Stanford Drama

A theory describing the spectator's phenomenal experience of the onstage human figure can be derived from a close study of Shakespeare's Coriolanus. Through its internal debates over how other persons are to be perceived, coupled with its insistence on the body and voice as separate and irreconcilable elements of perception, this play generates a fundamental tension between seeing and hearing in the percepction of the onstage figure, and questions the ease with which data from these two senses are usually unconsciously intergrated. In this, Coriolanus can be compared to the plays of Beckett, and also to foundational texts such as the Hebrew scriptures, particularly as interpreted by Elaine Scarry.

The radical separation of body from voice also reveals and problematizes other phenomenal polarities, such as those of action vs. stillness and singularity vs. plurality. In each case, elements of perception that we normally assimilate are charged with unusual significance in the drama, which has the effect of arresting our attention on the act of perception itself. These separations take on an analytic quality, allowing us to see the intrinsic behavior of each phenomenal element and the essential relations between them. Through this separation of essential materials, the play begins to reveal the structure of theatrical perception. In particular, the play allows us to identify two contrasting elements of audience interest—instrumental interest, which rests on a fantasy of transcendent activeness, and orificial interest, which inheres in images of absence or lack. These categories, which describe the audience's experience of the stage figure prior to interpreting it as a character, provide a useful descritpion of the intrisnic phenomenal tensions that govern the perception of the actor both on- and offstage.