and spatiality and temporality of the stage are the ultimate limit, which

Noises Off delves into.

The ability to penetrate from one fictional world to another and back, comment on it

and explain it is based on the principle that characters of Noises Off speak about their

roles in “Nothing On” and in this way elucidate their own standing as characters. Lloyd

announces to “his” cast: “Your line. Come on, love, we’re two lines away from the end

of the act” (Noises Off 413). He, as the director, has access to knowledge about the

structure of his play “Nothing On” but as character of Noises Off he also speaks about

his own reality, in fact reporting in the form of a prolepsis from both fictional worlds at

once.

The dependence on staying within the limits of the play-within-a-play breaks down

when its basic principles are breached, such as mixing up prescribed lines and involving

the private with the public. Frayn describes the development of his play as follows:

“The prepared words will vanish. The planned responses will be inappropriate. Their

performance will break down, and they will be left in front of us naked and ashamed”

(“Introduction” xiv). This is still comic because of a constant repetitive feeding of

information about the rehearsed and performed play-within-a-play to the audience both

in the form of reportage and by acting it out repetitively in the three acts. As the quoted

passages show, characters of actors and the director employ their intrinsic knowledge

about the world of the play and the world out there (still within the fictional frame), and

thus become new messengers, reporting across the two realms. This sends out a

message both to other characters and the audience. The comical effect capitalizes on

playing with the audience’s reception of these messages, preconceiving the

understanding that characters of actors or the director can step out of this role and

Kačer 173

transform into another character who is capable of bringing in news about the outside

(fictional) world. There is a discrepancy between what should be and what is, which

creates a comical effect often supported by a substantial amount of slapstick. The

knowledge of the discrepancy among the audience is primarily reached by situational

comedy, but it is heavily supported by reporting techniques, such as commentary or

description.

To sum up, the title of this chapter “It’s All in the Play” refers to the connection of

meta-theatre and use of the new messenger when characters report from the play-within-

a-play. As it has been suggested several times, one of the principal qualities that a

character must embody in order to be able to report from outside the current action on

stage, is that his access to facts and events out there must be legitimate. In the case of

meta-theatre, the basic principle is that characters inhabit both worlds and may more or

less knowingly or intentionally operate in both, thus legitimately report from one in the

other. In case of drama and theatre and the issue of new messengers and their access to

facts and events of a play-within-a-play, the ones with the most privileged access to the

dramatic content are “characters”.

Kačer 174

8.2. Interpreting for Others

“I’m a lover of and an apologist for journalism,” Stoppard said in an interview about

his 1978 play Night and Day (Nadel 75). Although this play can be seen as a criticism

of some of the journalistic practices, it is in essence a defence of the free press, in which

Stoppard is a believer. “In Night and Day Stoppard offers us a commercially-produced

play that presents a multi-layered, if sometimes loaded, debate on freedom” (Billington

123). This persuasion is grounded in Stoppard’s early career prior to writing fiction and

plays when he worked as a reporter for a local newspaper, where he “began to cover

stories as diverse as cave-ins, criminal courts and visiting theatre personalities” (Nadel

55). His writing activities as a journalist soon came to merge with his self-invention as a

dramatist.

Stoppard saw journalism as a topic that he had to tackle49: “reinvented as a political

playwright, [Stoppard] managed to synthesize his concern with human rights and drama

into a focused and successful work which his […] play Night and Day would expand,

uniting it with his long-standing interest in journalism” (280). Influenced by Evelyn

Waugh’s Scoop, “Night and Day fulfilled Stoppard’s need to write a play about

49 It is worth noting that among Stoppard’s inspirations to write Night and Day there

was also his personal interest in the political situation in the country of his birth,

Czechoslovakia. He says in an interview: “In the 70s and 80s, when I was involved

in dissident stories in Russia and Czechoslovakia, my refrain was that a free press

made all the other freedoms possible, and by that I didn’t just mean an uncensored

press. I meant an untrammelled press. This is what got me into writing a play about

journalism in 1978. I knew I’d have to write one one day” (Stoppard, “My Love

Affair” n.p.).

Kačer 175

journalists, just as his later works such as Hapgood and Arcadia fulfilled his desire to

write plays about science – more specifically mathematics” (293). The journalist enters

the stage as a type of character that meets well the qualities of the new messengers, as

well as scientists.

Indeed, journalists and reporters as characters carry several qualities that destine

them to be new messengers. They keep some of the attributes of the profession from the

social reality, such as access to information outside the frame of action on the stage, and

their learning new facts is thus “motivated” by the definition of their social role as the

ones who are capable of knowing and delivering stories about events or facts

inaccessible and/or unknown to others50. Their expertise lies in their ability to be there

and then to pass on what they have seen with their own eyes as objectively as possible

in the form of a news report.

Night and Day by Tom Stoppard

Night and Day serves as a good example for the issue of another important role of

the new messenger, which is to inform the others (other characters as well as the

50 Such definition of a journalist’s work is, of course, reductive as it largely ignores

practices of the newsroom, the editing process, and perhaps most importantly, the

ideological background lying behind the selection of what is newsworthy in the first

place or, in other words, the mechanism by which a piece of information becomes a

piece of news and makes it to the media agenda. However, I am taking the liberty to

assume that this deficiency of the working definition is largely irrelevant for the

purpose of the present argument regarding the establishment of an idealized

journalist as a character type, while specifics of journalistic work may prove to be the

case in point when analysing a specific play, such as Night and Day by Stoppard.

Kačer 176

audience) about facts and events from within the fictional world, to which they would

not otherwise have access. In this case, the primary aim is not to push the action forward

in the sense of the dramatic structure of the play. Although each piece of information

partially contributes to the unfolding of the plot, the primary aim of the new messenger

as an interpreter of affairs from within the fictional world is to expand it by introducing

new facts, which come from outside the frame of the action on the stage. This in general

serves to create a richer context within which the story takes place, bringing in issues

which do not fit the frame of dramatic action. As such, these pieces of news have the

form of reports or, small-scale narratives.

The majority of the play’s characters are journalists. Wagner succinctly sums up the

core of their work: “All we need is a story” (26). There is a certain amount of cynicism

in this comment and a relative self-irony may be felt there. It is not only in journalism,

where it holds true, up to a point the same holds for playwriting.

The play often makes comments about the principles of journalistic work. There are

several slogans associated with journalism, which express the core issues related to this

industry and which have become generally known. One of them is the well-known “a

picture is worth a thousand words”, which has been so overused that it has become a

cliché. Stoppard twists this proverb a little to introduce a journalist and his photographer

who twists it a little to make fun of the reporter:

Guthrie: Dick Wagner. Do you know him? (Pause)

Ruth: Is he a composer?

Guthrie: No. He’s a reporter. Writes for the Sunday Globe, in London. I take

the pictures. The pictures, as you know, are worth a thousand words. In the

case of Wagner, two thousand. […] (N&D 17-8)

By this dialogue, the most important identity of the characters is established – that of

Kačer 177

their professions. From this identity, various other characteristics are deduced such as an

insider’s access to information about developments of and details about the war in a

fictitious African country.

The dictator, President Mageeba is also a character. Wagner has an opportunity to

interview him. Thanks to various satirical notes of the play which help it to criticise

British media for their two-faced approach and stereotypical attitude towards a post-

colonial country, the play can emphasize the difference between Mageeba’s image put

forward by the press and his personality when he is introduced to the stage. It turns out

Mageeba knows a lot about how the press works and as a prestigious British university

graduate, he is also aware of its problems and drawbacks. He proves this knowledge by

quoting several commentaries about journalism that had appeared in the British press:

Mageeba: “The press lives by disclosure.”

Wagner: Ah, you know that one.

Mageeba: Delane of The Times – we had all that at the LSE. […] And C. P.

Scott of The Manchester Guardian, of course – “Comment is free but facts

are sacred.” (78)

In this dialogue, it is Wagner’s response that exposes his insider’s status as a journalist.

He knows these slogans because he is a member of the guild and as such, he is

automatically attributed the knowledge of the principles of his trade.

As a journalist, he has access to information sources. He is talking to Carson and in

between the lines he lets him know that he knows about seemingly secret facts about the

country’s economical situation:

Wagner: Charming fellow, your boss.

Carson: He’s not my boss. He’s the President, that’s all, I can’t help who’s

President. I’m a mining engineer.

Kačer 178

Wagner: They’re his mines.

Carson: They were here first and so was I. They’re my bloody mines more than

his.

Ruth: And more Shimbu’s than yours now.

Wagner: True.

Carson: How did you know about all this?

Wagner: I was guessing about Shimbu. On Mageeba I had my own source. (72)

Wagner here meets his expected role when he shows that he is able to get to information

which are limited to a group of insiders and inaccessible to public. It is not surprising,

because it is a part of his identity to have his own source even on this type of

information.

Later on in this scene, Wagner makes Carson one of his sources. Carson gives him an

overview of the planned agreement between President Mageeba and the Marxist guerilla

leader Shimbu. He confides this secret information to Wagner because he believes that

he can entrust it to him:

Carson: I’ll brief you if you promise to leave.

Wagner: Sounds fair.

Carson: Mageeba wants his mines back. Last year they produced nearly sixty

per cent of his copper – you read that in The Kambawe Citizen. The mines

are no good to Shimbu because the railway goes the wrong way. You saw

that on a map. So Shimbu will swop the mines for recognition of

Adoma. (72)

This particular detail is exactly the type of report which does not push the action

forward as it only has an indirect connection with the development of the plot. The main

line of the play, reporting from the battlefield front, does not alter due to the knowledge

Kačer 179

of this newly learned fact. On the other hand, it neatly expands the universe of the play,

broadening the context of the fictitious civil war in the post-colonial country.

Guthrie’s report about his survival of a crossfire belongs to this category, too:

Guthrie: We eventually got to the front, which is where the cover runs out. […]

We had the headlights on, acting friendly, and a white handkerchief tied to

the aerial, but it was just about dark, they couldn’t see what was coming.

[…] But somebody behind us got nervous and let off a few rounds. […] I

shouted to Jake to run and I got fifty yards and when I looked back he's in

the driving seat trying to turn the jeep round. He got it round, and then he

was hit. Knocked him into the back seat. I should have looked after him

better. (88)

Although Guthrie is describing the death of his driver, he is doing it in the form of a

reportage. He himself only closely escaped, but his professionalism makes him describe

the event in a narrative form as a way of an eye-witness message from the front to

Wagner and the audience. This report serves to give the account of an event outside the

time and space of the current action on the stage, thus expanding the world of the play.

Here, a transformation of a character into a new messenger gives an example of a

typical employment of this type of character, which is to expand the world of the play

beyond the limits of the stage in a form of a narrative. These expansion do not

necessarily have a connection with the logic of the development of the plot, as this

scene shows. At best, the scene can be viewed as a case of a needless death, which

surely happen at wars, but tend to be anticlimactic in drama (unless meant as an

intentional disruption of a given genre, which is not the case here).

Another theme developed in the play is stylistics, which is closely related to the

phenomenon of reporting. It has been pointed out on several occasions that the narrative

Kačer 180

mode is one of the signalling qualities of a reportage as a dramatic technique, and it is

even more specific in the case of a journalistic reporting, which can be defined by its

journalistic style. However, Stoppard is a critical observer of how news reports are

written and he is mocking the British press for its variability of accepted standards of

writing. In other words, it turns out that from the point of view of the reader of the

news, there is a multiplicity of journalistic styles:

During the expositional scene between Guthrie and Wagner, Stoppard utilizes

one of his trademarks – parody – as a means of commenting on the way in

which news is reported, and thus the way in which readers receive their

knowledge of world events. Stoppard accurately apes the style and tone of The

Sunday Times, with Wagner assessing the writing as “All facts and no news”

([29]). In contrast, Newsweek’s colorful account of the unfolding civil unrest is

viewed as “All writing and no facts” ([29]). (Fleming 141)

These two examples of the various styles of writing remained in the 1978 version of the

play. Stoppard’s mock Sunday Times report reads:

Wagner: […] “At five minutes past eight on Wednesday morning, an aide-de-

camp on the staff of Supreme Commander and President Ginku Mageeba,

his uniform distinguished by Christian Dior sunglasses and unbuttoned flies,

drove a green and white jeep up to the Princess Alice Bar in downtown

Jeddu and commandeered it as the nerve centre of Mageeba’s victorious

drive against the forces of darkness, otherwise known as the Adoma

Liberation Front. The army itself appeared in time for elevenses, and by

today the advance had nearly reached the Esso pump three hundred yards up

the road towards the enemy.” […] (N&D 29)

In contrast, his mock Newsweek report reads:

Kačer 181

Wagner: “This time last week Jeddu was a one-horse town on the road from

Kamba City to nowhere. Today you can’t see the town for cavalry, mainly

armoured personnel carriers and a few T-47 tanks. In them thar hills to the

north-west, the renegade Colonel Shimbu is given no more chance than

Colonel Custer – if only he’d make a stand. Unfortunately, no one can find

the Colonel to tell him to stop playing the Indians and it may be that Jeddu

is going to wake up one morning with its armoured cars drawn up in a

circle.” (29)

On first sight a stylistic exercise (and there are two brief mock articles attributed to The

Observer and The Sunday Telegraph (29-30), although “in the 1979 text Stoppard

eliminates his parodies” (Fleming 141)), they show that information can be delivered in

various forms emphasizing various aspects. This nevertheless supports the moral of the

play that, “Information, in itself, about anything, is light” (N&D 92).

While this idea seems a universally acceptable notion, Stoppard was heavily

criticised for his ideological background supporting this argument, among others by

David Hare who wrote Pravda (co-written with Howard Brenton in 1985) after Night

and Day came out. It was because Stoppard does not see that it also matters where

information appears and whose interests it serves:

Whether the “information” comes in gutter tabloid form, or in the form of page

three sexism, or as Sunday supplement gloss, or just plain old daily capitalist-

controlled conservatism, it is worse, says Stoppard, where people are kept in

the dark. So, one can conclude, quality of information, bias or distortion are all

“relative” and irrelevant so long as there is “news”. (Itzin 10)

Another critic adds that “what Stoppard never really acknowledges – unlike the authors

of Pravda – are the numerous filters that distort that light on his way to the newspaper-

Kačer 182

reader” (Billington 128). Although this criticism of Stoppard’s view of journalism is a

valid point, the play also includes another dimension.

The quoted passages show that Stoppard is aware of the impossibility of purely

objective reporting and he acknowledges the fact that there is always an agenda behind

each piece, even on the stylistic level. Furthermore, he gives his characters personal

motivations why they report and they differ in their creation of news as much as they do

in their personalities. Still, this remark should not be seen as an attempt to defend the

lack of criticism in Stoppard’s play of the ideological background of the 1970s British

press practice.

The issue of objective reporting is also tackled with a dose of parody. Wagner is

trying to express the ideal of the British journalistic tradition to a local government

representative who does not understand the concept:

Wagner: […] [The government press officer] wants to know which side The

Globe thinks it’s on. So I tell him, it’s not on any side, stupid, it’s an

objective fact-gathering organization. And he says, yes, but is it objective-

for or objective-against? (27)

Although Wagner is an experienced war correspondent, in his ironic remark he lets the

idealistic belief in objective journalism prevail.

The best-known line of the play or, in Stoppard’s words, “the only line people

remember” (“My Love Affair” n.p.), further twists his view of the journalistic practice:

Milne: […] Then you’d really need a free press, otherwise you may never find

out about it. That’s the whole point. No matter how imperfect things are, if

you’ve got a free press everything is correctable, and without it everything

is concealable.

Ruth: I’m with you on the free press. It’s the newspapers I can’t stand. (60)

Kačer 183

While no biting criticism, this stance still expresses “the discrepancy between the ideal

of a free press and the way journalism is actually practiced” (Fleming 143). And as

Night and Day is populated with reporters both in professional and literary theoretical

senses, the play thus admits that it also cannot produce a fully objective report on events

outside the stage. These small narratives are limited by abilities and personal

motivations of the journalistic characters who have a direct access to the expanded

reality but their accounts can never be objective as they always necessarily distort that

fictional reality by the mode of their reporting. In this way, they also allow the audience

to view them critically. The audience is aware that there are motivations behind and

limits to the seemingly objective reports, which helps the audience understand that the

new messengers here not only present, but also interpret the fictional world.

This chapter is an analysis and a case study of one specific kind of the new

messenger. It presents a journalist as a character with a privileged, almost automatic

access to information outside the frame of the onstage action. Furthermore, it shows that

this serves to expand the world of the play with reports on new facts and events that do

not need to primarily push the action forward, but rather create a richer fictional world

filled with accidental information that builds up the wider context where the main plots

develop. Moreover, the journalist delivers his reports from the perspective of his

profession which is thematized and somewhat problematized in the play, and by these

small narratives he creates and interprets the broader image of the fictional world for

other characters as well as the audience.

However, the journalist is not the only kind of character fitting the definition of the

new messenger whose function is to interpret facts and events within the fictional world.

Generally speaking, any character may become one as long as its access to the offstage

Kačer 184

is legitimate (for example, a journalist obtaining information inaccessible to others).

Still, in the context of commercial mainstream British and American drama this thesis

focuses on, there is a tendency to assign this privilege to characters whose profession

defines them to do so, such as the present journalist, the politician, the reporter, the

teacher, and so on. There is also one broader type which may be identified as the eye-

witness, a character whose authority to report from a different time and space is based

on its identity as a participant in the events it interprets to others.

8.2.2. The Eye-Witness Testifies51

As far as the issue of legitimate reporting within the frame of the fictional world of a

play is concerned, besides “experts” there is also another group of characters with this

privilege. These are eye-witnesses with personal memories as their ticket to the past.

While it is often the case with the new messengers that their competence springs from

their occupation, in the case of eye-witnesses, it is based on their claim of having been

there. This principle follows from the ancient tradition, which goes back to Oedipus the

King as it was shown above.

The cycle of ten plays by August Wilson Twentieth Century Cycle is heavily based

on connecting the present with the past. Characters telling their stories is one of the

most widely used narrative techniques in Wilson’s cycle, where each play is full of

51 Substantial parts of this chapter were presented in the form of a paper at the

conference Plurality of Culture and Democracy: Olomouc Colloquium of American

Studies at Palacký University in Olomouc, the Czech Republic, on 4-6 Nov 2010,

under the title “Constituents of Historical and Political Identities in August Wilson’s

Twentieth Century Cycle”.

Kačer 185

African American inhabitants of Pittsburgh who “carry the history of the neighbourhood

through personal memories” (Booker 187). To zero in on the topic of eye-witnesses and

their personal testimonies about their past, three of the plays serve as a good example:

Fences, Two Trains Running and Jitney. They cover the historical period before, during,

and after the Civil Rights Movement and as such illustrate the dynamics of a society

going through a period of historical change. Descriptions of past events by characters

from these plays then serve as a point of comparison for the audience to see the changes

of the period in a larger historical perspective, follow developments of African

American identity and, last but not least, radically influence the characters’ actions.

Howard Zinn in his A People’s History of the United States includes a chapter on the

Civil Rights movement which is aptly called “Or, does it explode?” This is an obvious

quote from the poem “Harlem (A Dream Deferred)” by Langston Hughes. The chapter

opens with the following: “The memory of oppressed people is one thing that cannot be

taken away, and for such people, with such memories, revolt is always an inch below

the surface. For blacks in the United States, there was the memory of slavery, and after

that of segregation, lynching, humiliation. And it was not just a memory but a living

presence – part of the daily lives of blacks in generation after generation” (Zinn 435).

There are some important concepts mentioned in the quoted passage that bring us closer

to the topic of this paper. They are mainly “memory”, “revolt” and, perhaps more

importantly, it is also the concept of the “living presence, the daily lives” which may

serve as an appropriate frame for mapping out some of the sources of black identity in

three plays by August Wilson.

The three concepts – memory, revolt, living presence – are important when

considering the plurality of culture in the works of August Wilson. Among Wilson’s

achievements and works, there is a series of ten plays called The Twentieth Century

Kačer 186

Cycle, or The Pittsburgh Cycle. Wilson wrote a fictional chronicle of the development

of the African-American community in Pittsburgh – his hometown – where he devoted

one play to each of the decades of the 20th century. Centralized around the point of the

trauma of slavery and pains of emancipation, the plays themselves become fictional

reports from crucial points of African Americans’ history:

Their historical trajectory takes African Americans through their transition

from property to personhood (Joe Turner’s Come and Gone); their struggle for

power in urban life (Ma Rainey); their dilemma over whether to embrace or

deny their slave past (The Piano Lesson); the broken promise of first-class

citizenship after the Second World War (Seven Guitars); their fraught

adaptation to bourgeois values (Fences); stagnancy in the midst of Black

Power militancy (Two Trains Running); and their historical and financial

disenfranchisement during the economic boom (Jitney and King Hedley II).

(Lahr 30)

Such a chronicle may be in itself understood as an attempt at a longitudinal fictional

reportage from Pittsburgh. It has context, development, analysis and a good measure of

catchy stories.

Zinn mentions the concepts of memory, revolt and living presence in the context of

events which took place in the US in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s (the era of the Civil

Rights Movement). These three decades are covered in Wilson’s Fences, Two Trains

Running and Jitney which are set in 1957, 1969, and 1977, respectively.

In these plays, Wilson focuses on everyday living presence of his characters – urban

African Americans of Pittsburgh. There are several axes or trends that can be studied.

There is memory, which has its inner dynamic and serves as motivation for some of the

characters’ actions. Memory can be tricky for individuals, but in order for the Cycle to

Kačer 187

be a chronicle of African Americans in Pittsburgh in the course of the 20th century,

Wilson’s characters carry both good and bad memories. This serves to capture the spirit

of the time.

