A.M. Potter Editors, texts, and performance: the value of textual criticism in the age of relativity

T he article is an a ttem pt in part to refu te what are seen as gross d isto rtions of the work of Shakespeare’s editors in a recently-published article by Johannes Birringer. Initially the work of such editors is analysed, with particular emphasis being placed on their acknowledgement of the tentative nature of their conclusions, in refutation of Birringer’s claim that they are obsessed with ‘authority’ and definitive texts. It is then pointed out that Birringer bases his argument on a false perception of the relationship between text and performance in the Elizabethan theatre, and the value of sound editorial work is then indicated, based on a more accurate assessment of this relationship. The argument is then extended into a more general discussion of the attitudes underlying Birringer’s article, which are questioned in a number of ways on the basis of the contradiction between theory and practice.


The issue
Johannes B irringer's article "Texts, plays and instabilities" in the first edition of South African Theatre Journal (1987:4-16) contains, among other things, such a distorted view of the activities of the editors of Shakespeare's plays that I feel compelled to make some sort of defence of their work, while at the sam e time extending the discussion from a simple argum ent/ counter-argum ent encounter to an attem pt to gain a more balanced perspective on some of the broader issues Birringer's article raises.
In his argu m ent B irringer, follow ing the recen t tren d in the discussion of w hat could b roadly and loosely be called cu ltu ral experience to see relativism everyw here and perm anence nowhere, seeks to do away with many o f the approaches to dram a that have been employed up to now, all of which, he feels, tend to seek for some kind of hierarchy, stability and perm anence.I should state immediately that this position is neither here nor there, really: modes of interpretation come and go; each has its contribution to make; and each has its w eaknesses.In the course of estab lish in g his case, how ever, B irringer introduces a thoroughgoing dismissal of the work of the editors of Shakespeare's plays, which I shall rep eat in full, since it will provide the basis for the first p art o f this article.Birringer (1987:10-11) states that Shakespeare scholars continue to be religiously obsessed with determinisms, G ood and Evil quartos, "definite" or "original" texts, "authority", "aesthetic integrity", and so forth, although they should in fact know that -so far as performance goes -the written Text remains our best evidence after the event, very much like the quartos and folios of the Elizabethan stage that are in most cases merely records and transcripts o f a certain perform ance in a certain playhouse.Shakespeare's m odern editors, in th eir search for the lost U rtext and th eir constru ctio n o f an "a u th o rita tiv e ' version of it, have successfully repressed the unthinkable thought that there never was a stable text in the first placc but only scenarios-inprogress (sic), trial versions, subject to cutting, rewording, expansion, revision ... and, not surprisingly, to collaborative processes in the theatre as well as to diverse proprietary interests of acting companies and owners.Now, whereas it seems to have become an established fact of many of the procedures which have been created to discuss cultural experience that in order to say something considered to be 'new ' and 'd iffe re n t' exponents o f th e 'new ' feel obliged to go in for "blanket condemnations of existing positions ... as ... a strategy, the purpose of which is to carve out a place within the discipline for the group's interests and methods" (Visser, 1983:60), such procedures seem to me to be extremely unfortunate.They become so because they almost invariably involve the universally condem ned activity o f throwing the baby out with the bathw ater, in this case in particular dismissing and denegrating som e genuinely valuable work done by some very capable people for the sake of introducing as yet untried ideas into the spectrum of know ledge -or, m ore accurately, into the spectrum o f theo ries about knowledge.

