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Shakespeare and the Stage / With a Complete List of Theatrical Terms Used by Shakespeare in His Plays and Poems, Arranged in Alphabetical Order, & Explanatory Notes cover

Shakespeare and the Stage / With a Complete List of Theatrical Terms Used by Shakespeare in His Plays and Poems, Arranged in Alphabetical Order, & Explanatory Notes

Chapter 86: TROILUS AND CRESSIDA
By Maurice Jonas
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About This Book

A historical and practical study of dramatic performance and stagecraft that traces how medieval religious spectacles gave way to secular comedy and tragedy, examines inn-yard presentations and purpose-built playhouses, and surveys company organization, acting practice, court performances, and theatrical allusions. The work describes theatre architecture, audience arrangements, production practices, and contemporary documents and illustrations, and concludes with an alphabetically arranged glossary of stage terms associated with Shakespeare, each entry supplied with explanatory notes to clarify period usage and theatrical meaning.

TROILUS AND CRESSIDA

ACTOR. PROLOGUE. ARGUMENT. PLAY.

And hither am I come
A prologue armed, but not in confidence
Of author’s pen or actor’s voice, but suited
In like condition as our argument.
To tell you fair beholders, that our play
Leaps o’er the vaunt and firstlings of these broils,
Beginning in the middle, starting thence away
To what may be digested in a play.

Prologue, line 23.

HISS.

Some two months hence my will shall here be made.
It should be now, but that my fear is this,
Some galled goose of Winchester would hiss.

V, 10, 55.

PAGEANT.

Q.

Let my lady apprehend no fear; in all
Cupid’s pageant there is represented no monster.

III, 2, 80.

From this passage it must be inferred that a Fear was a part played or impersonated in our old pageants or moralities. To this circumstance, Aspatia alludes in The Maid’s Tragedy, “And then a Fear,” “Do that Fear bravely wench.”

Let Patroclus make demands to me,
You shall see the pageant of Ajax.

III, 3, 275.

PLAYER. SCAFFOLDAGE.

And like a strutting player, whose conceit
Lies in his hamstring, and doth think it rich
To hear the wooden dialogue and sound
’Twixt his stretched footing and the scaffoldage.
Such to be pitied and o’er wrested seeming
He acts thy greatness in.

Good all round acting in Shakespeare’s time was not the order of the day, as practised in ours. One or two stars, and the rest nowhere. Thus Shakespeare compares the strutting actor to the wooden boards on which he treads, making up in martial gait and heavy tread what he lacks in spiritual fire. The scaffoldage refers to the wooden platform on which plays were enacted. A hamstring is one of the tendons which form the sides of the ham or space at the back of the knee.

APPLAUSE.

From his deep chest laughs out a loud applause.

I, 11, 163.

PLAY.

Now play me Nestor.

I, 3, 165.

Now play him me Patroclus.

I, 3, 170.

SCENE.

In Troy there lies the scene.

Prologue, line 1.