Fences by August Wilson

Memory lives inside his characters who carry their experiences through the time,

borrow them from their parents and their parents’ parents and this way, memory enters

their lives and actions on stage. A lot of Wilson’s characters look as if they were frozen

in time. They let their memory influence them at the given moment. Troy Maxson, the

main character of Fences, a play set in 1957, makes some of the biggest mistakes due to

his personal memories. This is where the fictional chronicle and history come together.

In 1957, Troy works as a garbage man. He cannot drive the garbage truck because he

is black – only white garbage men can drive, according to their employers. When Troy

was young, he was a good baseball player, but that was at the time when the leagues

were segregated in the United States. The desegregation only happened in 1947 “when

Jackie Robinson finally crossed baseball’s color line” (Koprince 349) – and it was too

late for Troy. In describing the situation in segregated baseball, Troy becomes a speaker

for a lot of actual historical former African American baseball players: “Troy’s

complaints echo the words of actual players from baseball’s Negro Leagues” (350). He

is a fictional representative, a declared participant in the segregated sport. Troy sums up

the core arguments of actual former players: “I done seen a hundred niggers play

baseball better than Jackie Robinson. […] I’m talking about if you could play ball then

they ought to have let you play. Don’t care what color you were” (Fences 16). Although

a fictional character, he makes legitimate general historical observations due to the fact

that he is created as an eye-witness. Viewed from a Brechtian perspective, he is a

Kačer 188

derivative of this social-historical class.

Troy’s son Cory also wants to pursue a career in sports, American football, alongside

his studies. It is the memory of segregation that leads Troy to forbid his son to do

professional sports: “The white man ain’t gonna let you get nowhere with that football

noway. You on and get your book-learning so you can work yourself up in that A&P or

learn how to fix cars or build houses, get you a trade. That way you have something

can’t nobody take away from you” (37). Cory’s devastated and from this moment on, he

is estranged from his father.

The main issue of unfulfilled dreams and regrets of the past has a universal appeal.

This universality is emphasized in the play by its “muted African presence” (Shannon

38) resulting in that “the numerous universal emotions evoked in Fences make it a play

that crosses boundaries of time, age, race, gender, and culture” (38). Troy’s lingering in

his past makes his memories more alive and as such more generally understandable.

Sympathy for him comes from that “Troy, for all his strengths, is flawed humanity in

need of grace and forgiveness” (Wessling 123). His story and personal history are even

more generally appealing considering that his present perspective on his past is based on

that he “was abandoned by his mother at age eight, fled a brutal, lustful father at age

fourteen, began to steal for a living, and served fifteen years on a murder charge[.] One

can only hope for some measure of good, and Troy exceeds a realist’s expectations”

(124). In this sense, Fences “is a tragedy” (123) and as such its present development is a

necessary consequence of the past events.

Troy is building a fence around his house and he is also building a fence around his

heart because he carries the memory of his own hurt with him as an eye-witness (thus

the title of the play, Fences). He does not see that the times change: in the actual

historical reality, Babe Ruth is playing the Major League in baseball, Rosa Parks sat

Kačer 189

down on the front seat in Montgomery in 1955 and the Civil Rights movement is slowly

gaining strength. But these are elements that constitute Cory’s identity while Troy’s

identity is different. They differ in the way they see sports – as the deferred dream on

the one hand and as an opportunity to be successful on the other. Two views of the

contemporary reality are present on the stage at one moment. Troy, the father, has

developed a different identity as African-American than his son. Troy lives in the world

where the African American cannot play Major League Baseball, while his son hopes

for a career in the National Football League. It is as if they belonged to two different

cultures, even – a culture of no chance and a culture of opportunities.

Troy’s status of the witness has a double edge. On the one hand, it gives him the

authority to speak about the past and serve as a basis of comparison with and contrast to

the present situation. On the other hand, it holds him back because it makes a fence that

he cannot escape should his testimony of an eye-witness hold firm and not fall apart as a

matter of a fleeting memory. Besides, memory tends to idealize the past and Troy’s role

is to present the past with all its cruel injustice.

Two Trains Running by August Wilson

Two Trains Running takes place in 1969. The play takes the audience to an

environment of the historical time at the end of the decade of the Civil Rights

movement when, to make another use of Hughes’ poem, “it exploded”. The audience

are watching a bistro in an African American neighbourhood in Pittsburgh. Customers

and friends meet in the bistro and comment on political developments, personal lives of

the people of the neighbourhood, as well as various other issues. The play manages to

tell a number of appealing personal stories as well as captures the variability of opinions

on the position of African Americans in the USA of the time. There are those who are

Kačer 190

still sceptical – after all, they live in a ghetto; yet there are optimists as well as some

radicals, too. In this sense, the play spreads the basic map of the period full of revolt and

change.

In this part of the chronicle of the 20th century, Wilson does not send his characters

to the streets. They do not participates in sit-ins (although Memphis’ bistro may remind

us of the famous sit-in in Woolworth’s lunch counter, Greensboro, NC, in February

1960), they do not go to rallies (although they talk about rallies quite often – they

certainly do take place still), and there are no riots in the play (although Pittsburgh also

witnessed some of the fiercest ones in 1967: “In the black ghettos of the country, came

the greatest urban riots of American history” (Zinn 451)). The revolts are of a much

smaller – because personal – scale, but perhaps equally illustrative of what had changed

in the society in the last years.

One of the main plots of the play is about the turning point in the life of Memphis,

the owner of the bistro in Pittsburgh’s Hill District. The house where the bistro is

located will be taken by the city authorities for demolition and Memphis is only willing

to clear it if he is offered the money he believes it is worth: “[…] I ain’t greedy. But if

they wanna tear it down they gonna have to meet my price” (Two Trains 15). This is in

stark contrast to Memphis’s past experience when he was driven out of Jackson in the

South after his contract for soil was illegally claimed void. He recounts the

discriminatory practices from the past:

Memphis: […] Jim Stovall, who I bought the land from, told me my deed say if

I found any water the sale was null and void. Went down to the court to

straighten it out and come to find out he had a bunch of these fellows get

together to pick on me. […] They took and cut my mule’s belly out while it

standing there. Just took a knife and sliced it open. I stood there and

Kačer 191

watched them. They was laughing about it. […] Went in there, saw the

judge, and he say the deed was null and void. Now I got to walk home. […]

Got home and they had set fire to my crop. To get to my house I’d have to

walk through fire. I wasn’t ready to do that. (Two Trains 67)

Memphis returns in his memories to the act of his expulsion several times. His recounts

serve to build his past and present identities and illustrate the change in his personality

which is possible in effect of the changes in the society connected with the

emancipation and the Civil Rights Movement.

Memphis’s report from the past not only gives evidence about the injustice he had

suffered then, it is also the key structuring element that motivates his decisions. When

he testifies about the horrors from his youth, he makes the past alive. It becomes a part

of the narrative of the play as such. He, as the new messenger who is the eye-witness,

recreates the past in front of the audience’s eyes. As soon as the past is made present, its

flagrant evil calls for retaliation. At this point, after Memphis gets his money for his

diner, he must get on the train and go down to Jackson to get back what is his. In other

words, the new messenger’s report has the ability to make the past present. Furthermore,

although the audience only hears a report from Memphis’s perspective, the status of the

character as the eye-witness of the events makes it indisputable and the point is made

that his trip is just and necessary. The report helps to add a symbolic dimension to the

story’s moral.

Jitney by August Wilson

Jitney illustrates mundane struggles of the economic everyday reality in 1977 and the

emerging African American middle class. In the play, there are African American

businessmen and Vietnam War veterans such as Youngblood, the owner of the “gypsy”

Kačer 192

cab service. It describes the process of gentrification of African Americans, their escape

from the ghetto. It is not that easy: “At the time, the civil rights movement was in

decline, having achieved merely a few of its major goals. While certain aspects of

society had seen integration, the economy largely had not. As a result, jitneys represent

the essence of black economic life” (Krasner 161). This is because official cabs at the

time of segregation did not take black customers and such discriminatory practice

remained, for example, among New York taxicab services as of the 1970s. As a reaction

to this, “gypsy” cab services called jitneys run by African Americans for African

American customers emerged and developed.

In Jitney as in real life, however, characters cannot fully escape their past. History

comes to the stage in the character of Becker’s son (Becker is a driver in the service).

His return from the prison is an intrusion of the past which defines the present and leads

to its multiplicities. Another one of the drivers in the cab service, Turner, tells

Youngblood the story of Becker’s son Booster:

Turner: Becker’s boy been in the penitentiary for twenty years! […] When the

judge sentenced him for the electric chair, his mama just fell dead away.

[…] He later got it commuted to life. […] Booster he liked that science. […]

Booster goes out to [University of Pittsburgh] and he meets this old white

gal. Young gal… […] That gal was crazy about Booster, […] she didn’t

want her daddy to know she was fooling around with no colored boy. […]

The police come and the gal said […] he raped her. They arrested Booster

and Becker got him out on bail ’cause he knew the gal was lying. The first

day he was out […] he went over to that gal’s house and shot her dead right

on the front porch. (Jitney 29-30)

The story revives the social reality and sentiment of the 1950s: there is inequality,

Kačer 193

prejudice, injustice. Booster’s coming back to a different society, but he will have to

face new types of challenges based on personal abilities and economic situation. His

relationship with his father is damaged. The father is influenced in his judgement by the

social changes that have taken place. From this perspective, he cannot accept Booster’s

explanations for his motives to murder the white “gal”:

Booster: […] what you got, Pop? You the boss of a jitney station.

Becker: I am the boss of a jitney station. I’m a deacon down at the church. Got

me a little house. It ain’t much but it’s mine. I worked twenty-seven years at

the mill … got me a pension. I got a wife. I got respect. I can walk anywhere

and hold my head up high. What I ain’t got is a son that did me honor…

(Jitney 41)

Booster cannot escape his viewing the society from the perspective of the time when he

murdered the “gal” and was sentenced to jail. He builds on his experience with

everyday discrimination against blacks. In his view, his action was a just revenge for the

injustice he received. He says: “I did what I had to do and I paid for it” (41).

As these two perspective inevitably collide, Booster and Becker also diverge in their

view of what they mean to their present relationship:

Booster: […] I thought you would understand. I thought you would be proud of

me.

Becker: Proud of you for killing somebody!

Booster: No, Pop. For being a warrior. (43)

What makes Booster hold his position is his experience from the jail where he missed

the transformation caused by the Civil Rights movement. To support his stance, he often

returns to the past, to the time where he resides in his memories and which is also the

era that makes it impossible for him to move on and see why his father rejects him.

Kačer 194

As far as the structure of the plot of the play is concerned, Booster is the eye-witness

of the past with a clear vision which is not influenced by the later developments. To

emphasize his position, he often talks about the past and reminds the jitney station

workers as well as the audience about the past, which in some way or another still

influences the current state. He talks about the society in general from his own, young

man’s perspective, and he also creates moving images of his personal aspirations and

dreams:

Booster: […] I don’t know if you knew it, Pop, but you were a big man.

Everywhere you went people treated you like a big man. You used to take

me to the barbershop with you. You’d walk in there and fill up the whole

place. Everybody would stop cussing because Jim Becker had walked in. I

would just look at you and wonder how you could be that big. I wanted to

be like that. I would go to school and try to make myself feel big. But I

never could. I told myself that’s okay … when I get grown I’m gonna be big

like that. Walk into the barbershop and have everybody stop and look at

me. (42)

Unfortunately for Booster (and the girl), his ambition was crushed because of his

girlfriend’s white father’s prejudice.

As in the previous two plays, the quotes show a strong emotional charge. At first

glance this is a feature that is perfectly understandable as these eye-witnesses’ small

narratives are expressions of memory. But Wilson does not only use the narrative mode

to express his characters’ hard feelings which in turn create empathy among the

audience. These testimonies are intertwined with “objective” reports. Commentaries

about the historical past form a part of his characters’ memories and thus transcend an

individual perspective. There are only bits and pieces within the narrated memories that

Kačer 195

do so, but still they do manage to reach out to the audience’s consciousness about their

historical past. In other words, there is information that the audience can share with the

characters in the memories, although it is hidden under a layer of emotions, which seem

to cover it at first glance. As such, these memory narratives serve to help to reconstruct

the historical context into which the characters are placed, and they do so by

implementing reports about the past inside narratives that primarily aim at the

audience’s sentiments. It may be said that new messengers arrive only sporadically, here

and there within the narrated memories, but when they do so, they are empowered with

emotional charge, too, which frames them.

In The Twentieth Century Cycle, as illustrated in the preceding paragraphs, Wilson

uses several techniques to create a documentary chronicle of the development of the

African American situation during the course of the century. His primary method is to

build up a common life of representative types of characters that would express as many

features typical of the given decade as possible. These characters then struggle among

themselves based on differing views of the contemporaneous situations and also deal

with generational clashes based on their radically different life experiences. But, in

order to give context to these conflicts, it is necessary to step out of the frame of the

decade. For this purpose, Wilson often employs the eye-witness who returns in his

memories to the past and recounts representative stories which shed a new light on the

events of the present. Be it to explain their current motivations or to accentuate the

development, these stories, fictional reports from the past, are a device which expands

the fictional world of a common life environment at a time defined by a specific year of

the century. Characters have the ability to move across decades and return to the past

due to the fact that they store their experiences in their own memory as eye-witnesses.

Kačer 196

8.2.3. New Messengers as Political Agents

Alphabetical Order by Michael Frayn

“I’m the Messenger. I’m in and out all the time. I mind everybody’s business. Yours

included” (Alphabetical Order 4). These are the words by which Geoffrey, a journalist

“of about sixty” (3), welcomes the new librarian Leslie in “a provincial newspaper

office” (3). The office is a mess. There is paper all around and a sense of disorder is

hanging in the air. It is soon obvious that Leslie’s task will be to find order amidst this

chaos, organize the office and put all the collected records (mainly cut-offs from other

newspapers) into the alphabetical order according to topical keywords. The stage

includes filing cabinets and a telephone; symbolically, the former is a database of

information about the world outside the office while the latter serves to receive requests

and give answers about a variety of topics.

Act I is Leslie’s first day at a new work where she learns how the office works. Her

senior Lucy comes late, and it soon turns out that “she wouldn’t know whether to file a

fish finger in the fridge or the airing cupboard. The nearest she gets to pigeonholing

anything is to divide her colleagues into the ‘all right’ and the rest” (Billen, “A

Comedy” 4). At the beginning of Act II, the stage direction describes the stage: “The

same. But it has been transformed” (Alphabetical Order 41). All folders have labels and

no spare paper lies around. Leslie has managed to put order into the life of the office as

well as her colleagues. Disorder returns when the office learns that the newspaper is

shutting down. People’s inclination towards chaos bursts free and they throw paper

around and bring the office back to the disorderly state. This is the basic plot line of the

comedy written by Michael Frayn in 1975.

Besides the number of comical episodes involving discrepancies among differing

Kačer 197

personalities and their inability to work together in a cosy, familial atmosphere, the play

offers at least two important dimension relevant for the topic of this thesis. One, it is a

comedy from a newspaper office about journalists, who are supposed to be able to

understand the world around them in order to interpret it to others, in which task they

ultimately fail. Two, its setting is closed in itself and the only possibility to

communicate with the outer worlds is by talking on the phone, reading newspaper

headlines, and talking about what happens outside, in other words reporting about the

fictional world outside the stage, the world of the provincial office.

The journalist’s work is mocked. Lucy, the head librarian, is incompetent, although

she tries to explain her work to the newcomer Leslie. However, her instructions are

shallow:

Lucy: Well, in this office we only cut The Times, the Guardian, and ourselves.

Look, two copies of each. So you can cut the back and the front of each

page. You’re cutting this, say. (She cuts) Power Pay Talks Breakthrough.

Cut it nice and neatly so that it doesn’t mess up the other stories around it.

Now, stamp it. Times – Guardian – us. […] (12)

Her approach is intuitive and unsystematic. When she is supposed to file the article she

cuts, she does not know what the main keyword should be.

She tries to cover her incompetence by transforming it into a piece of advice about

selectiveness:

Lucy: Be very selective!

Leslie: I see. What do I select?

Lucy: You select … (She thinks) … the kind of thing that the kind of people

who produce our kind of paper would want to know about to go on

producing a paper of our kind. (12)

Kačer 198

This description of her work shows that she only has a faint idea about how the

newspaper works and what its main goals are. Or, perhaps, it shows that her chaotic

nature is the reason why the newspaper cannot find its direction and shuts down in the

end, given the fact that its reporters’ research is heavily dependent on the sources

provided by Lucy’s confused filing cabinets.

Stories told about the world outside then have the same chaotic nature. Still, Lucy is

able to feed information to her reporters and provide them with figures and facts up to

some degree:

Lucy: […] (Into the telephone) Twenty-three thousand, four hundred and forty-

three. That’s crimes of violence against the person. (21) […] Sexual

offences? (22) […] Six thousand, six hundred and fifty-six. Do you want

that broken down into rape, sodomy, bestiality, and so on? (23)

The world outside the office gets shape by categorizing. There are data which describe

the world, but their relevancy is dubious. The audience can hear a lot of similar data

packages, but has no clear idea about what they refer to. Theatrically, this effect is

achieved by a simple means. They are answers to requests which remain unknown as

they are placed on the other end of the telephone line, unheard on the stage. The office

together with the audience stay in a state of insecurity about the meaning of the facts

about the world, because when there is no question, then the answer to it falls short of

belonging to a category and thus escapes understanding.

This changes with Leslie’s arrival as the new librarian. As far as the staging is

concerned, there are requests for Leslie which are also over the telephone, but she

nevertheless repeats them, by which she informs the audience about what she is about to

answer. The new information about the outer world thus fit into place. And more

importantly, her tasks consist of requests placed in person by other characters, namely

Kačer 199

the journalists Geoffrey and John. Leslie is also clear on what Geoffrey needs and she

gives him data in an ordered way:

Leslie: […] You had Fish General, Fish EFTA, Fish EEC, Fish Iceland, and

Fish Norway. (48)

In this way, she imposes order on her files, her colleagues as well as the world outside

of the stage, because that world had been opaque and disorderly before her arrival.

Frayn comments on the main idea of his play: “We impose our ideas upon the world

around us. In Alphabetical Order it is by classification” (Frayn, “Introduction” xiii).

The uncertainty about and confusion of the outer world is manifested in the journalists’

clueless requests, which are highly comical. However, they show that their ideas about

the objects of their reports are only hazy and they also pass them on as such. John’s first

request is:

John: Someone, some spokesman on education, I assume in the Labour Party,

only I somehow have a hunch that it wasn’t someone in the Labour Party,

that it was someone more surprising than that, or possibly not, […] said

something to the effect that even corporal punishment was better than

selection, […] or something equally undesirable. […] It was reported

somewhere, in something, about halfway down a righthand page.

(Alphabetical Order 6)

The comical effect of this request is amplified by Leslie’s obvious despair as she has

only just begun her work and Lucy still has not arrived in the office. When John returns

in Act II to open with the same request to a radically changed environment with order

all around, Lucy interrupts him to stop him and get rid of him:

John: Somebody, some spokesman on education, and I have made the

suggestion that he should be sought within the ranks of the Labour Party,

Kačer 200

said, or, as I proposed in my alternative hypothesis, wrote – […]

Lucy: (head in hands) Yes, we haven’t forgotten. (36-7)

It is however not only the outer world in general that the characters search for reports

about.

Their mode of communication among themselves is also mostly in the third person

when they are gossiping about their colleagues. The signalling phrase used in the play is

“poor old”. When somebody leaves, the others start talking about them and discuss what

they do outside.

Arnold walks heavily out. […]

Nora: Poor old Arnold.

Geoffrey: Poor old Arnold.

Nora: How’s he going to manage while Megan’s in hospital?

Lucy: (shrugging) Live in the “Swiss”, I suppose. […]

[Nora] goes out.

Geoffrey: Poor old Nora.

Lucy: Poor old Nora. […]

Geoffrey: Chasing after Arnold. […]

[Geoffrey] goes out.

John: Poor old Geoffrey. […] Don’t forget to say “poor old John” as soon as

I’m out of the room. (28-9)

Thus, the personal life of characters, which is the secondary story line of the play,

unfolds mainly mediately, through reports between the employees of the office.

Similarly, when characters return back to the office from outside, they tell the others

about what they were up to or what the others were doing, in case they could witness

that. Direct exchanges deal mainly with the issue of looking for information in the file

Kačer 201

cabinets or they are full of small talk filled with comical language and situational

humour. The atmosphere of the chaotic journalistic office is strengthened by additional

information delivered in the form of reports from outside. Characters do not get to speak

for themselves, they are mainly reported about:

Leslie: […] When Megan comes back from hospital … Arnold is going to

move out? He is going to go home? (Pause) Sorry. […]

Lucy: Well, don’t worry about Arnold. I get him out of the “Swiss” by nine

every night. I get him to the hospital three times a week. (54-5)

The whole office knows Lucy is having an affair with Arnold while his wife is in the

hospital, nevertheless Arnold never talks about it, the audience learns about it from

others. It is only Leslie that gets to talk about her own love affair with her colleague

John:

Leslie: John and I are thinking of getting married. […] Just to get him

organized. (57)

She is putting forward the main trait of her character, which is to organize the life of the

office as well as its occupants, and in the figurative sense, the world as it has been

shown above. The play moves from disorder to order and back to disorder again.

Midway through Act II, Geoffrey already starts missing the disorder of the first act,

when he laments: “Oh dear me! Uproar there used to be in here! People carrying on!

Everything everywhere!” (51). Yet, the world of the play needs to be restructured and

get back to its initial stage. The opportunity to do so arrives when they learn that the

newspaper has been folded.