The procedures and practice of textual criticism
In order to retain what seems to me to be a very healthy baby, what this article will attem pt to do is to examine the principles the editors of Shakespeare's plays have developed over the years, in o rd er to see if th ere is any value in th eir work.To get to the ro o t of the m a tte r, one needs to ask q u estio n s a b o u t w hat exactly S h a k e sp e a re 's e d ito rs are attem p tin g to do w hen they p re p a re a m o d ern ed itio n o f o n e o f his plays, on w hat principles they are attem pting to operate when they do so, and what their attitude to their work is.Is it as blinkered -and self-deluding -as Birringer suggests it is?All these m atters have b een discussed w ith g re a t clarity in key w orks w hich p ro v id e th e b asis for understanding w hat a textual critic working with the plays of Shakespeare (or, for that m atter, with any o th er text) is trying to achieve.W.W. G reg, probably the g reatest of Shakespeare's editors, sets out seven rules in his The editorial problem in Shakespeare which can serve as valuable guidelines to anyone who wishes to find out m ore about the subject.These can profitably be read in full (Greg, 1954:x-lv), but only Rule 1 is quoted here, for it states the basic aim of the textual critic p rep arin g a critical ed itio n of a R enaissance dramatic text: The aim o f a critical edition should be to present the text, so far as the available evidence penniis, in the form in which we m ay suppose that it would have stood in a fair copy, m ade by the author himself, o f the work as he finally intended it.(Greg, 1954:x) Let us set aside for the mom ent the issue of w hether attem pting to establish a text "as [the author] finally intended it" is a valid aim (it will be addressed later), and examine the tone of this statem ent.Notice how built into the apparently prescriptive form of a 'rule' there is a considerable m easure o f tentativeness: the text is established "so fa r as the available evidence permits"', there is no attem pt to claim absolute authority.Similar statem ents in th e sam e sp irit m ad e by G reg an d o th e r te x tu a l critics su p p o rt a c le a r case for acknowledging that Shakespeare's editors do not make the kind of rigid claims about their work that B irringer seem s to think they do: G reg (1954:ix), for example, states earlier in the work already referred to that This seems sufficiently clear and undogmatic in tone not to require further comment.Greg states elsewhere (1970:27), in his discussion of the establishm ent of a copy-text (the text upon which a modern edition of a Renaissance dramatic text is generally based): Since the adoption of a copy-text is a m atter of convenience rather than of principle ... it follows that there is no reason for treating it as sacrosan ct....He concludes his discussion with the statem ent: "My desire is rather to provoke discussion than to lay down the law" (G reg, 1970:33).N otice in particular G reg 's use of the term sacrosanct, w hich m akes an in te restin g co m p ariso n w ith B irrin g e r's sta te m e n t th at Shakespeare's editors are "religiously obsessed" with the fundam entals of their work.In fact G reg here, using terminology with identical associations, not only denies the need for any such 'religious' obsession, but by im plication specifically rejects such an obsession.A .E. H ousm an (1970:2) uses th e sam e term inology to m ake the sam e point: "[textual criticism] is not a sacred mystery".
To extend the point, Fredson Bowers, another formidable name in the area of Renaissance textual criticism, proceeds along sim ilar lines when he sets out one of the principles the m odern textual critic should apply: "In editing it is necessary to proceed on consistent assumptions".He then adds, 'T h e application of this saw should not be confused with the derivation and observance of m echanical rules" (Bowers, 1955:6).H ousm an (1970:2) makes an identical point: ...textual criticism is not ... an cxact science at all.It deals with a m atter not rigid and c o n sta n t... but fluid and variable ....It is therefore not susceptible of hard-and-fast rules.
All this, I would suggest, evidences an attitude of Shak esp eare's editors to th eir work adm irably elastic, open, un dogm atic in th e extrem e, acknow ledging fully th e highly tentative nature of their conclusions and equally aware that, contrary to Birringer's claims, there is no such thing as a 'definite' or 'original' text with absolute 'authority', an 'U rtext' of which they can say, 'This is the last word on the text of H amlet or R om eo and Juliet' or whatever.They are fully aware that they are merely presenting the best text possible, given the evidence available, in full acknowledgement of its imperfection in ideal terms.Textual critics, it can clearly be seen from the above statem ents, do not see themselves as working in ideal terms.Now, it undoubtedly happens that trail-blazers and theorists such as the men quoted above have their ideas or principles distorted by followers who come later, who cannot cope with elasticity and need rigid guidelines, h ard-and-fast rules ra th e r th an b ro ad ad ap ta b le principles, but this happens in any discipline, and I see no reason why a basically sound set of principles (backed up by some adm irable practice which is evidenced by the many fine editions of Renaissance plays we have available to us today) should be condemned because of its second-rate, more literal-minded adherents.