Wally: We’ve folded. (Silence) We’ve ceased publication. […] We’re not

producing a paper tonight! (65)

At this moment, all characters except for Leslie, who is not present mess up the office in

Kačer 202

an act of a small revolt. By throwing the paper all around, they return to the time before

Leslie’s arrival at the beginning of the play which is the play’s basic point of departure.

Lucy ceremoniously sweeps all the cuttings out of the folder John is looking at

on to the floor.

Nora: I shouldn’t throw them on the floor, Lucy. Someone will only have to

pick them up.

Lucy: Why? They can just stay there now. (67-8)

This return to disorder is a visual expression of a person’s unwillingness to be

manipulated, categorized and organized.

By the same action, it returns to the state when the world outside, which is the world

of the audience, stops making orderly sense, as all folders that concern it lose their place

and thus the ability to speak clearly about it. As Frayn says: “If things are disordered

you long for them to be better – then you want them destroyed” (Billen, “A

Comedy” 4). Through the incapability to speak with sense about the actual world, the

play makes a strong comment about its complicatedness and, perhaps,

incomprehensibility by simple categorizing of all fact that we can learn about it.


Frayn’s 2003 play Democracy is a political drama about West Germany’s chancellor

Willy Brandt and his East German spy Günter Guillaume, who worked for him as his

secretary during his whole career. The play follows in the direction started in

Copenhagen and is a wide sketch of contemporaneous politics, even a lesson on history

of the 1970s in Germany, combined with a touch of document and an insight into

personalities of the two main protagonists. Although it is a product of fictional, highly

stylized writing, it is thoroughly researched and as such serves as a fictional document

Kačer 203

of the historical events. As Frayn emphasizes, “this fiction does take its rise from the

historical record” (Frayn, Stage Directions 100) and indeed, most of his characters are

politicians with excessive knowledge of the time’s events and facts which they willingly

pass on to the audience. As a critic observes, “Frayn’s script has to slog through a

certain amount of exposition to explain the complexities of Brandt’s left-leaning

coalition government. […] It pays off as the play develops its vision of an alliance

driven by resentment, snobbism, and suspicion” (Wren 32). By exposition in this case

she means all the reports about the history of Germany as well as details from the lobby

of West Germany’s political parties and practical politics.

In this respect, the politicians fulfil the function of the classical use of the reportage,

the definition of the fictional circumstances in which the future action of the play is

about to operate. While this exposition is a traditional role of the messenger (see, for

example, the chapter on the reportage above), in Democracy it is transformed. First, it

takes most of Act I and the information delivered is more connected with the function of

the new messenger as a political, rather than dramatic agent. A lot of reports do not

serve primarily to define the context where the action then develops, but makes a

historical lesson, thus interpreting the actual historical world events through the prism

of the characters of politicians.

Political figures step out of their roles and turn into reporters on and interpreters of

the recent history of Germany:

Kretschmann: Twelve years of Hitler. Four years of military government.

Twenty years of conservatism and Cold War. (Democracy 3)

The stark difference between the Nazi past and the present peacefulness of Germany

was Frayn’s fascination. He confesses:

Kačer 204

To me, I have to say, that material prosperity, that peacefulness, even that

supposed dullness, represent an achievement which I never cease to marvel at

or be moved by. […] What other nation […] has risen so swiftly from

beginnings as abject as the physical ruin, moral degradation, and political

paralysis in which Germany found itself in 1945? (Stage Directions 94)

The characters of the play also often seem to think along this line. They interpret the

historical development to build up this version of Germany’s history between 1945 and

the 1970s. Among them, it is Brandt whose opinion resounds most powerfully:

Brandt: 1945. Every city in Germany reduced to rubble. So what did we start

rebuilding with? The rubble. It was all we had. Lines of women patiently

sorting the usable bricks out one by one. Passing them from hand to hand,

cleaning them, storing them… Who knows what buildings those bricks had

been part of? The cellars of the local SS… the factories where the slave

labourers suffered and died… They cleaned up the bricks as best they could,

and out of them we built the plain straightforward cities we all live in today.

It was the same with the people. (31)

By the end of Act I, the audiences are briefed on all sorts of general historical

developments of the country. A critic finds this aspect as a weak point as far as

theatricality of the play is concerned: “Perhaps it is the historical aspect that makes

Democracy sometimes sound like a well-written public lecture delivered by shop-

window mannequins all wearing the same dark suits” (Brustein 33). On the other hand,

as far as concerns the motivations of the characters, the history lesson serves as the

primary moving principle. Their personal motivations as acting characters are blurry.

Their actions, as a matter of fact, only make sense when explained from a broader

historical perspective. It is the politicians themselves who have the power to present it

Kačer 205

in the way necessary to form the world for their actions, in other words, to create an

exposition to support this web of dramatically problematic motivations of themselves as

characters of the play.

History is also supplemented with the present. In this way, characters describe the

change that took place in West Germany when the New Left (as it was called in the

1970s) took power for the first time after 1945. The range of details associated with this

new political situation includes all sorts of information:

Genscher: People look at the government and what do they see? A lot of long-

haired radicals from the universities. People didn’t like them when they

were rampaging round the streets in ’68, and they don’t like them now.

(24-5)

This comment includes a description as well as a strong evaluative perspective.

There are all sorts of details about the relationship between West and East Germany

that the audience must digest in order to understand the sense of some motivations. One

of them is the policy of paying for and exchanging political prisoners:

Ehmke: […] What’s their [the East’s] one successful industry? The

manufacture of political prisoners. So that’s what they sell us. They arrest as

many as they need, and we buy them out. A thousand or so a year at 40,000

Deutschmarks a head. (14)

However, this piece of information is again supplemented by another, just loosely

associated one about split families. Ehmke adds immediately: “Oh, and they also charge

us for letting people out to be reunited with their families” (14). This line is a typical

example of an excessive report which is based on an insider’s knowledge and which

adds to the general complex image of the world but, nevertheless, does not link with the

action of the play in any way. Again, Ehmke is rather a political that a dramatic agent.

Kačer 206

Nevertheless, the topic of buying out prisoners lingers and returns at the end of the

play after Guillaume is convicted as a spy. His East German employer from the Stasi is

informing him about the background of his release to East Germany:

Kretschmann: Thirty prisoners we paid for you, Günter! You always wanted to

know if it was true about the prisoners. And the price has gone up. They’re

worth almost a hundred thousand marks a head now. Three million marks

we valued you at! (91)

By stating a historical fact known to him exclusively, he is also making a comment

about the political cynicism of the East German Communist regime.

Most of the action revolves around two issues. One is the collaboration of political

secretaries and the German Chancellery, in other words the political background, and

the other is Guillaume’s inner fight over his role as the spy and his growing attachment

to Brandt. The latter is manifested in the stylistic separation. There are dialogues and

inner thoughts in the form of asides signalled in the text by dashes. These are mostly

commentaries about the action.

However, as follows from the above stated, asides are not the only commentaries

about action on stage and events and facts outside. It is not only the historical contexts

which is delivered to the audience in the form of reportage, it is also most of characters’

actions. In this way, they do not travel, but their travels are reported, they do not give

speeches, but it is discussed what the speeches were like. Politicians around Brandt refer

about all this in this way, because either they eye-witnessed the events or their

knowledge of them is expected due to their occupation. Brandt’s trip to East Germany,

the first visit of a West German Chancellor since the country’s separation is thus only

reported by Brandt’s collaborator:

Kačer 207

Wilke: It’s never happened before! In every town and village along the line –

people with their hands outstretched towards him, people waving tablecloths

and bedsheets. Armed police everywhere with orders to stop any

demonstrations, but there’s nothing they can do. (15)

Or later, a report from his visit to Warsaw, where Brandt knelt before the Warsaw

Uprising Memorial:

Wilke: Silence. One of the greatest speeches of his career. Not a word. Just that

one little gesture. That one characteristic little gesture. (16)

These historical and synchronous events portraying the political history of the country

have their counterparts in stories from the characters’ personal histories. These histories

further illustrate the past. Yet they have little or no effect on the characters’ present

motivation.

The audience thus learn from various dialogues about Schmidt’s and Guillaume’s

past activities as boy soldiers at the end of the war:

Schmidt : Hitler Youth? Boy soldier?

Guillaume: Of course. Anti-aircraft. Like you. (41)

These personal histories connected with the Nazi past are put into contrast with Brandt’s

past. As Wehner puts it, “All of us on the train, except the great man himself” (41).

Details from Brandt’s biography, particularly from his Norwegian exile during the war

make him exceptional amongst his collaborators.

In order to illustrate the growing attachment between Brandt and Guillaume, Brandt

describes his own past, when he would change his identity several times:

Brandt: Herbert Frahm. […] Then one day, when he was nineteen years old, he

vanished off the face of the earth. He set out from Lübeck to go to Dresden,

and he never arrived. […] Only one bit of Herbert Frahm ever arrived in

Kačer 208

Dresden. His old student cap. But now it was perched on the head of a

young man no one had ever seen or heard of before. (47-8)

Guillaume recognizes that Brandt is describing his past and laconically informs the

audience about it when he identifies the young man Brandt is talking about: “Willy

Brandt” (48).

Later on, in Act II, Brandt comes back to his past and adds even more historical

details about himself:

Brandt: Willy Brandt isn’t the only person I was when I was here in Norway in

the thirties. I was also Willy Flamme. I was Karl Martin. I was Felix Franke.

[…] (70)

Such statements on the one hand illustrate the multiplicity of the character’s identity,

but it locks them in the past: “while Brandt talks about his several skins, we never see

him wearing them. Such personal complexities do not seem to interest Frayn as much as

his hero’s public persona” (Brustein 32-3). As a result, the play pictures Brandt from

one perspective only, which is his interpretation from the point of view of broader

historical context, which is introduced to the audience by Brandt’s collaborators.

The scene which closes the story line of the spy’s activities in Brandt’s closest

vicinity is also structured just like another one of the line of reported synchronous

events outside the stage. After Guillaume’s role is revealed, Nollau feeds the message

about Guillaume’s arrest to Brandt in a clearly cut style of a messenger:

Nollau: Half past six this morning, Herr Chancellor. At his flat. His wife was

also arrested.

Brandt: And Pierre. Their son. Was he present? Did he see it happen?

Nollau: I believe he came out of his bedroom while the arrest was being made.

I’m pleased to say Guillaume confessed at once. (80)

Kačer 209

The action is only indicated, but then the light shuts after which the reportage follows.

The scene shifts towards a narrative, this time indicated by the switch in the mode as

well as lighting of the stage, which works as a visual signal that the mode of delivery

has changed.

Democracy is a play with an all-male cast. “The oddest economy of all, one may

think, is the exclusion of the entire female sex – particularly since it was Brandt’s

relations with women that undid him. German parliamentary politics at the time,

though, was a man’s world” (Stage Directions 109). Enclosed in the world of male

politicians, the play equips them with a lot of qualities typical of the new messenger,

such as their privileged and legitimate access to facts and events outside the spatial and

temporal frame of the action on the stage, which they then report to the audience. In this

way, they deliver a vast amount of data in order to create the exposition in Act I and

reports from synchronous events taking place outside the stage to report on what is

happening with the protagonists. The focus is on the relationship of Guillaume towards

Brandt, while a whole world of facts and interpretations is carried to the audience by the

specific type of the new messenger-figure, the politician.

Afterlife by Michael Frayn

The latest play by Frayn so far, Afterlife (2008), can be viewed as an outcome of

dramatic strategies used in his previous works, mainly Copenhagen and Democracy in

the sense that it combines a thoroughly researched biographical sketch with a staged

document about the character as well as the time in which the play is set, together with

an outreach to historical contexts and interpretations from the contemporary

perspective. Frayn says, “My play, like the two earlier ones of mine, Copenhagen and

Democracy, is based on the historical record” (Stage Directions 139). Afterlife is

Kačer 210

revolving around the persona of Max Reinhardt, an Austrian impresario and theatre

director, who “by the end of his life […] had directed some 340 productions and built or

rebuilt no less than thirteen theatres” (Frayn, Stage Directions 127). It specifically

focuses on his last production of Everyman at the Salzburg festival before his forced

emigration to the United States caused by the rise of the Nazis before the WWII. It

makes a parallel between Everyman and his director’s fate, leaving “Reinhardt, a Jew,

[…] as naked and vulnerable as Everyman himself” (Afterlife, dust jacket) on the

threshold of Hitler’s annex of Austria comparable to the arrival of Death himself.

A reviewer praises the play for its use of verse: “Afterlife is the best verse drama in

English since T. S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral” (Billen, “Draw Near” 44) which is

the result of the fact that it is a piece about staging Everyman and fragments from the

classical morality are often quoted to illustrate the burdened atmosphere of the time and

show Reinhardt at work. Other registers are used, too, which are typical of Frayn’s style

since Copenhagen. As a matter of fact, the play swarms with linguistic devices which

turn the play’s characters into new messengers and in some cases make them primarily

political agents who step out of the rigid frame of the fictional environment of their play

even to a degree of becoming didactic at the expense of a dramaticality of their actions

or words.

Encountered already in Democracy, characters are introduced to the audience by

short descriptions given from the bird’s eye perspective in an informative voice. When

introducing, characters leave their roles and become objective commentators:

Kačer 211

Adler: Herr Reinhardt always knows the whole play by heart before he begins.

Reinhardt: My personal assistant, Fräulein Adler.

Adler: He has the whole production in his head. All written down in his

prompt-book. […] Every inflexion, every gesture. Every pause, every

breath. (4)

Such introductions do not occur only at the first arrival of characters, they develop

during the play and more characterizing descriptions in an objective voice are given.

The two most important women in Reinhardt’s life define his character during the time

of rehearsing a new play:

Thimig: Always late! Always exhausted! Never any time!

Adler: He doesn’t want to have any time left over, does he, Helene, with

nothing to fill it? Nothing in front of him. Nothing in his head. Nothing to

do. (28)

Even Reinhardt himself objectifies a similar statement about himself towards the end of

the play when he comments on his own traits from a distant perspective: “I have always

worked hard and late. All day and half the night. Always, always” (74). His partner

Helene Thimig in a dialogue with the Prince Archbishop, who is the patron of the

Salzburg festival staging of Everyman, laments about offensive remarks towards her

person:

Thimig: The Jew’s whore.

Prince Archbishop: Yes, the Jew’s whore. That’s what they call you. Even now

you’re married. (66)

The Prince Archbishop’s response shows that he is not speaking for himself, but it

rather represents a historical fact, a detail from Reinhardt and Thimig’s life in Austria

where Nazism is on the rise. It illustrates that Reinhardt is not only standing against

Kačer 212

eager Nazis, but also against the common people of Austria, who by now have adopted

the hatred against Jews, which has developed there since the beginning of the play

identified as the year 1920 by Reinhardt’s informative statement at the early stages of

the play: “we find ourselves living in the year 1920” (6). References to historical

context is a very important component of the play.

It is included in the play in the form of short descriptions of the situation outside. It is

primarily Müller through whose eyes the audience witnesses the changing political-

historical context, as he undergoes a shift from Reinhardt’s close colleague to a member

of the Nazi party and a defender of its policies, including anti-semitism. He describes

the Austrian society during the 1920s:

Müller: […] We’ve just lost the Great War. The currency has collapsed. So we

have various problems. Unemployment. Hunger. Disease. People seeing

their entire life savings wiped out. […] (16)

Krammer adds a more universal dimension to Müller’s narrow perspective: “There is

also a world economic crisis” (25), which is a statement that also adds to the historical

lesson about the contemporaneous context of the action on the stage. Identifying

entirely with the Austrian (or, as it turns out, pan-Germanic) people, Müller’s role is the

messenger of the defeated and suffering nations and as such, a knowledgeable

representative and a trustworthy presenter of the historical contexts.

As the historical time progresses, however, Müller’s political views change. His

reports about the political situation gain a brown shade. He can no longer remain the

impartial commentator and his assessments include various evaluative elements. For

example, he uses the metaphor of light when he is watching the German side of the

frontier across the valley next to Salzburg:

Kačer 213

Müller: […] Look at those lights shining up there in the darkness. A new world

is being born on that side of the frontier.

Kommer: There’s still a frontier!

Müller: Still a frontier, yes. Between Germans and Austrians. Between

Germans and their fellow Germans. Still a frontier. (56)

In this dialogue, another meaning is accentuated. It is the general knowledge aimed at

the audience’s awareness of the historical development. Müller’s sigh about the frontier

involves a temporal mark “still”, implicating that the annex of Austria is historically

inevitable, thus being a messenger from the future predicting the course of history.

Similarly, the Prince Archbishop warns Reinhardt. He also uses the future tense as if

he could be personally sure about the future. Although this could be viewed as a divine

inspiration (he is the Archbishop of Salzburg, after all), it is more conclusive to interpret

his mode from a linguistic perspective. When he uses the future tense, he is not

speaking for his character, but rather becoming like Müller a messenger from the

audience’s time, incorporating their knowledge of the development of historical events.

This interpretation is enforced by his indirect reference to Hitler to make sure that the

audience will get his point and see him as their spokesman:

Prince Archbishop: You take no more interest in politics than I do, Herr

Reinhardt. But we both know who is up there in Berchtesgaden looking

down on us.

Reinhardt: There is still a frontier between us and him.

Prince Archbishop: Frontiers can be crossed. […] And when he does come,

what will you do? Where will you go? […] You will lose everything! Your

homeland. Your home. […] You will exchange your house for a

suitcase. (64)

Kačer 214

Within the frame of the play, his speech is a case of prolepsis, as he is in fact describing

Reinhardt’s fate in Act II after his emigration to the United States, when Reinhardt finds

himself in New York with only, as Krammer notes descriptively, “Seventeen dollars!

His life savings!” (79) and a single suitcase.

A similar case of foretelling the future development of the play precedes Reinhardt’s

departure from Austria when he is promising Gusti Adler to come back soon, but she

already announces that he will not. It is not a mere cry of an unhappy personal assistant

who admires her boss. She is also an observer of the political situation outside and as

such, her reply is more of an objective statement supported by historical evidence.

Furthermore, it is from her that the audience learns that the Archbishop is dead and

Reinhardt thus has lost his protector:

Reinhardt: We shall be back very soon, Gusti. Like the swallows. […]

Adler: You won’t, you won’t! The Archbishop’s dead. The Nazis are just

waiting for their chance. (70)

It is in situations like this that characters step out of their role and bring information on

to the stage to refer about the historical context. They can rely on certain general

knowledge among the audience and in effect they speak about future events from the

perspective of the audience and in accordance with the historical situation which lies in

the future for them as characters enclosed within the frame of the stage and the action of

the play. The ability to work with historical facts and events is one of the basic abilities

of characters whose role it is to function as the new messengers, and more specifically

as political agents rather than dramatic ones. They build up the context and give details

about historical events, building up a connection between the knowledge of the

audience and the situation on stage.

It is also worth pointing out that the play combines stage design with descriptive

Kačer 215

narration to build up the setting. At the beginning of the play in the London première

production,52 “the play opens and large marble pillars move towards the front of the

stage” (Billen, “Draw Near” 44) creating the interior of the magnificent baroque Schloss

Leopoldskron where most of the action takes place. Frayn holds the setting for an

important and forming element, which is also indicated for the play-within-a-play at the

beginning. The setting and its history is introduced, described, and explained to the

audience in detail. As a part of the commentary on the setting, further historical

information or, perhaps, trivia are filled in:

Prince Archbishop: And a famous house it is. One of our great baroque

palaces!

Reinhardt: Built by one of our great baroque princes. Your illustrious

predecessor. There he is.

Prince Archbishop: Twice life size. Hanging in the place of honour.

Kommer: He built this house – good! Chucked all the Protestants out of

Salzburg – not so good!

Reinhardt: It was one of Your Grace’s predecessors, though, who helped to

give Mozart his start in life.

Kommer: And another one had him kicked out on his behind. Great chuckers-

out, you Prince Archbishops!

Reinhartd: This house. The music of Mozart. They were the legacy of your

predecessors to future generations. Our play could be Your Grace’s. (10)

Schloss Leopoldskron was Frayn’s motivation to write the story: “The genesis of this

52 This particular production was designed by Peter Davison and directed by Michael

Blakemore. (Afterlife n.p.)

Kačer 216

play was its setting” (Frayn, Stage Directions 123). Frayn’s and historically Reinhardt’s

fascination with the place make it a central point of the play and explain the vast amount

of information about it presented to the audience. On the one hand, the technique of

supplementing the stage design with descriptions in the dialogue seems as an overuse of

the reportage, which the play is heavily based upon, as the previous paragraphs have

shown. On the other hand, it is a result of building upon the underlying layer,

Everyman. The convention of this morality is also based on making an illusion by the

linguistic means of a dramatic dialogue, in other words it is perfectly unnaturalistic.

The difference is that the characters of Afterlife do not merely talk about the setting to

create a representation on the stage, but rather fill in various other information that has

little or nothing to do with the setting needed for the purpose of the dramatic action on

the stage. In this sense they are not the unnaturalistic characters of Everyman. They are

the new messengers, historians and interpreters of the fictional world with access to

knowledge of historical facts and events outside the frame of the action on stage.

The play is in this respect also a meta-theatrical play, “a self-referential theatre piece,

about a piece of theatre ” (Billen, “Draw Near” 44). Thus, at the end of Act I, Reinhardt

quotes Everyman addressing both fictional audience of his performance and the

audience of Afterlife:

Reinhardt: Dear guests! Before you join us, take

A well-earned twenty-minute break! (50)

Afterlife, as mentioned before, makes a parallel between the director’s greatest

achievement, which was staging of Everyman at the Salzburg Festival before the WWII

and his biographical fate. After all, Reinhardt’s late career was closely connected with

the Festival and:

It was Everyman that became its emblem. Reinhardt revived it every summer

Kačer 217

[…] until the Nazis came to power in 1938, and drove both him and the play

into exile. It resumend its career and its emblematic status at Salzburg after the

Nazis (and Reinhardt) had gone, and has now outlived him by over sixty years.

(Frayn, Stage Directions 135-6)

This link is made explicit at the end of the play when Death enters the stage. At this

point, the plots of the two plays merge and Reinhardt speaks both for Everyman and

himself:

Death: (whispers) Everyman! Everyman!

Reinhardt: For me it comes, the pale face there.

At me those eyes so coldly stare. (83)

To emphasize the parallel, the two levels often intertwine and supplement each other

during the course of Afterlife.

Yet structurally, the relationship between them is different than in the case of

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead illustrated elsewhere, characters do not entirely

belong to both worlds and it is only Reinhardt that eventually does at the very end in

order to stress the parallel between himself and Everyman, thus taking a political stance

that he as Jew became suffering Everyman facing Death beyond his capacities as he was

born to a time which he could not choose and had to confront contexts he could not

compete with. In this parallel, Afterlife gains a general appeal to the audience, making a

warning memento about the present.

Rock’n’Roll by Tom Stoppard

Stoppard’s 2006 play Rock’n’Roll is set at two distant places, in Cambridge in Great

Britain and in Prague in Czechoslovakia and it covers the time span of over thirty years,

as it begins in 1968 with the Warsaw Pact armies’ invasion of Czechoslovakia and ends

Kačer 218

with The Rolling Stones concert in Prague in 1990. In the play, Stoppard describes the

environment of a British university professor Max and his family and shows how their

relationship with a Czech student Jan develops. “Both Max and Jan care deeply about

theoretical issues but differ in their view of the solution to the Czech crisis of foreign

domination. Their ongoing ideological debate continues as the two protagonists shuttle

back and forth between Cambridge and Prague while turbulent historical events unfold”

(Rocamora 122). While both Max and Jan begin the play as Communists, Jan becomes a

dissident when the secret police destroy his beloved collection of rock’n’roll records

and upon his activities connected with the Charter ’77 he is even imprisoned for some

time. This in turn makes Max refuse to believe in the way of Socialism, although he

does not refuse his socially critical attitude toward the capitalist society together with

handing in his Communist Party membership card.

The play does not use the technique of the reportage as much to exchange

information about events taking place in the other setting, with the exception of the very

first scene depicting Jan leaving Cambridge to return to Czechoslovakia after he hears

the news of the military invasion to his country. As a matter of fact, this historical

incident is taken for granted as a universally well-known fact. It is only indirectly

mentioned and reported as part of a wider dialogue. In other words, no proper reportage

takes place. First, Max’s daughter Esme mentions it: “Max thinks it’s great about the

Russians” (Rock’n’Roll 2). After a short debate between Max and Jan about the nature

of reform socialism and the Prague Spring, Max says goodbye to Jan and adds: “I’m

sorry about the tanks” (4). The ignorant audience thus can only put together the

information about the occupation upon Max’s wife Eleanor’s scolding of Max’s

ideological point of view of the Warsaw Pact invasion:

Kačer 219

Eleanor: […] tanks is tanks and it’s on TV, so just do what you did last time

when they occupied Hungary.

Max: What did I do?

Eleanor: Ate shit and shut up. (7)

It is only after her comparison where she mentions “tanks” and “occupation” that the

story about the events in Czechoslovakia in 1968 becomes complete.

However, there are a number of other types of reporting in the play. Although it does

take place alternatively in Cambridge and in Prague, there is little communication

between the two places and the situation is not as in Antony and Cleopatra; events in

one do not directly influence the dramatic development in the other. Reportage is mostly

used to cover events that take place in Czechoslovakia during the 1970s. This way, the

political map of the play is created and the coordinates which lead Jan to his dissident

path are outlined. The first report is about Jan’s return to Czechoslovakia after the

occupation (called in accord with the Communist term “fraternal assistance”). It is a

secret police officer during Jan’s interrogation who describes the situation of Czechs

and Slovaks who were abroad in August 1968:

Interrogator: When our allies answered the call for fraternal assistance to save

socialism in this country, thousands of Czechs and Slovaks who happened

to be in the West decided to stay there. You, on the other hand, […] rushed

back to Prague. (11)

The interrogator on the one hand describes to Jan his own past action, on the other, he

presents a more general description of the population’s behaviour after the invasion. In

this respect, he as a representative of the ruling power is the new messenger who has

access to relevant data and who then mediates them to the other characters and the

Kačer 220

audience.

Although the band The Plastic People of the Universe only appears in soundtrack to

the play53, its developments are an important part of the story of Rock’n’Roll. This is

because one of the band’s member, the historical I. M. Jirous is referred to several times

by Jan, who is his great admirer. As Jirous’s fictional counterpart is not the part of the

play’s narrative, Jirous only enters the story in the form of subject matter of

messenger’s reports by Jan and his circle. Jan explains to Magda why he had missed a

meeting with her:

Magda: Where were you, then?

Jan: At the police station. Jirous got shoved around by a drunk outside the

party, and two cops sprayed his eyes and arrested him. (29)

A report from Jirous’s arrest becomes a part of his explanation. It also serves to

illustrate the behaviour of the repressive regime that had Jirous in its cross hair. Later,

when Jan is trying to make his friend Ferdinand sign a petition against the regime

Ferdinand is reluctant at this point. In fact, Ferdinand is an interpreter of Václav Havel’s

political ideas and developments and represents “Havel’s spirit” (Stoppard,

“Introduction to R’n’R” xiv). In a critic’s words, “Stoppard […] incorporated a number

of the ideas expressed in essays by Havel and his contemporaries (including Milan

53 This is relevant to the British and US productions. As a matter of fact, the Czech

production (The National Theatre première 22 Feb 2007, director Ivan Rajmont)

included an appendix to the textual version when after The Rolling Stones concert in

Strahov in 1990, which is the last image of the play, the orchestra platform raised and

the revived band The Plastic People of the Universe played a live concert in the

theatre house.

Kačer 221

Kundera and [Ludvík] Vaculík into the speeches of his characters in Rock’n’Roll, to

dramatize the intense intellectual debate among the Czech dissidents” (Rocamora 127).

Ferdinand asks Jan: “Why don’t you get your friend Jirous to sign it?” (Rock’n’Roll 33).

Jan has to explain that Jirous cannot do so because, “He’s in gaol” (33). Reasons for his

imprisonment are again presented in the form of the reportage:

Jan: Free expression. Somebody in a pub called him a big girl, so Jirous called

him a bald-headed Bolshevik, and he turned out to be state security. (33)

Jan knows all this, because he is a member of the underground now, as he is among

regular audience to the band’s concerts. And vice versa, his reports from the dissidents’

activities than backfire and define Jan as a dissident, too. Jan’s role as a part of the

“official” opposition begins in full after an incident which he reports to Ferdinand a few

years later at the end of Act I:

1977 Jan: […] There wasn’t one policeman at Jirous’s wedding. The concert

was a joy. I thought – okay, so eight years living underwater did the trick.

Then they arrested everybody. (53)

It is this arrest that in turn makes Max to give up on his belief in the Socialist way in

Czechoslovakia. He explains this turn when he describes what the regime did to Jan:

Max: You remember Jan. Anyone who gives him a job gets a visit next day and

he loses the job. He’s sleeping on friends’ floors, living as a beggar. (55)

When Jan and Max meet again after 1989, Jan is able to give him more details about

how the society worked and what his fate was or, how he became a baker instead of a

Marxist scholar:

Jan: In September ’77 I was in Ruzyne, sentenced to one year for being a

parasite, which is having no work. One day my name was called and two

hours later I am standing outside the prison, a parasite once more, but

Kačer 222

there’s a Tatra with three cops waiting for me. […] They drove me to the

new bakery in Michle and took me into the office there. The policeman who

was in charge said to the boss, “This man works here now”. […] I worked at

the bakery for twelve years. (93)

This eye-witness report returns back to the time of “normalization” which Jan defines as

Czechs’ “arrangement with ourselves not to disturb the appearances. We aim for inertia.

We mass-produce banality. We’ve had no history since sixty-eight” (71). He describes

the situation of the 1970s and 1980s to a British journalist Nigel, who is in Prague in

search for a dissident story. However, Jan is not really able to give him one or explain

the situation clearly.

This problem of communication between the two countries and the impossibility to

transfer the reality of the normalized Czechoslovakia is another topic of the play.

Stoppard does not avoid criticism of the capitalist regime, either. He chooses from the

Czech reality selectively: “Even if Rock ’n’ Roll were entirely about the Czech

experience between the Prague Spring and the Velvet Revolution, it could only hope to

be a diagram. Yet, a diagram can pick out lines of force which may be faint or dotted on

the intricate map of history that takes in all accounts” (Stoppard, “Introduction to

R’n’R” xv-xvi). As a result, the play is a specific interpretation of the history of the

dissident movement in Czechoslovakia between 1968 and 1989. What connects it with

Britain the most is music. Various rock-and-roll recordings are a part of the script and

they mark the changes of scenes on the one hand, and on the other hand their function is

to mark shifts in time, as record from the staged historical period serve as time markers.

“As Stoppard sees (and hears) it, rock-and-roll is the soundtrack of contemporary Czech

history, the element that gives the play, as well as the Czech resistance, its powerful,

pulsating vitality and central metaphor – liberating spirit transcending nationalities and

Kačer 223

political systems” (Rocamora 123). The connection is complete when a British band,

The Rolling Stones, give concert at Strahov in Prague in 1990 at the very end of the

play:

Jan: The Stones are in Prague on Saturday. The Rolling Stones at Strahov…

Strahov is where the Communists had their big shows. (89)

Still, besides the references to the practices and events from the normalized

Czechoslovakia as the historical information about Communist shows just quoted, the

finale of the play does not hesitate to question the future development of the country.

Jan sees the revolution as a chance for a new start for both sides of the Iron Curtain

when he considers what happened in 1989: “Changing one system for another is not

what the Velvet Revolution was for. We have to begin again on the scale of the

individual person, and the ordinary meaning of words. I can’t use words like socialism

or capitalism any more. This language belongs to the nineteenth century” (101). This

appeal to return to the individual as opposed to systems, is supported by Max’s

granddaughter Lenka, who speaks critically of England: “Don’t come back [to

England]. […] It’s a democracy of obedience” (104). Thus, at the end of Rock’n’Roll, a

statement for the audience is made that a political system in itself cannot be the sole

guarantor of an individual’s freedom and that individuals just like Jirous, who did not

want to deal with the regime in any way and only wanted to be left alone to play his

music, will always be present and needed for a free development of a society.

To sum up, the reportage is used in Rock’n’Roll to present messages about events in

Czechoslovakia for characters in England, but this particular use is very rare. Much

more it serves to report on events that take place in the Czechoslovak dissident

community with the focus on the events related to the totalitarian police state attitude

Kačer 224

towards the band The Plastic People of the Universe and primarily its frontman Jirous.

It also serves Jan as a tool to retell the story of his personal life after his signing of the

Charter ’77.

The Coast of Utopia Trilogy by Tom Stoppard

In 2002, all three plays constituting the trilogy The Coast of Utopia premièred in the

National Theatre in London within a span of less then four weeks. Voyage, Shipwreck

and Salvage are a historical epic covering the time period from 1830s to 1860s. It tells a

story of the lives of Russian intelligentsia and revolutionaries, focusing mainly on

Alexander Herzen, the Russian writer and publisher, and the circle around him.

“Stoppard’s ambitious work, a daring attempt to dramatize political and philosophical

ideas” (Diggins ¶5), is an intense combination of personal fates on the background of

political events during a historical time full of important turning points, including the

freeing of serfs in Russia and the (ultimately) failed French revolution of 1848.

For the purpose of this part of the chapter on the new messenger, it is necessary to

refuse to attempt to cover a lot of issues of the trilogy, such as its humour and stress on

relationships among characters, and to focus on the moments connected with the present

topic, the employment of specific types of characters to report about facts and events

that take place outside the frame of the stage. Most of the characters are Russian

revolutionaries, but there are references to and appearances of other historical

characters, too, such as those of writers (Turgenev) and philosophers (Marx), who also

appear in the course of Stoppard’s trilogy. “[His] choice of historical figures for the

characters of the plays, is very significant because it points to the outstanding position

that the past, history, and memory occupy in Stoppard’s production” (Lara Rallo 1).

Kačer 225

After plays like Travesties, Indian Ink, The Invention of Love and Rock’n’Roll (leaving

aside his plays for the radio), The Coast of Utopia is another attempt to create a

historical play within the frame of mainstream commercial drama to put forward

political ideas and issues connected with our interpretation of the past.

While the philosophical background will be dealt with in the following chapter

focusing on new messengers as teaching agents, this chapter sticks to those types of

reports that define the plays’ characters as political agents. Given their status as

revolutionaries, characters of The Coast of Utopia report about historical developments

and events and thus create the context for their actions and interpretations, in effect

building up the boundaries for interpreting their opinions and developments. One of the

procedures is by references to the situation around the press. The historical Herzen who

inspired Stoppard to write the trilogy was “the founder of the Free Russian Press, editor

of Kolokol (‘The Bell’)” (Stoppard, “Forgotten Revolutionary” n.p.). It is however not

only The Bell that is considered in the trilogy. There are also other magazines and

journals that are established and later banned. Their publishers express their views on

the Russian society in them and by presenting them to the audience, report about the

social reality. This technique is on the brink of combining a reportage with

documentary.

One of such journals is the Telescope founded by Belinsky, a young man who would

become a revolutionary if he did not die too young. Or at least, he would be put in jail

for his articles, as happens to many other characters. When Belinsky starts writing for

the Telescope, he is certain that it will be a success and a force that will help to bring

Enlightenment to Russia. The only obstacle, in his view, is censorship; a “detail” which

serves to illustrate the historical context of the play’s times even further to the audience.

Talking about his journal, he succinctly describes the censorship situation in the

Kačer 226

contemporary Russia. He announces to his friend (in Autumn 1836): “At the Telescope,

we’ve got a manuscript that’s been going from hand to hand for years – if he can get it

past the censor it’ll put the Telescope on the map, or finish us off with a bang. It’s all

about how backward Russia is compared to Europe” (Voyage 35). For Belinsky, free

press is important also for another reason. It is the vehicle that emancipates a nation. He

observes: “Our literature is nothing but an elegant pastime for the upper classes, like

dancing or cards. How did it happen? […] Because we were never trusted to grow up,

we’re treated like children and we deserve to be treated like children [...] not daring

even to dream of the guillotine…” (44). Then, a few lines later, as if to reinforce his

ideas, a letter arrives. Belinsky cannot but announce what it says: “Oh my prophetic

soul! – The Telescope has been banned!” (45). In this statement, he is returning back to

his comments about the free press situation in Russia.

The free press issue continues with the magazine Messenger. Ogarev reports on what

he heard the government saying about it:

Ogarev: Every issue of the Messenger plays with fire – not my words; words

spoken by the Third Department and carried back to me. (61)

It turns out his words were once again prophetic a few lines later:

Polevoy: (gloomily) Have you heard? Closed down. (He snaps his fingers.)

Like that. I made the Messenger the lone voice of reform (70).

The recurring motif of establishing a journal to later see it folded leads to an episode

where Belinsky expresses his view on the role of censorship. His assessment is an

insider’s comment and this status gives his notions a touch of universality. During his

Paris exile in Shipwreck, he comes to a conclusion that words in a country, where there

is no censorship, are less important than when censored. Along this observation (which

Stoppard made, too, in conversations with Czech dissidents after 1989), there is the

Kačer 227

feeling of these writers that people listen to them more attentively if they are prosecuted

for their writings.

There is definitely an aspect of pride and feeling of self-importance in this attitude.

On the other hand, publications of ideas in a repressive society does require a certain

amount of risk and bravery, as numerous reports in The Coast of Utopia about arrests

and imprisonments prove. Belinsky is an example of a writer who saw freedom of press

as a problematic issue. This made Stoppard include an episode about his views in the

trilogy: “I wanted to write about [Belinsky] because when he visited Paris he couldn’t

bear the rowdy free-for-all of the uncensored literary scene; he wanted to get back to the

punitive restrictions in Russia” (Stoppard, “Forgotten Revolutionary” n.p.). When

Belinsky considers staying in Paris and publishing there, he rejects this idea, because “It

wouldn’t mean anything… in this din of hacks and famous names… filling their

columns every day with their bellowing and bleating and honking… It’s like a zoo

where the seals throw fish to the public. None of it seems serious. At home the public

look to writers as their real leaders” (Shipwreck 152). Such role of the printed word is

not possible in France. As Turgenev notes prior to Belinsky’s decision, “You can

publish anything you like in France” (136). Turgenev’s observation is, for he is a

publishing author himself, an expert’s report and assessment.

Besides the issue of the freedom of speech and the free press, the reportage is often

used in The Coast of Utopia to create the oppressive atmosphere of the police state.

Arrests, imprisonments and exile are a common tactics of the regime. It is also for this

reason why, as Tucker puts it, “The action moves for the most part forward on the

calendar and westward on the map” (Tucker 153) as the protagonists are one by one

driven out of the country.

When Herzen visits the Bakunin estate in 1834, he reports about arrests and the

Kačer 228

general atmosphere of fear:

Herzen: Someone sitting next to you in class disappears overnight, nobody

knows anything. [...] The Kritski brothers disappeared for insulting the

Tsar’s portrait, Antonovich and his friends gone for forming a secret

society, meaning they met in somebody’s room to read a pamphlet you can

buy on the street in Paris. (Voyage 59)

While the others are discussing German philosophy, Herzen repetitively drags them

back to the ground by feeding in further arrest stories:

Herzen: Do you remember Sungurov? They sent him to the mines and his

property was confiscated. (64)

As it soon turns out, Herzen’s concerns are not superfluous as he is arrested himself,

too.

Yet, not all active revolutionaries are in jail. The audience learn about Herzen’s

imprisonement from Polevoy who is surprised that he and the writer Ketscher are still

free. Polevoy is wondering after Herzen’s arrest: “I’m lucky not to be in Siberia. And so

are you, by the way. Why didn’t they arrest you when they arrested Herzen and the

others?” (71). Ketscher shrugs and plainly summarizes the historical lesson about

inconsistency in the Tsarist regime policy into one word for the audience: “Russia” (71).

Then he remembers this wave of arrests and he says to Polevoy in agreement, to further

illustrate how the political repression operates: “Sentenced [the group] in secret after

nine months in custody. Three got prison, six got exile – Alexander Herzen the furthest”

(72). Further reports on who is arrested, exiled or sent to Siberia then reappear in shorter

or longer passages throughout the whole trilogy. From the point of view of the plot

development, a turning point comes after the installment of the Empire in France after

Kačer 229

the failed 1848 revolution, when the Tzar had a lot of the protagonists arrested and sent

to Russia.

A special case of reports in the trilogy is the recurring motif of the 1848 French

revolution in Paris. One, it makes a temporal axis of the trilogy, it is its central point.

First it seems that in embodies all the revolutionaries’ hopes for the new order, but then

when it fails, it becomes the expression of their greatest fears of futility and

hopelessness.

Turgenev speaks of the revolution in a manner of a reportage:

Turgenev: The lid blew off the kettle on the twenty-second of June. [...]

Carriages became less frequent, the omnibuses disappeared completely; the

shops and cafés were being hastily closed... there were many fewer people

in the street. [...] Meanwhile the sound of drums drew nearer and grew

louder. The government of the Second Republic had had enough of its

rebellious workers. It sent in the army (Shipwreck 172).

It is merely five days later that Turgenev talks to Herzen, whose “party was heading for

Paris, the home of revolution (‘I came to Paris as people used to come to Jerusalem or

Rome’). The Herzens were visiting Italy when revolution broke out in Paris in February

1848, but returned in time for Herzen to experience, with growing disgust, the events

that were to transform the Second Republic into the Empire of Napoleon III” (Stoppard,

“Forgotten Revolutionary” n.p.). For him, Turgenev describes how the revolution ended

before it fully developed: “It’s amazing how life settles back. The theatres are open.

There’s carriages in the streets again, and ladies and gentlemen inspecting the ruins as if

there were in Rome” (Shipwreck 174).

Later, Herzen reports on the revolutionary days in Paris, which he did not witness

himself, as it was too short for him to manage to come to Paris in time.

Kačer 230

Herzen: I was in Italy. Ten days after I got back to Paris, I knew the revolution

was dead… and now the republic is dead, too. Did you know? President

Louis Napoleon turned himself into Emperor Napoleon with only a few

thousand arrests. People didn’t care. (218)

This regret of an opportunity lost is in stark contrast to the revolutionaries’ talks about

the revolution which is about to come.

They are expecting it every day. As a matter of fact, on the formal level, their

speeches are pure prolleptic statements about future events. Although they express their

dreams and hopes, this time they do not refer to events that do happen in the fictional

world outside the frame of the action on the stage. This is where the actual history and

literary freedom meet and enrich one another. The announced “soon to come” Russian

revolution never takes place. It would be thus wrong to take all reporting by

revolutionaries as a history lesson. The development of the plays shows clearly enough

that they are mistaken and in effect leave it to the audience’s imagination to consider the

historical implications of such failure.

Diggins notes: “The Russian intellectual environment, Irving Howe said (writing

about Turgenev), stood for a ‘politics of hesitation,’ the suspension of passionate

conviction by superfluous intellectuals lacking a course of action. The critic Belinski

was forever protesting the failure of Russian literature to show the way out of his

country’s historical impasse” (¶14). This characterization is perhaps contrary to the

revolutionaries’ dreams, but it perfectly captures their activities. They are discussing the

coming revolution, but never make it:

Herzen: What revolution?

Bakunin: The Russian revolution. [...] The Tsar and all his works will be gone

within a year, or two at the most. (Shipwreck 153)

Kačer 231

Bakunin says it in 1847 and he is wrong by the country, not the guessed time period.