Even more, their work should not be loosely conflated, as Birringer does, with what he calls "the nostalgic wish for an 'authentic' staging" which he quite rightly rejects as 'irrelevant' (B irrin g er, 1987:10).T he d esire for som e so rt o f a u th e n tic p e rfo rm a n ce th a t will "reproduce for a m odern audience the effect (it) may be supposed to have had upon (its) original audience" (Birringer, 1987:9, quoting Stanley Wells) is so obvious an absurdity that it scarcely needs comment, other than to state that such a perform ance is impossible simply because th ere is m inim al evidence upon which such a p erfo rm an ce could be based, whereas -and this is the key point that I would like to make here -there is very specific, concrete evidence on which to base an edition of a R enaissance text in the m anner which Greg sets out in the seven rules referred to above.This evidence is generally a printed text (often a quarto or folio) that was set up from some kind of manuscript, and it is with the p ro c e s s o f tu r n in g th a t m a n u s c rip t in to a p r in te d te x t by c o m p o s ito rs in an E lizab eth an /Jaco b e a n printing-house th a t the textual critic is m ost concerned, mainly attempting to ascertain what kind of errors crept in while the text was being set up prior to printing.
The fundamental problem with Birringer's critique of the work of textual critics stems from the fact that he does not correctly understand the relationship betw een the text with which the textual critic is concerned and the performance.He (Birringer, 1987:11) states that the ... quartos and folios of the Elizabethan stage ... are in most cases merely records and transcripts of a certain performance in a certain playhouse.
TTiis is most certainly incorrect: in fact the quartos and folios were almost invariably set up in the printing-house from som e form of m anuscript which provided not a record of a perform ance but rather the prior basis for perform ance(s) -which is an entirely different thing.F redson Bowers in his On editing Shakespeare id en tifies 13 possible states of m anuscripts of this type (Bow ers, 1955:11-12); only two types of p rin ter's copy w ere records of a performance; and these were either very rare, or a hopelessly garbled version of the play (forming the basis for the 'Bad quartos' which Birringer incorrectly perceives as the focus of obsessive behaviour by Shakespeare's editors)^.
As a result of this, it is clear that the textual critic is working with a text rath er than with p erfo rm an ce, and therefore does not seek to interfere in any way with the process o f performance.He or she tacitly acknowledges that w hat the E lizabethan players did with that text once they started preparing for a perform ance in the theatre is not their business at all (except in special circumstances, see below), and they would equally not dream of attem pting to dictate on questions of performance to a m odern director, or to criticise that director for adapting the text the editor produces in any way h e/sh e likes.A textual critic w ould th e re fo re ag re e w h o le h e a rte d ly w ith B irrin g e r's c o n te n tio n th a t "so fa r as perform ance goes -the w ritten Text rem ains our best evidence after the event" (Birringer, 1987:11), qualifying it merely (but vitally) by saying that a textual critic is not concerned with perform ance, unless it has visibly affected text (see below ), and th a t -with this qualification -the questions of text and performance are two entirely separate issues, which should in no way be conflated -as Birringer misleadingly does.
Once the order of procedure has been correctly established, one will further discover that the textual critic also takes into account B irringer's (1987:11) description of texts as being nothing more than ... scenarlos-inprogress, trial versions, subject to cutting, rewording, expansion, revision ... and ... to collaborative processes in the theatre as well as to diverse proprietary interests o f acting companies and owners insofar as evidence fo r such processes is available within the material upon which a m odem text is based.This is clearly acknowledged in an illum inating discussion of the many and various ways in which a play comes to be created, and their effect on the work of the textual critic, by Jam es Thorpe in his "The aesthetics of textual criticism" (G ottesm an and Bennett, 1970:77-79).T he editor will deal with such factors in the following way.W hen there ap p ear to be several versions o f a text, often the result of later rew ritings (frequently prom pted by changes made in rehearsal, or in production) the editor will make a decision to print a particular version, but will give a full and complete record of all other readings of modified passages, together with a full statem ent of the evidence which he used and the principles upon which he based his judgem ent to print the text that he/she did print, so that the read er may come to h is/h er own conclusions as to which the 'b est' reading is.This seems to be an altogether acceptable, open, and honest procedure, undeserving of blame.So in fact, far from "successfully repress[ing] the unthinkaWe thought that there never was a stable text" (Birringer, 1987:11), Shakespeare's editors fully acknowledge that texts were constantly modified, but speculate about such changes only insofar as there is evidence within the raw m aterials with which they work (printed texts or manuscripts) to support any case they m ake.F or classic exam ples of such procedures one might look a t Nicholas Brooke's edition of Chapm an's Bussy D ' Ambois in the Revels series, or virtually any critical edition of Marlowe's Dr Faustus, to name but two in which this process is clearly to be seen.