Five years later, a similar conversation takes place:

Bakunin: [...] it’s up to the revolution now.

Herzen: What revolution?

Bakunin: The Russian revolution. It can’t be long coming now. Not a

bourgeois revolution like in Europe [...] (217)

Bakunin is aware that the French revolution was a failure and he is hoping for a new,

better one in Russia. He will never live to it, but his choice of wording is a clear

reference to the future revolution of 1917, which is in all its aspects different from his

imagined one. But this remains unspoken and it is left to the audience to make that

connection. How much the Bolshevik revolution is a bastard child of Herzen and his

company’s legacy, is left open. But Stoppard makes it clear that in his opinion this

connection is not as loose as it may seem on the first glance.

This political statement is made explicit in Herzen’s speech after his book From the

Other Shore is finally published in Russian, by a London publisher during Herzen’s

English exile:

Herzen: […] Sasha… this is a book I wrote in the year of revolution [1848], six

years ago now. I called it From the Other Shore. It was only ever published

in German. But here it is at last in Russian as I wrote it. […] The coming

revolution is the only religion I pass on to you, and it’s a religion without a

paradise on the other shore. (Salvage 257)

Such play with the audience’s imagination making them to confront the ideas form the

stage with their political views is a common feature in The Coast of Utopia.

At times, Stoppard even makes one step further to create a comedy of this clash

between what is and what could be. Demastes analyzes this feature on an example from

Kačer 232

a dialogue between Turgenev and Marx illustratively:

The funniest extended run of literal revisionism occurs in Shipwreck, when

tone-deaf Marx asks sleek Turgenev for help (“You’re a writer”) in finding the

mot juste with which to open his new Communist Manifesto. Should it be a

“ghost” that is haunting Europe, a “phantom,” a “spook,” a “spirit”? After

several false starts Turgenev triumphantly produces the worst synonym of all:

“hobgoblin.” This big-laugh howler, driving from Turgenev’s mind the now

familiar “spectre,” and underscoring the arbitrariness with which a single

translation has implanted that word in our collective memory of the Manifesto,

shows how far from inevitable the deeds and the phrases of history can be.

(Demastes, Comedy Matters 164)

However, this episodes drives us too far from the narrow focus of this analysis of the

role of the reportage in Stoppard’s trilogy, specifically of its use to create the historical

context of his three plays about Russian revolutionaries in the mid-nineteenth century.

This sub-chapter focused on those aspects of the play, where the new messenger

functions as a type of character with an exclusive access to facts and events outside the

frame of action of the stage. His reports then enlarge the fictional world of the play. In

case of The Coast of Utopia, they are Russian revolutionaries who report about their

journals and their foldings, and thus report about the press and freedom (or, lack of it) of

speech in Russia and France. Similarly, they become the messengers when they

announce their fellow’s arrests and imprisonments. Finally, they become knowledgeable

observers, reporters of and commentators about the French revolution of 1848, granting

the audience an exclusive access to these events by a non dramatic means, in the form

of a reportage.

Kačer 233

The chapter on the new messenger as an interpreter for others (as opposed to the one

that primarily pushes the action forward dealt with above) shows several instances of

this use in the commercial mainstream drama. It takes the examples of several plays by

Frayn, Stoppard and Wilson and shows how the reportage operates in a selection of

their plays. In most cases, the reports serve to widen the fictional space and time of the

plays so that their span exceeds the needs and boundaries of the action on the stage. The

characters, who qualify for such a type of reporting are identified as the new

messengers, as social actors with specific privileges which grant them the access to

these facts and events out there and at the same time give them the authority to speak

about them for the others – the other characters and the audience.

Their authority is related to their affiliations. These are, as in the analysed plays, their

occupation such as that of a journalist, politician or librarian. They are also eye-

witnesses and members of specific communities, such as the African American small

entrepreneurs of Pittsburgh. Or they can be politicians or their opponents, radical

revolutionaries or dissidents.

All these characters at times have the authority to step out of their dramatic identity

as characters with a name, switch to a narrative mode, and testify about the world

outside the stage. In this context, their reports do not primarily serve to push the action

forward, in other words they are not indispensable building blocks of the dramatic

narrative. Thus, they interpret the wider constituents of the fictional world to the others,

shape its understanding and in effect, become political agents.

Kačer 234

8.3. Informing (not only about) the Actual World

“Mathematics does not take pictures of the world, it’s only a way of making sense.

Twins, waves, black holes – we make bets on what makes best sense” (Hapgood 571),

says Kerner of Stoppard’s 1988 spy thriller Hapgood when he is explaining how the

quantum mechanics theory helped him understand the plot of their espionage game.

Hapgood, Stoppard’s first “science play” (the other being Arcadia) was his attempt to

put scientific issues on the stage. There are various ways in which science may enter the

stage.54 In Hapgood, there are at least three different applications of science, in

particular the use of scientists as characters, inclusion of scientific explications into the

dramatic text, and structural make-up which follows the quantum mechanics theory in a

metaphoric way. To describe the last influence briefly, the play’s characters act as

electrons according to the theory’s explanations of the behaviour of light, in particular

they follow the “complementarity principle” known from quantum physics.

It is the first two applications that concern the most the topic of this dissertation,

however, as they combine some of the features of employing the new messenger. An

inclusion of scientists, as in Hapgood, is on the one hand an opportunity for the

playwright to set his play in an appealing environment and give his characters

motivations connected with it, such as a struggle for a discovery or specific ways of

solving even more specific problems, as popularity of television series from scientific

54 I dealt with the issue of science in the works of Stoppard, Frayn and David Auburn in

my Master’s dissertation Science on Stage: Scientific Issues in Contemporary Anglo-

American Playwriting, Master’s diss., Brno: Masaryk UP, 2004. Print. In this work, I

dealt specifically with the issue of using science as a subject matter, inspiration, and

influence of the concerned plays.

Kačer 235

environment shows; on the other hand it works as a signal that science becomes a

constitutive element of the plot construction as in the case of A.C. Doyle’s deductive

genius Sherlock Holmes whose specific methods serve as the structuring propeller of his

stories, for example. Scientists and similar characters (such as philosophers in The

Coast of Utopia, as it will be shown below) qualify for new messengers in several ways.

Their occupation grants them certain social status which goes together with their

legitimate access to knowledge from their field and also gives them the ability to report

about results of their work to others. Their stepping out of their primary role as dramatic

characters with a name is guaranteed. In other words, they are accepted by the audience

as the messengers of news from the field of science.

The other aspect goes hand in hand with the first and it involves motivation for the

switch of the mode of communication. Scientists are expected and excused to break free

from the ties of the dramatic dialogue when they switch to reporting. Although the

genre of their reports may be labelled as explications, lectures, or even classroom

lessons, information is delivered and the referential function is the dominant mode of

their communication at moments when they report.

This point calls for a generalization, as it presents the last but not least category of

the new messenger’s function covered in this thesis, in addition to pushing the action

forward and acting as political agents. There are such uses of the new messenger, and

scientists are among the most prominent types of characters in this respect in the works

of Frayn and Stoppard in particular, that report from outside the frame of action of the

stage about facts or events that represent knowledge from the actual world. Moreover,

this knowledge in order to meet the requirement of the genre of a report is presumably

of no prior acquaintance to the audience. In other words, new messengers become

teaching agents. In these cases they inform about facts or events from the actual world.

Kačer 236

This concept is problematic as it poses the question of the relationship between the

world of fiction and the actual world. What is the connection? How do these two

influence one another? What becomes of an actual world phenomenon when it is

included in the fictional world? In the theoretical chapter on the history of the structural

poetic tradition I grounded my overview on Lubomír Doležel’s work Occidental

Poetics. His views seem also helpful when addressing crucial issues such as these. It is

reasonable for a better understanding of a piece of literary art to consider all its

components parts of the fictional world; for example, “historical” figures do not take

part in historical novels, it is their fictional counterparts who carry their names and

borrow some of their properties. This position is well developed in Doležel’s

Heterocosmica. Let us then assume that the same holds for a scientific theory. It bears

the same name and it shares some of its properties (such as definitions, explanatory

power, and so on). However, as part of a fictional world, it operates primarily within

this world, that is to say it is a fictional counterpart. Typically, equations would be

missing. This difference is intuitive. The problem lies in the opposite direction. How

does a “fictional” theory apply on the actual world? Such question is out of the scope

and aims of this thesis, so let me make a working assumption about this issue. The

answer, in my humble opinion, lies in the fact that this is where the pragmatic aspect

comes onto the scene. Theatre (and let me repeat that I understand each dramatic text as

incomplete, as it is necessarily a step towards a completion in a performance) is a live

medium based on communicating content between the stage and the audience. In this

communication, which is essential for theatre, messages including explications of

scientific theories are delivered to the audience who understand the concept that it is a

part of a fictional world, however relate them to their actual lives and the world they

live in. Without the possibility of teaching the audience about the world they live in,

Kačer 237

visiting theatres would make no sense.

Hapgood by Tom Stoppard

Stoppard’s play about espionage primarily focuses on the character of Hapgood, who

is referred to by other British spies as the “mother”, and her career in the secret service

and as a mother of a little boy Joe. The plot revolves around a secret weapon

development at a time of the ending Cold War. One of the spies is Kerner, a Russian

double agent. Kerner is a scientist working at CERN, developing a missile based on

anti-matter. He is a scientist in the field of quantum mechanics. He is able to solve the

paradox of twin spies when he applies his knowledge about physics to the impossible

behaviour of the other spies, who function more as an application of some of the

quantum mechanical theories rather than human beings. Having one character at two

spots at the same time seems as a logical foul, until Kerner makes it clear that the one

character is in fact two. To explain this seeming paradox, Kerner lectures about several

principles of quantum mechanics, thus clarifying the confusion.

The play was not a success, in fact it was one of Stoppard’s least successful plays.

“The London production of Hapgood was Stoppard’s first relative failure […], its

international success was much more limited than his previous major plays” (Fleming

176). Yet Stoppard attributed this to the spy plot rather than to the fact that the play is a

metaphoric application of quantum mechanical principles.

Scientist Kerner becomes a new messenger with a teaching role in two aspects in this

play. First, he presents certain principles of quantum mechanics which serve as

explanations of some of the plot complications as well as the play’s dual structure

reflecting the dual quality of light: “The play’s structure also engages the theme of

duality, as nearly every one of the twelve scenes has a double” (Fleming181). Most

Kačer 238

characters have their twins (doubles), too. Kerner explains behaviour of light particles

based on their duality nature in the form of a lecture in physics to Hapgood:

Kerner: […] An electron can be here or there at the same moment. You can

choose. It can go from here to there without going in between; it can pass

through two doors at the same time, or from one door to another by a path

which is there for all to see, until someone looks, and then the act of looking

has made it take a different path. […] It defeats surveillance because when

you know what it is doing you can’t be certain where it is, and when you

know where it is you can’t be certain what it’s doing: Heisenberg’s

uncertainty principle […] (Hapgood 544)

This speech is in its form a lecture in physics. On the referential level, it speaks about

the behaviour of sub-atomic particles, thus mediating the theoretical knowledge of the

principles of quantum mechanics to Hapgood and the audience. In this sense, Kerner

appears as a teaching agent, whose role is to transfer knowledge and he is doing so in a

form of a report.

On the other hand, this report is not without impact on the development of the play’s

plot. It serves to explain the counter-intuitive behaviour of the Russian spies, the Ridley

twins: “Clearly, part of the appeal of incorporating scientific theory into theatre is the

sheer technical challenge. Quantum mechanics describes the interaction of particles at a

subatomic level, where the ‘common sense’ rules of classical mechanics no longer

apply” (Edwards 171). From this moment on, Hapgood and her team know how to catch

the Russian agent twins: “Once Hapgood and her associates have worked this out for

themselves, the plot of the play centers on their attempt to entrap the Ridleys” (173).

This connection is made clear in Kerner’s observation that “The particle world is the

dream world of the intelligence officer” (Hapgood 544).

Kačer 239

In other Kerner’s lectures on physics, the connection with the play’s plot is not that

direct. He adds more details and further theoretical knowledge. His other reports from

the world of physical theory have only little impact on the play’s plot and he is

becoming primarily the teaching agent about physics:

Kerner: Every atom is a cathedral. I cannot stand the pictures of atoms they put

in schoolbooks, like a little solar system: Bohr’s atom. Forget it. You can’t

make a picture of what Bohr proposed, an electron does not go round like a

planet, or loses a quantum of energy and then it jumps, and at the moment of

quantum jump it is like two moths, one to be there and one to stop being

there; an electron is like twins, each one unique, a unique twin. (545)

The other aspect of Kerner’s reports about science concerns his lectures in history of

science. These can be again divided into ones with an illustrative quality relevant to the

play’s plot, such as his historical lesson about the bridges in his native Konigsberg:

Kerner: […] Well, in Immanuel Kant’s Konigsberg there were seven bridges.

[…] An ancient amusement of the people of Konigsberg was to try to cross

all seven bridges without crossing any of them twice. It looked possible but

nobody had solved it. […] [W]hen Kant was ten years old, the Swiss

mathematician Leonhard Euler took up the problem of the seven bridges and

he presented his solution in the form of a general principle. […]

Hapgood: What did Euler prove?

Kerner: It can’t be done, you need two walkers. (541-2)

Besides the amount of plot unrelated information, which is perhaps amusing and

certainly educative, Kerner’s observation illustrates the behaviour of the Russian agents.

In other words, a proof of a mathematical phenomenon serves to explain the plot

development in Hapgood, while teaching about the history of science – in this case,

Kačer 240

mathematical proofs.

Yet, Kerner’s science history lessons at times only serve to teach about details from

this field and serve the purpose of amusing the audience, as in the case of the story

about Bohr’s horseshoe:

Kerner: Niels Bohr lived in a house with a horseshoe on the wall. When people

cried, for God’s sake Niels, sure you don’t believe a horseshoe brings you

luck!, he said, no, of course not, but I’m told it works even if you don’t

believe it. (571)

Although this particular story has little to do with science as such, it has a scientist at its

centre. For this reason, it belong to “popular” history of science. Kerner, who is himself

a physicist, has knowledge of historical anecdotes like this one and he is their legitimate

reporter.

In sum, Hapgood contains several lectures on science and history of science. Due to

the fact that Kerner is a scientist, he has knowledge of the field and is authorized to

transfer it further to the others. What makes his reports in this area special is the fact

that he speaks about phenomena of the actual world and in this way he functions as a

teaching agent on the stage. The play however has no ambition to supplement serious

science lectures. Wording and examples are chosen to meet the dramatic quality in the

first place. So while the play can teach the audience a lesson in quantum mechanics, the

lesson is not primarily intended as a serious scientific discourse. For this reason,

simplifications and inaccuracies are inevitable. Some concepts are included because

they are intriguing but without a wider erudition in sub-atomic particle behaviour they

cannot constitute a serious foundation in quantum mechanics. As a critic of Stoppard’s

simplifying approach expressed it, “Stoppard’s physics looks like quantum mechanics,

but no quantum mechanics looks like Stoppard’s physics” (Bernstein 113). Still, the

Kačer 241

application of the counter-intuitive quantum mechanical principles on the behaviour of

characters was a challenge that found its working stage expression in Hapgood.

8.3.2. New Messengers as Teaching Agents

Attempts to express scientific and philosophical ideas or, for that matter, any

information from the realm of human knowledge, on the stage or in another artistic form

is not a phenomenon that has appeared recently, quite the contrary. Poetry served as a

form to pass on knowledge in the Ancient times, as the didactic poem De rerum natura

(On the Nature of Things) by the Roman poet and physicist Lucretius from the first

century B.C. illustrates. This poem is a textbook of his atomic interpretation of the

world and the processes therein. Another good example dealing with knowledge and its

implications for mankind is the play (The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of)

Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe from 1604. Use of theatre as a didactic

environment to teach masses about various issues has had a long tradition. It is at the

beginning of the twentieth century when the scientific discourse begins its domination

in the sphere of producing and presenting knowledge, in effect claiming that other forms

of presentation are inappropriate: “science at the turn of the twentieth century was the

dominant paradigm of knowledge, claiming greater authority over the other ‘softer’

disciplines” (Walker 23). Staging of scientific and philosophical ideas in various forms

thus may be viewed as a renewal of one of the social roles that theatre, drama and

literature played in the course of history.55 To show that this has in proved to be a

successful connection, a critic observes that “the enormous popularity of these British

55 See, for example, Huxley, A. Literature and Science. London: Chatto & Windus,

1963. Print.

Kačer 242

and American productions attests to the potential for a happy marriage of art and

science, and their intriguing theatricality testifies to the playwright’s ability to transmute

potentially unappealing or inaccessible science into compelling drama” (Blansfield,

“Atom and Eve” 1).

This chapter shows, how findings of science (physics and mathematics) and

philosophy that are included into the dramatic texts and their stage realizations in

Stoppard’s Arcadia and The Coast of Utopia trilogy and Frayn’s Copenhagen.

The concept of the new messenger as a type of character who can legitimately step

out of his role, switch to a narrative mode and report about facts and events from

outside the frame of the action on the stage seems to be a viable approach to the issue of

the presentation of scientific and philosophical topics on the stage. It is again characters’

occupations, such as scientists and teachers, that guarantee to them this privilege. The

contents of these reports refer to a specific knowledge, which they in their reports

deliver to the other characters and the audience. The reportage takes on the form of a

lecture and as such it assumes an educative role. For this reason, I have decided to

illustrate this particular use of the new messenger by calling them teaching agents.

Arcadia by Tom Stoppard

In the 1993 play, Stoppard continued with implementing scientific theories into his

dramatic texts, a method that he tested on Hapgood five years earlier. He left the world

of sub-atomic particles and focused his interest on physical and mathematical theories

that deal with middle-size objects, such as the ones that we can perceive with our

senses. In the early 1990s, a theory that seemed very promising in describing the

indeterministic phenomena that surround us was the Chaos theory. “Arcadia is a play

that uses chaos patterning actually to structure the work. As such, the play is the first

Kačer 243

mainstream theatre product consciously designed to be formally a ‘chaos’ play”

(Demastes 107). The theory is appealing for many reasons. It offers interesting

predictions (such as the butterfly effect), explains traditionally indescribable processes

(such as forming of clouds) and produces aesthetically beautiful results (such as

fractals).

The play takes place in a single room at two different times: in the early nineteenth

century and in the present.

The central dynamic spokesperson in the 1809 part of the play is Thomasina, a

young, intellectually curious girl whose youth and gender minimize her

exposure to the culturally encrusted “way things are,” allowing her free reign

to think culturally unthinkable thoughts. The result is that Thomasina studies

nature rather than scholars and arrives at conclusions that anticipate what will

eventually become known as the second law of thermodynamics, typically

regarded as the first full challenge to the triumphant Newtonianism of the age

because it works against the notion of Newtonian perpetual order by

confirming that loss and eventual heat death are cosmic inevitability.

(108)

Most capitalized scientific theories in Arcadia are Chaos and its mathematics including

reiterated algorithms and fractal geometry and the second law of thermodynamics,

which Thomasina all deduces from considering the world around her with an open and

genius mind.

Thomasina’s work written into her algebra primer is discovered by Hannah Jarvis

and Thomasina’s present-time distant relative Valentine Coverly, Hannah’s fiancé.

Valentine is a mathematician and during the course of the play he figures out that

Kačer 244

Thomasina was in fact working on a mathematical theory that resembles his own state

of the art mathematical research. As a scientist, he is able to grasp what she was doing

and explain it to his fiancée as well as the audience in the form of brief scientific

narratives in the form of reports from the current scientific theory.

Thomasina’s inquiry begins when she understands that the algebra and Newtonian

physics she is studying with her tutor Septimus Hodge, cannot be used to express shapes

and processes she observes around her.

Thomasina: When you stir your rice pudding, Septimus, the spoonful of jam

spreads itself round making red trails like the picture of a meteor in my

astronomical atlas. But if you stir backward, the jam will not come together

again. Indeed, the pudding does not notice and continues to turn pink.

(Arcadia 12)

This simple observation has a great impact on her, as “Thomasina’s demonstration is

Stoppard’s apt illustration of irreversible entropic dissipation. Hence, Thomasina proves

Newtonian law to be incomplete at best” (Demastes 108). At this moment, her quest for

non-Newtonian physics begins.

She explains that classical algebra and geometry are no good when trying to express

the irregularities of natural objects:

Thomasina: […] Each week I plot your equations dot for dot, xs against ys in

all manner of algebraical relation, and every week they draw themselves as

commonplace geometry, as of the world of forms were nothing but arcs and

angles. God’s truth, Septimus, if there is an equation for a curve like a bell,

there must be an equation for one like a bluebell, and if a bluebell, why not a

rose? Do we believe nature is written in numbers?

Septimus: We do.

Kačer 245

Thomasina: They why do your equations only describe the shapes of

manufacture? (Arcadia 55)

She promises her tutor and herself to try to come up with a different mathematics that

would be able to create more natural shapes, such as that of a simple leaf: “I will plot

this leaf and deduce its equation” (56). Leaf-like shapes are among the typical

geometrical models which result from calculations known as iterated algorithm which

are a part of the Chaos theory.

When Hannah is studying her primer, she reads Thomasina’s notes to Valentine. This

report from the past works at the same time as an explanation of what an iterated

algorithm is and makes a lecture in mathematical operations.

Hannah: “I, Thomasina Coverly, have found a truly wonderful method

whereby all the forms of nature must give up their numerical secrets and

draw themselves through number alone. This margin being too mean for my

purpose, the reader must look elsewhere for the New Geometry of Irregular

Forms discovered by Thomasina Coverly.” Does it mean anything?

Valentine: I don’t know. I don’t know what it means, except mathematically.

Hannah: I meant mathematically.

Valentine: It’s an iterated algorithm. (61-2)

After Thomasina’s purpose and method are known, it is up to Valentine to interpret

what she was doing in terms of contemporary science.

He himself being a scientist, he explains Thomasina’s work and shows its possible

applications. He switches to the narrative mode to show how iterated algorithms are

used in contemporary science, in this case he gives an example of a use in biology when

predicting rises and falls of various animal populations:

Valentine: It’s how you look at population changes in biology. Goldfish in a

Kačer 246

pond, say. This year there are x goldfish. Next year there’ll be y goldfish.

[…] Then y goldfish is your starting population for the following year. Just

like Tomasina. (65)

Valentine is Thomasina’s mirror character in the present time part of the plot. The two

of them criticise the Newtonian description of the world: “the universe of Isaac Newton

is governed by symmetries that are demonstrated through geometry. It is an ordered,

determinate universe, and in principle its future changes are predictable and past states

discoverable by calculation based on the knowledge of forces and masses involved in

events” (Edwards 178). However, Thomasina’s and Valentine’s research both show that

natural processes are much more complex and work in an indeterministic way.

Valentine explains the development of science in the twentieth century and makes a

point about why Chaos theory (without naming it) is a good solution to a variety of

problems of classical as well as twentieth century physics.

Valentine: […] Relativity and quantum looked as if they were going to clean

out the whole problem between them. A theory of everything. But they only

explained the very big and the very small. The universe, the elementary

particles. The ordinary-sized stuff which is our lives, the things people write

poetry about – clouds – daffodils – waterfalls – and what happens in a cup

of coffee when the cream goes in – these things are full of mystery, as

mysterious to us as the heavens were to the Greeks. […] We can’t even

predict the next drip from a dripping tap […] (Arcadia 69)

Although his last remark seems as a personal lament, it is in fact a general statement

referring to mankind and the state of its theoretical knowledge in general, thus making a

connection with the actual world of the audience, where all these theories come from

and apply. In his approach to physics, he becomes a teaching agent.

Kačer 247

At one point, Valentine starts believing that Thomasina was going the right direction

and uses his computer to see whether her equations were correct. The result is

astounding and takes Hannah’s breath away:

Hannah: […] (She looks over Valentine’s shoulder at the computer screen.

Reacting) Oh!, but… how beautiful!

Valentine: The Coverly set. […] Patterns making themselves out of nothing. I

can’t show you how deep it goes. Each picture is a detail of the previous

one, blown up. And so on. For ever. Pretty nice, eh?

Hannah: Is it important?

Valentine: Interesting. Publishable.

Hannah: Well done!

Valentine: Not me. It’s Thomasina’s. I just pushed her equations through the

computer a few million times further than she managed to do with her

pencil. (107)

It only was technological development that could prove Thomasina’s calculations

correct as the number of mathematical operation needed to get any sensible results is

impossible to do by hand. After all, after Thomasina’s death in a fire, Septimus “spen[t]

twenty-two years reiterating Thomasina’s equation” (Edwards 182) without any

successful results. A computer was needed to reach them.

And as Hannah’s enchantment with what she can see on the screen proves, the result

is beautiful, too. Valentine calls it the Coverly set in a clear allusion to the Mandelbrot

set, which is another name for some of the fractals that he was plotting. One of the

fractals looks like a leaf that Thomasina was after.

Thus, both Thomasina and Valentine as scientists become the teachers of the

Kačer 248

audience. The former explains why it is necessary to use non-classical mathematics and

Valentine explains the principle and presents the results.

Similarly, the play incorporates the second law of thermodynamics. The issue was

dealt with in the early nineteenth century and Thomasina gets acquainted with it when

studying materials relevant for a steam engine, which the garden architect Mr. Noakes is

installing into the renovated park. Mr. Noakes is trying to tune it up so that it does not

waste energy.

Thomasina: Mr. Noakes – bad news from Paris! […] It concerns your heat

engine. Improve it as you will, you can never get out of it what you put in. It

repays eleven pence in the shilling at most. (Arcadia 122)

This expression of the principle is perhaps simplistic, but it captures the principle.

Thomasina is even able to give her discovery a more general context: “Newton’s

equations go forwards and backwards, they do not care which way. But the heat

equation cares very much, it goes only one way” (123), she says to refer about the

difference between Newtonian physics and thermodynamics.

Together with Hapgood, Arcadia is a play that is inspired by science. Among its

characters, there are also scientists who explain the theories they work with in a way

which is understandable to the audience, and as a result some parts of the dialogue

change into a popular science lesson. Besides the influence on the plot, which is to be

viewed as a metaphorical extrapolation of the concerned theories, the scientific contents

of the play speak to the audience about theories and phenomena from the actual world,

thus sharing the knowledge about it. In this sense, scientists in Arcadia, most

importantly Thomasina and Valentine, at times step out of their dramatic roles and

become teaching agents.

Kačer 249

Copenhagen by Michael Frayn

The play was premièred at the Cottesloe Theatre, Royal National Theatre, London,

on 28 May 1998, the director was Michael Blakemore (Copenhagen 2). The basic story

is the question about Heisenberg’s visit to Copenhagen in 1941, when Heisenberg was a

German physicist and Bohr his former mentor and colleague, nevertheless a Danish Jew

at the time of the Nazi German occupation of Denmark. Heisenberg announces at the

beginning of the play, “there are only two things the world remembers about me. One is

the uncertainty principle and the other is my mysterious visit to Niels Bohr in

Copenhagen in 1941. Everyone understands uncertainty. Or thinks he does. No one

understands my trip to Copenhagen” (4). The play unfolds in two acts possible answers

to this question which is connected with issues involving personal friendship, the

making of the atomic bomb, as well as expert issues of the two protagonists’ physical

theories. The third character of the play is Bohr’s wife Margrethe who is the objective

observer of the other two’s attempts on finding the answer.

Leaving aside the historical and moral implications of the play for they only have a

loose connection with the topic of this chapter, the key issue remains that both Bohr and

Heisenberg are physicists and as such they possess specialized knowledge from their

fields. Furthermore, they explain these issues to Margrethe and one another during the

course of the play, thus becoming the teaching agents about some of the key issues of

quantum physics: the uncertainty principle, complementarity, and the making of the A-

bomb.

As it is difficult to illustrate the behaviour of sub-atomic particles, the designer Peter

J. Davison created the stage with a light circle and three chairs. In this space, the

characters move around and in their positions and behaviour act out the principles of the

theoretical issues. For example, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle which says that it is

Kačer 250

impossible to measure both position and speed of an electron in an atom because the

measurement always influences the result (a photon used to “look at” the particle hits it

and changes its speed and position) is explained in rather non-scientific terms so that it

is understandable by common sense:

Heisenberg: […] you have no absolutely determinate situation in the world,

which among other things lays waste to the idea of causality, the whole

foundation of science – because if you don’t know how things are today you

certainly can’t know how they’re going to be tomorrow. I shatter the

objective universe around you. (68)

Heisenberg and Bohr move around and influence one another’s position or speed.

Bohr’s explanation of Complementarity, which roughly says that light behaves either

as waves or as particles, is more scientific:

Bohr: [...] Particles are things, complete in themselves. Waves are disturbances

in something else.

Heisenberg: I know Complementarity [...]

Bohr: They’re either one thing or the other. They can’t be both. We have to

choose one way of seeing them or the other. But as soon as we do we can’t

know everything about them. (69)

In these brief descriptions, basic explanations of the two quantum mechanical principles

are delivered to the audience.

Both theories have implications for the development of the play, too. “Frayn

incorporates the Uncertainty Principle on several levels: the uncertainty of memory, of

knowledge, of human behavior and motivation, and most notably of Heisenberg’s

motives for coming to Copenhagen” (Blansfield, “Atom and Eve” 11). The more Bohr

and Heisenberg are certain about where they went for the walk during their 1941

Kačer 251

meeting, the less they are certain about what they discussed and vice versa. In this

sense, Copenhagen is also an extrapolation of the theories.56

In another dialogue, Heisenberg is trying to illustrate his uncertainty principle on

another example. He again uses a real life scale analogy, this time of the whole city of

Copenhagen as an atom in whose centre Margrethe stands and the nucleus:

Heisenberg: Listen, in my paper, what we’re trying to locate is not a free

electron off on its travels through a cloud chamber, but an electron when it’s

at home, moving around inside an atom…

Bohr: And the uncertainty arises not, as you claim, through its indeterminate

recoil when it’s hit by an incoming photon […]

Heisenberg: Listen! Copenhagen is an atom. Margrethe is its nucleus. About

right, the scale? Ten thousand to one?

Bohr: Yes, yes.

Heisenberg: Now, Bohr’s an electron. He’s wandering about the city

somewhere in the darkness, no one knows where. He’s here, he’s there, he’s

everywhere. (Copenhagen 68-69)

In this speech, Heisenberg also informs about a model of the atom, known as Bohr’s

model that shattered the previous model which imagined the atom as a micro-world

version of the solar system.

Besides explaining the principles of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and Bohr’s

complementarity, which are both also illustrated by the means of characters’ movement

56 See, for example, the chapter “Uncertainty as Extrapolation in Copenhagen” in my

Master’s dissertation Science on Stage: Scientific Issues in Contemporary Anglo-

American Playwriting. Brno: Masaryk UP, 2004. 50-1. PDF online.

Kačer 252

on the stage metaphorically representing the atom, there is the last important issue dealt

with in the play, the making of the A-bomb. It is in the dialogues about the bomb that

the characters fully become lecturers, in other words the new messengers from the

actual world, and teaching agents.

Bohr: What happens in fission? You fire a neutron at a uranium nucleus, it

splits, and it releases energy.

Margrethe: A huge amount of energy. Yes?

Bohr: About enough to move a speck of dust. But it also releases two or three

more neutrons. Each of which has the chance of splitting another nucleus.

[...] An ever-widening chain of split nuclei forks through the uranium,

doubling and quadrupling in millionths of a second from one generation to

the next. First two splits […] Then two squared, two cubed, two to the

fourth, two to the fifth, two to the sixth […] Until eventually, after, let’s say,

eighty generations, 280 specks of dust have been moved. 280 is a number

with 24 noughts. Enough specks of dust to constitute a city, and all who live

in it. (33)

Later in the dialogue, the principle of the chain reaction needed to make a bomb from

isotopes of Uranium is explained:

Bohr: Natural uranium consists of two different isotopes, U-238 and U-235.

Less than one per cent of it is U-235, and this tiny fraction is the only part of

it that’s fissionable by fast neutrons. […] 238 is not only impossible to

fission by fast neutrons – it also absorbs them. So, very soon after the chain

reaction starts, there aren’t enough fast neutrons left to fission the 235.

Heisenberg: And the chain stops. (33-34)

Kačer 253

The two scientists thus describe the possibility to build the bomb from the theoretical

point of view, teaching the audience about the physics behind the deadly weapon.

Margrethe steps in and puts their theoretical consideration of making the bomb into a

wider perspective: “And from those two heads the future will emerge. Which cities will

be destroyed, and which survive. Who will die, and who will live. Which world will go

down the obliteration, and which will triumph” (54). Her commentary shows that it is

not the primary aim of the play to lecture about physics, but to find the answer to the

question, Why did Heisenberg come to Copenhagen in 1941? The play makes a bold

proposal that it was to find a theoretical background for taking a dead-end road in the

research of the atomic bomb, so that Hitler’s Germany could not make it in time to win

the war. Before such conclusion is reached, however, the two scientists often leave their

characters to present findings of quantum mechanics and the physical principle of the

atomic bomb to the audience. In these cases, they do not function primarily as dramatic

agents, but as teaching agents, whose speeches are primarily based on the referential

function of language, where the reference lies the a theory (more precisely: the

Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics) which is set in the actual world

populated by the audience of the play.

The Coast of Utopia Trilogy by Tom Stoppard

Stoppard’s 2002 trilogy was considered above in the context of the new messengers

as political agents, which was appropriate given the main focus of the plays on Russian

revolutionaries from 1830s to 1860s. Besides their personal destinies in the totalitarian

Russia and their lives in exile around Europe, the plays also devote a lot of space to the

background of their ideas. Among the sources for their revolutionary standpoints and

activities, there is primarily the Western philosophy of the time. Michael Bakunin,

Kačer 254

Belinsky, Herzen and others are passionate readers of philosophical treatises, especially

of those by German speculative philosophers such as Schelling, Fichte and Hegel. They

also discuss the work of Immanuel Kant.

Moreover, among the characters, there is Karl Marx who at times expresses his

opinions about the historical determinism of his dialectical materialist philosophy and as

a character of the plays (he appears in Shipwreck and Salvage) he characterises his

actual world counterpart’s philosophical ideas on the stage. Primed through words of

the Russian intelligentsia, the audience have access to the philosophical background of

the Russian revolutionary movement and they can also watch the characters’ attempts

on their implementation into practice to consider why these radically progressive

movements lead to failures and even oppression of Nazism and Communism, as history

teaches us about misinterpretations and misuses of the philosophy of German Idealism

and Marx.

The philosophical background of the Russian revolutionaries is among the key issues

of the trilogy. “Having picked these exiled and half-forgotten ideas out of the wreck of

more than one world-transforming revolution in social relations, [Stoppard] exhibits

them in as full a representation of their historical circumstance as the best current

stagecraft permits, for critical assessment and practical adaptation in our time” (Tucker

150). This background is crucial for the trilogy because, “The Russian cognoscenti,

caught up in arcadian fantasies and anarchist messianism, looked to philosophy to solve

the problem of history, to grasp the movement of events by turning to a thinker

convinced that he knew the meaning of events” (Diggins ¶5). The exposition of their

starting point, the philosophy of German idealism and its main ideas is spread through

the whole first play, Voyage.

Michael Bakunin announces that this philosophy will have a great impact on the

Kačer 255

future development of the society, including his native Russia:

Michael: […] Dawn has broken! In Germany the sun is already high in the sky!

It’s only us in poor behind-the-times Russia who are the last to learn about

the great discovery of the age! The life of the Spirit is the only real life: our

material existence stands between us and our transcncedce to the Universal

Idea where we become one with the Absolute! (Voyage 13)

Michael’s learning about philosophy and its explication in the form of reports or

reader’s notes then makes several “complex dialogues half an hour long” (Tucker 153),

as a critic bitingly characterises them. “Bakunin’s mentor du jour” (159) Nicolas

Stankevich joins him to teach him about Schelling:

Stankevich: Schelling’s God is the totality of Nature struggling towards

consciousness, and Man is as far as the struggle has got, with the animals

not too far behind, vegetables somewhat lagging, and rocks nowhere as yet.

(Voyage 22)

He continues to explain contemporaneous metaphysics to Michael and in their

discussion, several succinct summaries of the main philosophical ideas of German

idealists are delivered in form of reports as facts from outside the frame of action on the

stage.

Stankevich explains the basic idea of categories from Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason

in a nutshell:

Stankevich: The world outside of me has no meaning independent of my

thinking it. […] But how can we be sure there is a world of phenomena, a

woman reading in the garden? Perhaps the only thing that’s real in my

sensory experience, which has the form of a woman reading – in a universe

Kačer 256

which is in fact empty! But Immanuel Kant says – no! Because what I

perceive as reality includes concepts which I cannot experience through the

senses. Time and space. Cause and effect. Relations between things.

Without me there is something wrong with this picture. […] (23)

As far as Kant’s philosophy is concerned, his metaphysics is not the only are which is

covered in Voyage. Basic principles of his ethics are presented in a dialogue between

Stankevich and Michail’s sister Liubov:

Liubov: […] May I borrow this? To read. (She examines the title.)

Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten. Is it good? […]

Stankevich: Kant says, the only good actions are those performed out of a

sense of duty, not from emotion… like passion or desire…

Liubov: So to act out of love can never be good?

Stankevich: Kant says you cannot take moral credit from it. Because you are

really pleasing yourself.

Liubov: Even if it gives happiness to another?

Stankevich: Yes. Consequences don’t come into it.

Liubov: And to act out of a sense of duty, even if it leads to unhappiness…?

Stankevich: Is a moral action, yes. (25-6)

This dialogue takes the form of a class on philosophy. In fact, Luibov is performing a

figure of speech that could be identified as a Socratic dialogue, which is to say that she

always asks the proper question to seemingly undermine what is being said, but in effect

leading the partner into formulating his idea in a form as clear as possible for the

listener.

The relationship of various characters to philosophical concepts is an important

Kačer 257

source of their motivation as revolutionaries. For this reason, they often return to their

philosophical background and comment on it later when they explain by it their actions

or confront it with historical events they witness. For this reason, the practice oriented

Belinsky scorns Schelling:

Belinsky: […] But the truth of idealism would be plain to me if I had heard one

sentence of Schelling shouted through my window by a man on a galloping

horse. When philosophers start talking like architects, get out wile you can,

chaos is coming. When they start laying down rules for beauty, blood in the

streets is from that moment inevitable. […] (43)

Just as Belinsky is dissatisfied with Schelling’s view of history, Michael recants Fichte

only to claim Hegel. As a matter of fact, it was Hegel that “many 19th-century Russian

intellectual adopted, [because he] promised both consciousness and control, the

knowledge of reality and of human destiny” (Diggins ¶6). Michael thus praises Hegel:

Michael: […] I was on the wrong track with Fichte, I admit it – Fichte was

trying to get rid of objective reality, but Hegel shows that reality can’t be

ignored, you see, Father. Now I know where I was going wrong. (50)

In his confession to his father, Michael also in the basic terms explains the main

difference between Fichte’s and Hegel’s metaphysics.

The struggle between theoretical and practical views of the Russian revolution which

the characters are waiting for, is reflected in their attitude to reading philosophy. This is

a stage expression of the historical situation as Stoppard describes it in his article:

In Moscow in the early 1830s, among the young men and women of the

educated elite, there were two related but distinct responses to Tsarist

absolutism […]: the “philosophical circle”, and the “political circle”, amicably

Kačer 258

decried by each other as “German sentimentalists” and “French frondeurs”.

Both circles were tiny. The philosophicals took refuge from unpleasant reality

in the “inner liberation” offered by German idealism. Their most famous

alumnus turned out to be Bakunin. Meanwhile, the politicals studied the French

Revolution and the utopian socialists. Their leader was young Herzen.

(Stoppard, “Forgotten Revolutionary” ¶11)

While Michael makes all his sisters read as much philosophy as possible, Herzen’s

associate Belinsky finds it all useless and he discourages Katya from reading it:

Belinsky: Don’t you bother with reading, Katya, words just lead you on. They

arrange themselves every which way with no can can to carry for the

promises they can’t keep, and off you go! “The objective world is the still

unconscious poetry of the soul.” What do these words mean? “The spiritual

communion of beautiful souls attaining harmony with the Absolute.” What

do they mean?

Katya: I don’t know.

Belinsky: Nothing, and I understood them perfectly! (97)57

57 Belinsky misquotes Schelling here. The well-known phrase from Schelling’s The

System of Transcendental Idealism reads: “The objective world is only the original,

still unconscious, poetry of the spirit.” The latter quote is a parody of Schelling’s

philosophical writings, as it combines his terms into a meaningless sentence. The

audience of Voyage would be leaving the performance in confusion if they took

Belinsky’s quotes for Schelling’s. In this light, Belinsky’s claim, “I understood them

perfectly”, is a sophisticated philosophical joke on Stoppard’s part.

Kačer 259

In a dialogue with Stankevich, Belinsky almost begins to believe in the practical use of

Hegel’s philosophy, in particular in his “dialectical logic of history” (102), As

Stankevich puts it. Belinsky then supports Hegel’s views, until Herzen draws him back

to the frondeurs:

Herzen: […] You’ve got Hegel’s Dialectical Spirit of History upside down and

so has he. People don’t storm the Bastille because history proceeds by

zigzags. History zigzags because when people have had enough, they storm

the Bastille. When you turn him right way up, Hegel is the algebra of

revolution. […] Oh yes, I’ve read your articles. Belinsky, you’ve blinded

yourself. (108-9)

Herzen’s criticism of Hegel’s philosophy is also an explication of the practical attitude

to the revolutionary movement. That Herzen’s argumentation is successful is proven

later in Shipwreck when Belinsky says in his last appearance on the stage: “What have

these theoretical models got to do with us? […] I’m sick of utopias. I’m tired of hearing

about them” (Shipwreck 158). His dismissal of philosophy serves to announce the

arrival of Marx, whose philosophy will be misused to install such a utopia. Belinsky’s

line thus serves as historical irony.

In the above quoted dialogues, as well as various other short mentions of the German

idealist philosophy, Voyage serves as a classroom of the history of philosophy. On the

one hand, Stankevich and Michael describe the various concepts to explain their

motivations to believe in a social change. On the other hand, these brief lectures also

serve as an introduction into German philosophy of the nineteenth century and create a

philosophical and intellectual background for the audience.

Shipwreck and Salvage move one step further. Philosophical debates still appear, but

they are of lesser importance to the plays’ plots as the main purpose of these treatises

Kačer 260

was fulfilled in Voyage. The most important change is the incorporation of Marx among

the characters. “Consumptive

Belinsky dies having repudiated the philosophy of Hegel; and, ominously, in the

scene right after Belinsky’s last appearance, the great Hegelian revisionist Marx makes

his first” (Tucker 154). Marx is himself a German philosopher, moreover a philosopher

of revolution, who can thus express his ideas directly and for himself. It is nevertheless

true that most of what he says is presented to the audience in a simplified, even vulgar

way, in a sense comical given the circumstances: “Victory will be decided between the

proletariat and the bourgeoisie!” (Salvage 164), says Marx when he is disgustedly

watching the “bourgeois” revolution in Paris in 1848.