If we are to proceed a little fu rther with the discussion, then B irringer's assertion that "there never was a stable text" needs to be looked at a little closer, because it is here that probably the crux of my argum ent as to the value of the work done by textual critics is to be found.It is un doubtedly valid to m ake such a statem en t (since texts obviously w ere adapted in some way all the time, while playwrights, knowing that they were only providing a working script which would be adapted in the theatre, were often very casual about the manuscript they handed to the theatre company), but this cannot be crudely extended to the assumption that there never was a text at all and therefore that any attem pt to establish a text is highly questionable (as Birringer constantly implies).Birringer, we recall, is working on the inaccurate a.ssumption that the text was a record of a performance, and since there was obviously never a stable perform ance (although even that statem ent probably needs to be q u alified ), th en any atte m p t to m ake a p rin ted record (as he thinks h a p p en ed ) of a particular perform ance, and then edit that record and view the resulting text as sacrosanct and authoritative, is obviously questionable.But if we view the procedure correctly -i.e. that some kind of manuscript formed the prior basis for performance, however much it was adapted or m odified later -then we find ourselves confronted with an entirely different situation.

The value of textual criticism
I would like to clarify this situation by examining it in terms of what goes on in any theatre nowadays when a play is produced, w hether it be a production of a Renaissance dram a or a m odern play.Surely one must acknowledge the initial presence o f a text, generally a printed or typed one, that provides the basis of m ost productions, and therefore of each in d iv id u al p e rfo rm a n c e w ith in a p ro d u c tio n ru n .It is tru e th a t som e plays are workshopped from a basic scenario, or developed in some other way without a pre-written text, but these are in the minority.D irectors and producers read texts, eith er a printed version of a play (usually, it should be pointed out, prepared by some kind of editor, even if it was the author her/him self) or a typed manuscript of a newly-written work.This is called the script, if you like, but the fact remains that it takes the form o f a printed text.Actors are given scripts/texts from which to learn their lines.Now, that text may be cut, modified, and adapted in rehearsal, bui it still provides the basis fo r a perfonnance.And if this is the case, why then reject w ith co n tem p t the labours of m en who estab lish som e kind of reasonably rehable text as the basis for these modifying processes, especially since those editors make no claim, as we have seen, either to the absolute authority of the texts they have established, or to w hat the d irector and actors may o r may not do at any point in production?
From here it would seem obvious as to why the labours of S h ak esp eare's editors are worthwhile, but I will make the case nonetheless, to fully confute B irringer's ill-informed dismissal of those labours.
If we accept th at the texts of Shakespeare's (or Marlowe's, or W ebster's, or C hapm an's) plays are not only the 'best evidence after the event' of perform ance, but in fact the only source of our knowledge of these plays, w ithout which they would be entirely lost to the modern world (i.e., they would not exist at all), then it would seem to follow logically that if we are going to base a perform ance on one of these texts, the question to ask is on what precise text that perform ance is going to be based.To answer that question, one needs to look a little deeper at the kind of problems editors deal with when they come to prepare a modern edition of a Renaissance play.
The process of transm ission of a R enaissance text from its earliest recorded origins is a complex one -and I give here only the briefest caricature o f th at process^.Occasionally manuscripts are still extant, but generally the play will exist in its earliest state in a quarto edition.From this first quarto, la te r q u arto or folio editions w ere generally (but not always) set up.As the Shakespeare industry grew, one started to see the appearance of editions of his collected works by editors such as Pope and Johnson.In this process of transmission, huge numbers of 'errors' crept into the texts presented.The compositors of the initial quartos w ere responsible for many of them -possibly they couldn't read the au th o r's handwriting, or tried to rem em ber too much text at one time, and set up either incorrect text (i.e. they did not repeat precisely the substance of their copy) or gibberish^.T hese errors were often not detected, as E lizabethan printing-house proof-reading was frequently slapdash and haphazard, to put it mildly'*.Such errors were not only repeated, b ut often com pounded later.W hen, for exam ple, a p o e t like Pope d ecided to edit Shakespeare, he felt at liberty to rew rite many lines, suprem ely confident th at he was 'im proving' on the original; Johnson, rath e r less arrogant, im proved on the gibberish passages more according to his own good taste than with any authority (which in this case m eans without any careful study of the process of transmission in order to discover how and when errors could have crept in and what a m ore 'correct' reading might be).It worked very much like that party game where one whispers som ething into one's neighbour's ear and it gets passed on until by the tim e it has trav e lled right ro u n d th e room it is a completely different statem ent from the original.