Besides the comical episode with translating Marx’s Communist Manifesto which

was mentioned in an above chapter, Marx and his philosophy are further made subject

to criticism in the play. Bakunin explains that Marx’s philosophy is a Western concept

which is not applicable to Russia, in fact Russia proves Marx wrong. In the context of

the freeing of the serfs in Russia, he characterises Marx and his views of the peasantry:

Bakunin: I couldn’t wait to get to see the West! But the answer was behind me

all the time. A peasant uprising, Herzen! Marx bamboozled us. He’s such a

townie – to him peasants are hardly people, they’re agriculture, like cows

and turnips. Well, he doesn’t know the Russian peasant! There’s a history of

rebellion there, and we forgot it. (218)

There is clear historical irony in this line, too, given what became of Marx’s philosophy

after Lenin transformed it and applied it in the Soviet revolution. In this sense, the

report on Marx’s mistake becomes a dramatically ironic proleptical commentary on the

future development in Russia.

In a similar way, Marx’s laws of historical development are doubted by Herzen:

Kačer 261

Herzen: Nobody’s got the map. There is no map. In the West, socialism may

win next time, but it’s not history’s destination. Socialism, too, will reach its

own extremes and absurdities, and once more Europe will burst at the

seams. Borders will change, nationalities break up, cities burn […] So it

goes. (219)

The same historical irony is at play as before. Herzen’s final protest that, “History has

no purpose! History knock at a thousand gates at every moment, and the gatekeeper is

Chance” (Salvage 335), cannot change the fact that the action on the stage is referring to

the future actual historical developments and that the philosophical debates in fact do

refer to the audience’s situation in their historical world.

To stress this view of history, that is the indeterministic view of it combined with the

historically ironic stage representation of Marx’s philosophical ideas, Marx has the last

(philosophical) word in the whole trilogy, where “the larger ironic parallel cannot be

missed. One demurs at the poetic injustice this talking-head finale does to Marx’s entire

body of thought” (Tucker 161). In the last scene of Salvage, the fictional Marx

summarises the main idea of The Communist Manifesto by the historical Karl Marx,

briefly lecturing to the audience about the principles of his economic theory and the

social implications it will have in his view:

Marx: […] Industrialisation, ever expanding to feed the markets for canoes,

samovars, those wooden dolls that fit into each other, alienates the worker

more and more from the product of his toil, until Capital and Labour stand

revealed in fatal contradiction. Then will come the final titanic struggle, the

last turn of the great wheel of progress beneath which generations of toiling

masses must perish for the ultimate victory. (335)

Kačer 262

It is in the final scene of The Coast of Utopia when the disparity between theoretical

sentimentalists and practical frondeurs unites in the philosophy of Marx.

In Stoppard’s trilogy, Russian “philosophers” and their opponents from the “political

circle” step out of the frame of action on the stage to report about history of philosophy,

in particular about the main ideas of Kant, Schelling, Fichte, and Hegel. They give small

lectures on metaphysics and ethics and they also show the positions from which these

concepts were criticised in the historical context. In the end of The Coast of Utopia, it is

left to the audience to consider the impact these theories, which are taken from actual

history of philosophy, had on the future political development in the course of the

twentieth century in Russia and elsewhere. In this way, characters become the new

messengers of philosophical knowledge and in the framework of the plays, teaching

agents.

Kačer 263

8.4. The New Messenger’s Applications: a Conclusion

The new messenger has been introduced as a specific type of a dramatic character

with specific qualities. This introduction of the character-type followed from an

argument based upon numerous sources. In the first place, there is the messenger in its

conventional form, which has been described and illustrated on examples from the

history of drama, namely in the case studies of Oedipus the King by Sophocles, Antony

and Cleopatra by Shakespeare, and Glass Menagerie by Williams. As a successor of

this conventional type of character, the new messenger has been attributed its name as

well as a basic function within the development of a play’s story, which is to push the

action forward. The structural view of drama, which helped to identify the new

messenger and its roles within the framework of a play capitalises on findings of the

Prague School, and on their observations concerning the aesthetic function of language.

The idea that the new messenger is a basic type of a conventional character is based on

the line of thought grounded in the narrative grammar and its approaches to the structure

of dramatic works. Last but not least, the fact that Brecht’s theatre has changed the

understanding of how a convention works in a play lead to the notion that a

transformation of the convention of the messenger was necessary, which gave way to an

appearance of a new type of character, the new messenger.

The case studies of various applications of this character-type showed how it is used

in a selection of contemporary mainstream dramas by Frayn, Stoppard, and Wilson. The

choice of these dramatists and their plays has been explained in one of the opening

chapters of the present thesis, and it has proven illustrative in the variety of material it

offers for analysis. The numerous instances of new messengers in action support the

main argument of the present thesis about the existence of the new messenger as a

Kačer 264

character type, as well as its specific properties. However, the analysed material allowed

to do more than that. It shows that the new messenger is used in several ways, which

can be accordingly distinguished.

The first application of the new messenger is dealt with in the sub-chapter “New

Messengers Pushing the Action Forward”. This role of the new messenger, when it

becomes the propeller of action, is shared with the conventional traditional messenger.

As the examples from Democracy and Arcadia show, characters of the plays assume the

role of the new messenger to announce new facts from outside the on-stage action to

give it a new impulse and thus steer of the action towards another direction. In

Democracy, Kretschmann’s reports from East Germany have influence on Guillaume’s

espionage career in the West German Chancellery. Set within an all-male staff of the

Chancellor’s office, the storyline turns towards Guillaume’s inevitable disclosure and

motivates his actions. In Arcadia, Hannah’s report of her discovery of the garden book,

which explains Ezra Chater’s death, shatters Bernard’s hope for a ground-breaking

discovery in the history of literature and turns an academic hero into a loser.

When pushing the action forward, there are also several other uses of the new

messenger when viewed as a type, which are covered in the sections dealing with the

voice from the gadget and reports from a play-within-a-play. As far as the former is

concerned, the radio is the first kind of a gadget which turns into a reporter in order to

push the action forward. When Mrs Grudge turns on the radio in The Real Inspector

Hound, the voice from the radio reports about an ongoing search for a murderer and

provides the audiences with a farcical exposition. In Democracy, Ehmke lends his voice

to a newspaper and the report he reads out loud contributes to the Chancellor Willy

Brandt’s fall. When creeping and crawling of Sutter’s ghost is heard from the attic in

The Piano Lesson, the family learns that the time has come to deal with the slave past.

Kačer 265

Moreover, the music of the piano brings harmony to the family’s life. Although it lacks

a voice, its sound is capable of exorcizing Sutter’s ghost and evoke their ancestors’

spirits to come to terms with them. These examples illustrate that the role of the new

messenger is not strictly limited to human characters, but can also be assumed by

various “gadgets”, which can or cannot speak. These gadgets then speak with their own

voice, with a borrowed one, or even with the sound of music.

The latter use of the new messenger pushing the action forward focuses on reporting

from a play-within-a-play. Both Rosencrantz and Guildenstern from Rosencrantz and

Guildenstern Are Dead comment on events that take place outside the stage of their

play. It is evident from their reports that they are retelling the parallel story of Hamlet.

Their observations from Hamlet on the one hand structure the unfolding action and,

ultimately, lead them to the inevitable death of them. In farcical Noises Off, characters

rehearse and perform a play-within-a-play called “Nothing On” and it is through their

reports from the two layers where their identities begin to intertwine and finally

collapse. Characters in such a play-within-a-play can become the new messenger and

bring news from the other play, because they belong to both worlds. As such, they can

pass from one to another, and it is their status as “characters” that grants them access

across the boundary between the two fictional realities, which works as a structuring

element for the audience.

In case of pushing the action forward, the convention of the messenger has gone

through the transformation as far as concerns the character, but the role has remained

comparable. The new messenger is no longer a separate character. Various other

characters can assume its function. They are main characters, supporting characters as

well as specific props, which for the most part play their own specific roles within the

Kačer 266

development of the action, only assuming the messenger’s role temporarily, when a

push forward of the action is structurally necessary.

The second sub-chapter focuses on the new messenger as an interpreter of facts and

events that take place outside the frame of on-stage action. It is in this use of the new

messenger, where the Brechtian tradition has fully separated the new type from its

conventional predecessor. It is especially in cases of reports of extrafictional facts and

events that the new messenger becomes an interpreter. By selection of facts and the

context of the delivery, it gives historical and political commentaries that shape the

audience’s understanding of the given topic. The new messenger thus becomes a

political agent when interpreting facts and events for others – other characters and the

audience alike.

Wagner of Night and Day has a privileged access to information about the civil war,

as he is a reporter. Although his reports are fictional, his framing serves as an

interpretation of the journalistic work as such, including personal involvement and

story-hunt. By his reports, he opens the arena for a political discussion that aims at the

audience’s actual world, rather than the world of the fictional action. A succession of

three studies of plays by Wilson show how the status of an eye-witness is important for

the character when it assumes the role of the new messenger. Troy of Fences, Memphis

of Two Trains Running and Booster of Jitney are all representatives of characters that

have the power to revive the past when they report about it, because they witnessed and

experienced what they now recount. They are not mere mediators of facts and events,

they are a part of them.

These case studies show that the use of the new messenger is a potent tool for

making a political statement in a historical way, as is the case of the whole of Wilson’s

Kačer 267

The Twentieth Century Cycle, where these plays belong. Wilson’s plays send out a clear

political message about the suffering and discrimination of African Americans. By

retelling the stories from the past, it becomes obvious that the reconciliation with the

slave past and racial discrimination has remained a pressing issue in the American

society. And it is Wilson’s Cycle, that becomes a part of the healing process.

Frayn’s and Stoppard’s plays do not have such a unified purpose even when they are

political or political-historical. As the case studies show, the topics of these plays differ

and so do the appeals, making their production more universal. The chapter on the new

messengers as political agents covers this diversity of topics that belong to the political

arena in the sense that they present an interpretation of history and society to the

audience, often so through new messengers’ reports. Thus, Alphabetical Order gives the

impression of a comedy about a helpless world, where any attempt on organizing fails,

or a memento of a world that is ruled by strict categories and order. Democracy rebuilds

the Iron Curtain and reminds the audience of the burden of personal decisions that

individuals were forced to make in an era of permanent political tension. Reinhardt of

Afterlife is watching his world fall apart, when he is made to leave Austria as a Jew in

the eve of the Nazi Anschluss. Jan turns from a supporter of the “Socialism with a

Human Face” after he testifies about the Communist Czechoslovak regime’s actions

against a rock band and he becomes a dissident. His reports in Rock’n’Roll further stress

the hopeless atmosphere in the country in the late 1970s and the 1980s. And The Coast

of Utopia trilogy offers yet another series of reports of totalitarian practices from 19th-

century Russia, when the members of a revolutionary circle report on events from their

country.

Although these plays by Wilson and by Frayn and Stoppard are seen as political-

historical plays, based upon the above it is evident that while Wilson’s plays aim at a

Kačer 268

political interpretation that affects the present take on the topics of the plays (racism,

discrimination, reconciliation with the past, and so on), Frayn’s and Stoppard’s plays

found a larger-scale political commentary about the nature of oppression and

totalitarianism or, their counterparts, revolutionary changes.

The last part of the chapter presenting case studies identifies the new messenger as a

teaching agent. The provided analyses show how the use of this character-type

effectively reach out to the extrafictional, actual world of the audience. In these plays,

the interference of the actual with the fictional world is even more striking than in the

case of the historical plays, where the function of referring about historical events was

to present them while interpreting, shaping them. This last part describes how the new

messenger makes extrafictional content a part of the fictional world, while preserving

the informational quality of his news which is relevant to the actual world.

Such is the case with the so-called science plays, where an explication of a scientific

theory forms an important part of the play’s narrative and structure. Kerner of Hapgood

is a scientist and his lectures about quantum physics on the one hand explain some of

the plot-constructing features of the play, but on the other teach the audience about

them. The situation is similar in Arcadia which swarms with scientists from various

fields such as mathematics, physics (Newtonian and quantum) and chaos theory. Bohr

and Heisenberg of Copenhagen are fictional representations of the physicists, and they

present their originals’ theories, such as the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum

mechanics, complementarity and uncertainty. While there are moments in each of the

plays that serve as on-stage metaphors of the scientific concepts, the scientists as

characters also give lectures (report) about their fields and as such, function as teaching

Kačer 269

agents for the audience. In this sense, this application is a return to one of the oldest

aims of drama, which is the educational role.

The Coast of Utopia is also a case of a series of lectures, this time in the history of

philosophy, namely German Idealism. While the characters try (and fail) to live up to

the teaching of the particular philosopher’s idea they support at a given moment, now

and then they switch the mode of their discourse, leave the dramatic dialogue, and

switch into a narrative mode and give an overview of the philosophy. At these moments

they are the new messengers and what they bring is facts and knowledge.

At this point, a final remark is appropriate. The new messenger has been defined as a

character with a name who has the authority to report about facts and/or events from

outside the framework of the on-stage action. It makes a character-type and its function

within the structure of a dramatic text is to push the action forward, interpret for others

or mediate knowledge. The new messenger is not a “great character”. In fact, its

application and use may well be even less frequent and functional than that of its

predecessor, the traditional conventional messenger. Nor is the new messenger a

necessary character’s role. On the contrary, the list of plays doing without it would be

endless. Moreover, its use is also a minor element in the plays that do take advantage of

this recent convention. As the “old” messenger only enters a few times, so does the new

one and when a character assumes its role, he does it for a short time.

This claim may seem to the reader of the present thesis as a let-down and I must

admit it does seem anticlimactic. However, I believe that it is necessary to remember

that the new messenger is in its essence a marginal character disregarding the amount of

pages written about it, because it is only then that the importance of this new convention

can be recognized.

Kačer 270

It is not a central element that would redefine the understanding how contemporary

mainstream drama is made. However, it presents answers to several key issues. It

illustrates how conventions disappear and how new ones take over their roles. In other

words, that drama as one of the oldest forms of artistic expression remains a living (and

thriving) genre with inner dynamics and developments, it incorporates new trends and

remains in a vivid communication with its audience. It is a case in point of how

efficiently drama treats language. A simple change of the mode opens up a whole range

of possibilities, changes characters and focuses the audience’s attention towards

radically different targets. As a system of signs, it is very efficient in the meaning-

creative process and its possibilities to encode can be very subtle. It gives evidence that

the creative potential of language is without borders. The new messengers expand the

fictional world across the boundaries of space and time, they can efficiently create a

complex context in a sentence, and can twist the course of events on a whim.

And lastly, the new messenger is contributes to the answer to the question, which is a

permanent part of any serious enquiry into the area of drama and theatre, which is, How

does it work?

Kačer 271

9. Epilogue

The present thesis begins with a quote from Aristotle, because this is also where the

story of the messenger starts. Oedipus the King stands as an ideal at the beginning of the

tradition of the structural poetics and its messengers re-enter the stage with each new

adaptation of the classical play. But just like most stories, this one also leads away from

where it began.

The view of drama as a particular structure has been radically transformed and the

normative dimension of a poetic ideal has been identified as useless and self-destructive

for the field; the stage does without imitation and narrative is no longer the opposite of

action, but it rather makes its natural complement. Similarly, the messenger does not

enter the mainstream stage with flourish as he used to, but survives as a function and

has undergone a transformation; as a character-type, it lost some of its properties but

gained new ones, radically different from the old convention.

There is no way of predicting the future and it is possible that the new messenger

will make its exit as swiftly as it made its entrance. After all, the case studies of the

present thesis are based on examples from mainstream drama. This is based on the

premise that mainstream drama uses well-proven and functional conventions. And it

was exactly for the reason that the “old” messenger, while still well-proven, seized to be

functional and therefore was abandoned; it did not correspond to the norm any more.

This inadequacy of one lead to a need of another.

When this thesis gives a name “new messenger” to this other convention that it

introduces and studies, it does so to pay tribute to the long row of messengers that

precede it and to acknowledge the continuity with them. It also takes pains to show what

remains inspirational about theory which will in some respects be as old as one hundred

Kačer 272

years very soon. The reason why it does so is the same. It is to acknowledge a

continuity in the line of thought, which believes that a better understanding of how a

dramatic piece operates on various levels provides a key to a richer enjoyment of the

beauty it contains.

Kačer 273

10. Works Cited

Ambros, Veronika. “Přesýpací hodiny (aneb Pražská sémiotika divadla a dramatu

v kontextu soudobých sémiotických teorií).” [“Hourglass (or, the Prague Semiotics

of Theatre and Drama in the Context of Contemporary Semiotic Theories).” Trans.

mine.] Divadelní Revue XII.1 (2001): 22-6. Print.

Aristotle. Poetics. Trans. S. H. Butcher. Web.

<http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/poetics.html>.

Aston, Elaine and Geogre Savona. Theatre as Sign System. A Semiotics of Text and

Performance. London: Routledge, 2007 [1991]. Print.

Barrett, James. Staged Narrative. Poetics and the Messenger in Greek Tragedy.

Berkeley: U of California P, 2002. Print.

Bernstein, Jeremy. Quantum Leaps. Cambridge (USA) and London: Belknap P of

Harvard UP, 2009. Print.

Billen, Andrew. “A Comedy of Chaos… a Perfect Play for Today.” Review of

Alphabetical Order by Michael Frayn. The Times 23 Apr 2009: 4. ProQuest Central.

Web. <http://search.proquest.com/>.

----. “Draw Near, Good People.” Review of Afterlife by Michael Frayn. New Statesman

16 Jun 2008: 44. ProQuest Central. Web. <http://search.proquest.com/>.

Billington, Michael. Stoppard: the playwright. London: Methuen, 1987. Print.

Blansfield, Karen C. “Michael Frayn and the World of Work.” South Atlantic Review.

60.4 (1995): 111-28. JSTOR. Web. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/3201239>.

----. “Atom and Eve: The Mating of Science and Humanism.” South Atlantic Review,

68.4 (2003): 1-16. JSTOR. Web. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/3201472>.

Kačer 274

Bloom, Harold, ed. Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2007.

Print.

----. The Western Canon. New York: Riverheads Books, 1994. Print.

Booker, Margaret. “Radio Golf: the courage of his convictions.” The Cambridge

Companion to August Wilson. Christopher Bigsby, ed. Cambridge: CUP, 2007.

183-92. Print.

Booth, Wayne C. The Rhetoric of Fiction. 2nd Ed. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1983.

Print.

Brecht, Bertold. “A Short Organum for the Theatre.” Brecht on Theatre. The

Development of an Aesthetic. Trans. John Willett. London: Methuen, 1964. 179-205.

Print.

----. “Short Description of a New Technique of Acting which Produces an Alienation

Effect.” Brecht on Theatre. The Development of an Aesthetic. Trans. John Willett.

London: Methuen, 1964. 136-47. Print.

----. “Shouldn’t we Abolish Aesthetics?” Brecht on Theatre. The Development of an

Aesthetic. Trans. John Willett. London: Methuen, 1964. 20-2. Print.

----. “The Epic Theatre and its Difficulties.” Brecht on Theatre. The Development of an


----. “The Literarization of the Theatre.” Brecht on Theatre. The Development of an


----. “Theatre for Pleasure or Theatre for Instruction.” Brecht on Theatre. The

Development of an Aesthetic. Trans. John Willett. London: Methuen, 1964. 69-77.

Print.

Brockett, Oscar G. History of the Theatre. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1968. Print.

Kačer 275

Brown, John Russell. Shakespeare and the Theatrical Event. Basingstoke: Palgrave

MacMillan, 2002. Print.

Brustein, Robert. “The Rebirth of Political Theater.” Review. New Republic 231.25

(2004): 31-3. Academic Search Complete. Web.

Chambers, Colin, ed. The Continuum Companion to Twentieth Century Theatre.

London: Continuum, 2002. Print.

Clark, Walter H., Jr. [untitled] Rev. of Semiotics of Art: Prague School Contributions

by Ladislav Matějka and Irwin R. Titunik. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art

Criticism. 35.3 (1977): 363-5. Web. <http://www.jstor.org>.

Deats, Sara Munson. “Shakespeare’s Anamorphic Drama. A Survey of Antony and

Cleopatra in Criticism, on Stage, and on Screen.” Antony and Cleopatra: New

Critical Essays. Ed. Sara Munson Deats . New York: Routledge, 2005. 1-94. Print.

Demastes, William W. Comedy Matters. From Shakespeare to Stoppard. New York:

Palgrave MacMillan, 2008. Print.

Diggins, John Patrick. “On the Road to Nowhere.” American Scholar 77.1 (2008):

102-9. Art Full Text (H.W. Wilson). Web. <http://www.pbk.org/>.

Doležel, Lubomír. Occidental Poetics. Tradition and Progress. Lincoln: U of Nebraska

P, 1990. Print.

Eco, Umberto. “The Poetics and Us.” On Literature. Trans. Martin McLaughlin [2004].

London: Vintage, 2006. 236-54. Print.

----. “Semiotics of Theatrical Performance.” The Drama Review: TDR. Theatre and

Social Action Issue 21.1(1977): 107-17 . JSTOR. Web.

<http://www.jstor.org/stable/1145112 >.

Edwards, Paul. “Science in Hapgood and Arcadia.” The Cambridge Companion to Tom

Stoppard. Ed. Katherine E. Kelly. Cambridge: CUP, 2001. 171-84. Print.

Kačer 276

Elam, Keir. The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama. London: Routledge, 2002 [1980].

Print.

Fleming, John. Stoppard’s Theatre: Finding Order Amid Chaos. Austin: U of Texas P,

2001. Print.

Fořt, Bohumil. Literární postava. Vývoj a aspekty naratologických zkoumání. [Literary

Character. The Development and Aspects of Narratological Research. Trans. mine.]

Praha: Ústav pro českou literaturu AV ČR, 2008. Print.

Frayn, Michael. Afterlife. London: Methuen Drama, 2008. Print.

----. Alphabetical Order. Plays: One. London and New York: Methuen, 1985. 1-77.

Print.

----. Copenhagen. New York: Anchor Books, 2000. Print.

----. Democracy. London: Methuen Drama, 2003. Print.

----. “Introduction.” Plays: One. London and New York: Methuen, 1985. vii-xvi. Print.

----. Noises Off. Plays: One. London and New York: Methuen, 1985. 359-494. Print.

----. Stage Directions: Writing on Theatre 1970-2008. London: Faber and Faber, 2008.

Print.

Genette, Gérard. “Fiction and Diction.” Fiction and Diction. Trans. Catherine Porter.

Ithaca and London: Cornell UP, 1993. 1-29. Print.

----. Palimpsests: literature in the second degree. Trans. Channa Newman and Claude

Doubinsky. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1997. Print.

Gerould, Daniel. Theatre/Theory/Theatre: The Major Critical Texts from Aristotle and

Zeami to Soyinka and Havel. New York: Applause Books, 2003. Print.

Hébert, Louis. “The Functions of Language.” Signo. Website.

<http://www.signosemio.com>.

Kačer 277

Hodgon, Barbara. “Antony and Cleopatra in the Theatre.” Cambridge Companion to

Shakespearean Tragedy. Ed. Claire McEachern. Cambridge: CUP, 2002. 241-63.

Print.

Honzl, Jindřich. “Dynamics of Sign in the Theater.” Semiotics of Art. Eds. Ladislav

Matejka and Irwin R. Titunik. Cambridge: MIT P, 1976. 75-94. Print.

Hoskovec, Tomáš. “Eighty Years of Linguistic Circle of Prague.” Tvar 19 (2006):12-3

[in Czech]. Print.

Ibell, Paul. Theatreland. A journey through the heart of London’s theatre. London:

Continuum, 2009. Print.

Itzin, Catherine. “Stoppard among the Correspondents.” Performance review. Tribune

Magazine 17 Nov 1978: 10. Web. <archive.tribunemagazine.co.uk>.

Jakobson, Roman. “Co je poezie?” [“What is Poetry?” Trans. mine.] In: Poetická funkce

[Poetic Function]. Jinočany (CZ): H&H, 1995, pp. 23-33.

Jameson, Frederic. Brecht and Method. Verso: London, 1998. Print.

Jenkins, Anthony. Critical Essays on Tom Stoppard. Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1990.

Print.

----. The Theatre of Tom Stoppard. 2nd ed. Cambridge: CUP, 2003. Print.

Koprince, Susan. “Baseball as History and Myth in August Wilson’s Fences.” African

American Review 40.2 (2006): 349-58. EBSCO Publishing. Web.

<www.ebscohost.com>.

Knox, Bernard. “Introduction to Oedipus the King.” Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. Updated

edition. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2007. 71-90. Print.

Krasner, David. “Jitney, Folklore and Responsibility.” The Cambridge Companion to

August Wilson. Ed. Christopher Bigsby. Cambridge: CUP, 2007. 158-68. Print.

Kačer 278

Kritzer, Amelia Howe. Political Theatre In Post-Thatcher Britain: New Writing, 1995-

2005. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Print.

Lahr, John. “Been Here and Gone.” The Cambridge Companion to August Wilson. Ed.

Christopher Bigsby. Cambridge: CUP, 2007. 28-51. Print.

Lara Rallo, Carmen. “‘The Past Will Have Its Time Again’: History In Tom Stoppard’s

The Coast of Utopia and Arcadia.” Bells: Barcelona English Language and

Literature Studies. Electronic journal. 15 (2006): 1-11. Web.

<http://www.raco.cat/index.php/Bells/article/view/82965>.

Logan, Robert A. “‘High events as these.’ Sources, Influences, and the Artistry of

Antony and Cleopatra.” Antony and Cleopatra. New Critical Essays. Ed. Sara

Munson Deats. New York: Routledge, 2005. 153-74. Print.

Matějka, Ladislav. No title. Interview by Petr Steiner. Česká literatura 5 (2007): n.p.

[Trans. mine.] Web. <http://vulgo.org>.

Meisel, Martin. How Plays Work: Reading and Performance. Oxford: OUP, 2007.

Print.

Mitchell, Stanley. “From Shklovsky to Brecht: Some preliminary remarks towards a

history of the politicisation of Russian Formalism”. Screen (1974) 15(2): 74-81.

Web. <http://screen.oxfordjournals.org>.

Morrison, Toni. “Foreword.” Two Trains Running by August Wilson. New York:

Theatre Communications Group, 2007. Print. pp. vii-xiii.

Mukařovský, Jan. Estetická funkce, norma a hodnota jako sociální fakty. [Aesthetic

Function, Norm and Value as Social Facts. In Czech. Trans. mine.] Praha (CZ): Fr.

Borový, 1936. Print.

Kačer 279

----. “Pokus o strukturní rozbor hereckého zjevu.” [“An Attempted Structural Analysis

of the Phenomenon of the Actor.” In Czech.] In: Studie I. Brno (CZ): Host, 2000.

463-72. Print.

----. “Two Studies of Dialogue.” The Word and Verbal Art. Trans. and Eds. John

Burbank and Peter Steiner. New Haven: Yale UP, 1997. 81-115. Print.

Musilová, Martina. Healthy Schizophrenia. Influences of Brechtian Epic Theatre and

Alienation Effect in Czech Modern Acting. [In Czech.] Dissertation. Prague: Charles

U, 2007. Electronic text.

Nadel, Ira. Double Act. A life of Tom Stoppard. London: Methuen, 2004. Print.

Nolan, Paul T. “On the Memory Play.” Bloom’s Guides: The Glass Menagerie. New

York: Chelsea House, 2007. Print.

Osolsobě, Ivo. „Ostenze aneb zpráva o komunikačních reformách na ostrově

Balnibarbi.“ Ostenze, hra, jazyk. Sémiotické studie. [“Ostension, or the News of

Communication Reforms in Balnibarbi Island.” Ostension, Game, Language. Studies

in Semiotics. Trans. mine.] Brno (CZ): Host, 2002. 15-42. Print.

Pavis, Patrice. Dictionary of the Theatre: Terms, Concepts, and Analysis. Trans.

Christine Shantz. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1998. Print.

----. “The Semiotics of Theatre.” Trans. Tjaart Potgieter. Versus 21 (1978): n.p. [In

French.] Web. <http://archive.lib.msu.edu>.

----. “The State of Current Theatre Research.” Applied Semiotics/Sémiotique appliquée

1.3 (1997): 203-30. Web. <http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/french/as-sa/ASSA-

No3/Vol1.No3.Pavis.pdf>.

Peirce, Charles Sanders. “On a New List of Categories.” Proceedings of the American

Academy of Arts and Sciences 7 (1868): 287-98. Web.

<http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/bycsp/newlist/nl-frame.htm>.

Kačer 280

Pfister, Mansfred. The Theory and Analysis of Drama. Trans. John Halliday. New York:

Cambridge UP, 1991 [1983]. Print.

Piano Lesson, The. Dir. Lloyd Richards. Hallmark Hall of Fame, 1995. TV film. Web.

<http://www.youtube.com>.

Plutarch. Antony. Trans. Bernadotte Perrin. Perseus Digital Library. Tufts University.

Web. <http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/>.

Portis-Winner, Irene. “Peirce, Saussure and Jakobson’s Aesthetic Function.” Peirce and

Value Theory: On Peircean Ethics and Aesthetics. Ed. Herman Parret. Amsterdam

(NL): John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1994. Web. <http://books.google.com>.

“Prague Linguistics – Linguistique de Prague.” Web.

<http://www.praguelinguistics.org>.

Prentki, Tim and Jan Selman. Popular Theatre in Political Culture. Britain and Canada

in focus. Bristol: Intellect, 2000. Print.

Propp, Vladimir. Morphology of the Folktale. Trans. Laurence Scott. International

Journal of American Linguistics 24.4 (1958): whole issue. Print.

Quinn, Michael L. The Semiotic Stage. Prague School Theater Theory. New York: Peter

Lang, 1995. Print.

Richardson, “Drama and Narrative.” The Cambridge Companion to Narrative. Ed.

David Herman. Cambridge: CUP, 2007. 142-55. Print.

Rocamora, Carol. “The Parallel Worlds of Rock’n’Roll.” American Theatre 23.8 (2006):

122-7. Academic Search Complete. Web. <http://search.ebscohost.com>.

Rousseau, Aloysia. “‘We will write it again”: subverted hermeneutics in Tom

Stoppard’s Arcadia.” Sillages critiques 13 (2011): n.p. 1 Dec 2011. Web.

<http://sillagescritiques.revues.org/2450>.

Kačer 281

Sammells, Neil. “The Early Stage Plays.” The Cambridge Companion to Tom Stoppard.

Ed. Katherine E. Kelly. Cambridge: CUP, 2001. 104-19. Print

Saussure, Ferdinand de. Course in General Linguistics. Trans. Wade Baskin. London:

Fontana/Collins, 1974 [1916]. Print.

Shakespeare, William. Antony and Cleopatra. Open Source Shakespeare. George

Mason University. Web. <http://www.opensourceshakespeare.com>.

----. Hamlet. Open Source Shakespeare. George Mason University. Web.

<http://www.opensourceshakespeare.com>.

Shannon, Sandra G. “Audience and Africanisms in August Wilson’s Dramaturgy: A

Case Study.” Bloom’s Modern Critical Views: August Wilson. Harold Bloom, ed.

New York: Infobase Publishing, 2009. 21-42. Print.

Shepherd, Simon and Mick Wallis. Drama/Theatre/Performance. New York:

Routledge, 2004. Print.

Sophocles. Oedipus the King. Trans. Ian Johnston (2004). Web.

<http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/sophocles/oedipustheking.htm>.

Stoppard, Tom. Arcadia. Tom Stoppard: Plays 5. London: Faber and Faber, 1999.

1-137. Print.

----. The Coast of Utopia: Voyage, Shipwreck, Salvage. London: Faber and Faber, 2002.

Print.

----. “The Forgotten Revolutionary.” The Observer 2 Jun 2002. n.p. Web.

<www.guardian.co.uk>.

----. Hapgood. Tom Stoppard: Plays 5. London: Faber and Faber, 1999. 483-593. Print.

----. “Introduction.” Rock’n’Roll. New York: Grove P, 2006. ix-xix. Print.

----. Night and Day. London: Faber and Faber, 1978. Print.

Kačer 282

----. “My Love Affair with Newspapers.” Edited version of a taped interview with the

editor. British Journalism Review. 16.4 (2005): 19-29. SAGE Publications. Web.

<http://www.sagepub.co.uk>.

----. The Real Inspector Hound. London: Faber and Faber, 1968. Print.

----. Rock’n’Roll. New York: Grove P, 2006. Print.

----. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. London: Faber and Faber, 1988 [1967].

Print.

Theatre Awards. Albemarle of London, 2012. Web.

<http://www.albemarle-london.com/awards/Awards.php>.

Tony Awards. Tony Awards Productions, 2012. Web.

<http://www.tonyawards.com/en_US/index.html>.

Tucker, Herbert F. “History Played Back: In Defense of Stoppard’s Coast Of Utopia.”

Raritan 24.4 (2005): 149-69. Academic Search Complete. Web.

<http://search.ebscohost.com/>.

Turner, Barnard. “Tom Stoppard’s The Real Inspector Hound (1968) and The Real

Thing (1982): New Frames and Old.” The Play within the Play. The Performance of

Meta-Theatre and Self-Reflection. Eds. Gerhard Fischer and Bernhard Greiner.

Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi, 2007. 113-28. Print.

Veltruský , Jiří. “The Prague School Theory of Theater.” Poetics Today. Drama,

Theater, Performance: A Semiotic Perspective . 2.3 (1981): 225-35 . JSTOR. Web.

<http://www.jstor.org/stable/1772473 >.

Walker, Julia A. “The Text/Performance Split across the Analytic/Continental Divide.”

Staging Philosophy. Intersections of Theater, Performance, and Philosophy. Eds.

David Krasner and David Z. Saltz Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P. 19-40. Print.

Kačer 283

Waugh, Linda R. and Monique Monville-Burston. “Introduction to Roman Jakobson,

Selected Writings.” Selected Writings. Volume II by Roman Jakobson. New York:

Mouton de Gruyter, 2002 [1962]. Introduction. Web. <http://books.google.com>.

Wessling, Joseph H. “Wilson’s Fences.” The Explicator 57.2 (1999): 123-6. EBSCO

Publishing. Web. <www.ebscohost.com>.

Williams, Tennessee. Glass Menagerie. Oxford: Heineman Educational Publishers,

1996. Print.

Wilmeth, Don B. and Christopher Bigsby, eds. The Cambridge History of American

Theatre, Volume Two: 1870-1945. Cambridge: CUP, 1999. Print.

Wilson, August. Fences. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2007. Print.

----. Jitney. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2007. Print.

----. The Piano Lesson. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2007. Print.

----. Two Trains Running. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2007. Print.

Wren, Celia. “Germans & Their Spies.” Commonweal 132.2 (2005): 32-3. Academic

Search Complete. Web. <http://search.ebscohost.com>.

Wu, Duncan. Making Plays: Interviews with Contemporary British Dramatists and

Their Directors. London: MacMillan P, 2000. Print.

Zich, Otakar. Estetika dramatického umění: teoretická dramaturgie. [Aesthetics of

Drama: Theoretical Dramaturgy.] Prague (CZ): Panorama, 1986 [1931]. Print.

Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States. New York: Perennial Classics,

2003. Print.

Zoglin, Richard. “The Spy Who Left Us Cold.” Review of Democracy by Michael

Frayn. Time 164.23 (2004): 111. Academic Search Complete. Web.

<http://search.ebscohost.com>.

Kačer 284

Summary

The thesis introduces the new messenger as a type of dramatic character, and

provides examples of the use of this type in a series of case studies of plays by two

British playwrights Michael Frayn and Tom Stoppard, and an African-American

playwright August Wilson.

As the name suggests, the new messenger is a follower of the conventional

messenger whose presence in classical drama serves several purposes, such as to present

the context of the initial dramatic situation (exposition) and to bring new facts in order

to push the action forward. The new messenger also fulfils these functions. What makes

it different is the fact that it is not an independent character, but the role it has is

assumed by major characters in contemporary mainstream drama, who can step out of

their identity and assume the messenger’s role.

As far as concerns the main characters, it is primarily journalists and reporters,

politicians and their assistants, scientists and teachers, detectives and police officers,

historical characters, philosophers and literary scholars, as well as many others. The

new messenger shares with the traditional messenger the ability to bring information

from outside the frame of the on-stage action. In order to have the authority to do so, the

new messenger must have access to such facts and events. It is the characters’

occupation that grants them this access.

Formally speaking, the switch from the character’s proper role to that of the new

messenger is signalled by a change in the mode of delivery. The basic form of the new

messenger’s speech is the reportage, which refers to events and/or facts from the

fictional world of the play or the actual world. The reportage is a small narrative and

from the functional point of view, the referential language function dominates it. Based

Kačer 285

on the nature of the new messenger’s report and its role within the structure of the

development of a play’s plot, the new messenger’s report (1) pushes the action forward,

(2) serves to interpret the reported facts and/or events, which makes the new messenger

a political agent, as the case studies of political-historical plays show, or (3) explicate

facts from the actual world to the audience, thus making the new messenger a teaching

agent with an educational purpose.

The thesis consists of the following parts. Chapter 1 presents the structure of the

dissertation and explains the choice of the topic and the material. It claims that the

choice of mainstream authors serves to identify the new messenger as an accepted,

understood and widely used convention. Chapter 2 introduces the traditional messenger

– the classical convention used throughout the history of drama in analyses of Oedipus

the King by Sophocles, Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare, and Glass

Menagerie by Tennessee Williams. Chapter 3 introduces theories that have shaped the

theoretical understanding of the new messenger as it is handled in the present thesis. It

begins with the poetic tradition capitalising on Aristotle, continues with selected issues

from the works of the Prague School, and pays special attention to the issue of the

functions of language, mainly on the coexistence and interaction between the aesthetic

function of language and the referential function of language. The chapter then

continues with narrative grammar, which tradition contributes to understanding the new

messenger as a type, or a role with a specific function. Chapter 4 deals with Bertolt

Brecht, focusing on his influence on political drama and theatrical conventions. Chapter

5, “The Reportage” capitalises on the theoretical chapter and identifies the reportage as

a narrative technique which is the main identifying element of the messenger as well as

its new follower. Chapter 6 then introduces the new messenger as a general concept and

presents several theoretical points concerning this role of a character. After an

Kačer 286

introduction in Chapter 7, Chapter 8 provides a series of case studies divided into three

parts according to the three main uses of the new messenger.

The thesis provides an insight into the transformation of the convention of the

messenger, which has seemingly disappeared from mainstream drama, and shows that

some of its roles have been assumed by the new messenger, which then also fulfils a

variety of other roles.

Kačer 287

Shrnutí

Dizertační práce se zabývá specifickým typem dramatické postavy, který

pojmenovává „nový posel“ (v určitých kontextech se pak jako vhodnější termín za

označení „posel“ jeví též vypravěč či opovědník). Uvádí řadu případových studií, které

analyzují příklady užití tohoto typu postavy. Konkrétně analyzuje dramata dvou

britských dramatiků, Michaela Frayna a Toma Stopparda, a afroamerického dramatika

Augusta Wilsona.

Nového posla lze chápat jako následovníka konvenčního typu postavy známé z

klasických dramat nejčastěji jako posel. Přítomnost posla v klasickém dramatu má

několik důvodů, mezi něž patří uvedení do počáteční dramatické situace (expozice) či

oznámení nových informací, jejichž účelem je posunout děj kupředu. Tyto funkce plní i

nový posel. Toho však odlišuje fakt, že se nejedná o samostatnou postavu, ale jeho roli

v současném mainstreamovém dramatu přejímá některá z hlavních postav, která za

tímto účelem na okamžik vystoupí z vlastní identity a poddá se této vedlejší roli.

Mezi takové postavy patří především rozliční novináři či reportéři, politici či jejich

asistenti, vědci či učitelé, detektivové či policisté, historické postavy, filozofové a

literární vědci, jakož i mnohé jiné postavy. Nový posel má totožnou schopnost uvádět

neznámé informace, které nepocházejí z rámce děje na jevišti. Takovou schopnost si

daná postava zajišťuje tím, že musí mít oprávnění k daným faktům či událostem

přistupovat. Tuto možnost jí obvykle zajišťuje její povolání.

Z formálního hlediska pak dochází k vystoupení postavy z její vlastní role a

chvilkového nabytí role nového posla tím, že se změní způsob promluvy, a tato změna

pak patřičnou záměnu rolí signalizuje. Základní formou promluvy nového posla je

reportáž, tedy vyprávění o faktech či událostech pocházejících z fikčního svět a daného

Kačer 288

dramatu či ze světa aktuálního. Reportáž jako taková je krátký narativní útvar a z

funkčního hlediska v ní dominuje referenční funkce jazyka. S ohledem na povahu

reportáže pak nový posel plní tři základní role. Buďto posouvá děj kupředu, nebo

interpretuje prezentovaná fakta, čímž se stává politicky aktivním činitelem, jak je patrné

například z analýz věnovaných politicko-historickým hrám, nebo předkládá fakta či

znalosti z aktuálního světa, čímž se stává jakýmsi učitelem a účel jeho promluvy je

edukativní.

Dizertační práce sestává z následujících částí. 1. kapitola je úvodem, ve kterém je

představena struktura celé dizertační práce a objasněn výběr tématu i materiálu. Kromě

jiného se zde vysvětluje, že volba mainstreamových autorů slouží k určení nového posla

coby přijímané, srozumitelné a užívané konvence. Ve 2. kapitole se práce věnuje

tradiční postavě posla, tedy klasické konvenci a jejímu užití v dějinách dramatu. K tomu

účelu se zde analyzují Sofoklův Král Oidipus, Antonius a Kleopatra Williama

Shakespeara a Skleněný zvěřinec Tennessee Williamse. 3. kapitola je teoretická.

Uváděné teorie tvarovaly chápání nového posla, jak jej prezentuje tato dizertační práce.

Nejprve se zabývá západní strukturálně poetickou tradicí sahající až k Aristotelovi, dále

pokračuje vybranými relevantními tématy, jak je zpracovala Pražská škola, a nakonec se

hlouběji věnuje tématu jazykových funkcí, zvláště pak vzájemným vztahem mezi funkcí

poetickou a referenční. Kapitola dále představuje koncept narativní gramatiky, jejíž

tradice vede k chápání nového posla coby specifickému typu či roli s danou funkcí. 4.

kapitola se zabývá Bertoltem Brechtem a zaměřuje se na jeho vliv na oblast politického

dramatu a divadelních konvencí. 5. kapitola vychází z teoretické části a jejím tématem

je reportáž coby vyprávěcí technika, která je hlavním identifikujícím prvkem posla i

jeho nového následovníka. V 6. kapitole je pak shrnut celý koncept nového posla včetně

několika teoretických bodů s ohledem na tuto roli, kterou mohou postavy nabývat. Po

Kačer 289

úvodu v 7. kapitole následuje 8. kapitola, která sestává s množství analýz dramatických

děl. Kapitola je rozdělena do tří částí podle toho, jak je nový posel používán.

Dizertační práce poukazuje na přeměnu konvence postavy posla, která se zdánlivě z

mainstreamového dramatu vytratila, a dokládá, jak některé z tradičních poslových rolí

p

ř

e

b

r

a

l

n

o

v

ý

p

o

s

e

l

,

k

t

e

r

Messengers on Stage - IS MUNI - Masarykova univerzita

Documents

Transcript of Messengers on Stage - IS MUNI - Masarykova univerzita