Given this situation, the question that must implicitly be asked is, if a director and a group of actors are going to p resen t a p erfo rm an ce of one of S h ak esp eare's plays, as they frequently do, and if they are going to base that performance -however loosely -on a text (which as far as I can see they invariably do), then on which text are they going to base that performance"?And it would seem logical to me that th at group of perform ers are most likely going to want to base their perform ance on the 'best' text available, i.e. the text, in G reg's words "as the au th or finally intended it", w hether they consciously m ake such a decision, and know the full ramifications of it, or not.And if you balk, as some people do, at the notion that one should try and produce a text 'as the author finally intended it' then, put simply, if you are going to take the trouble to learn some lines, are you going to learn lines which are (given all the qualifications which G reg and company so honestly make) closer to some kind of 'original' text that Shakespeare produced, or are you going to learn some lines which are the result of a compositor in an Elizabethan printing-house setting up gibberish because he was too lazy to read his copy properly?The answer seems obvious, and therein lies the value to the actor of Shakespeare's editors.
Having said this, I would be the first to acknowledge that at times the claims by some -and I stress som e -ed ito rs of R en aissan ce texts have b e e n ex trav ag en t as regards their pretensions to 'authority', assuming from the evidence of the quarto before them far too much knowledge of the physical processes of printing in the E lizabethan printing-house upon which such claim s for au th o rity are based.T his is an u n fo rtu n a te p a rt of any discipline, and all that need be said is that if such a discipline is in a healthy state, then it will have corrective mechanism s built into it to prevent such distortions from becoming generally-accepted practice.And so it is with R enaissance textual studies.An excellent exam ple, am ong o th ers, is D .F. M cK enzie's "P rin te rs of th e m ind: som e no tes on bibliographic theories and printing-house practice" (1969:1-75) which, as the title suggests, provides a d etailed com parison betw een the exaggerated claim s o f over-enthusiastic th e o rists, and a carefu lly -assessed analysis of w hat can leg itim ately b e claim ed as knowledge of what went on in the Elizabethan printing-house, in order to reject illegitimate claims for authoritative readings.Such corrective work seems entirely admirable within a discipline that acknowledges the tentative nature of much of its labours, and this seems in itself to suggest th at the products o f R enaissance d ram atic ed ito rs are a w orthw hile contribution to theatre in the broadest sense of the term.
Ironically, if one can briefly practise a little deconstruction on B irringer's argum ent, one can see th a t he (B irringer, 1987:9) acknow ledges th e value of such labours him self, although, of course, tacitly.Why else, for exam ple, w hen he quotes from A ntony and Cleopatra on p. 9 of his article, does he select the A rden edition of Shakespeare to quote from ?Now it may well have b een closest to hand, b u t th en again, w ould it not be legitim ate to ask why that particular edition was closest to hand?O ne could go back in infinite progression here (because that was the one in the bookshop at the time Birringer w ent in to buy a copy of the play, but then why did the bookshop stock th at particular edition, and not some other, etc., etc.?), but one must ultimately get to a point w here one is forced to adm it that the A rden edition was chosen because it has the reputation of having some kind of authority, that it is the 'best' text available, meaning the most 'accurate' the one, however imperfect, closest to Shakespeare himself.In another example, to support a point he m akes about the theatrical process in A ntony and Cleopatra, Birringer states that his point is "supported by the Folio stage direction" (Birringer, 1987:10).W hat are we to make of this?On one level, he is obviously asserting that an aspect of the much-despised text (a 'G ood Folio,' perhaps?-see Birringer, 1987:11) is sufficiently legitimate to support his argum ent, which in itself seem s illum inating of the im plicit authority he sees in such textual evidence.On another level, however, he is displaying a rem arkable ignorance of the general status of stage-directions in R enaissance printed dram atic texts.They can generally be described as u nreliable, th eir unreliability taking a variety of forms: for example, a character will be brought onto the stage and then never removed (in the stage directions) simply because of the casualness o f the author in the w riting of his work, as described above.Should a text be set up from a manuscript annotated or transcribed in the theatre to be used as a prompt-copy, then stage directions are possibly m ore reliable, but not necessarily so; compositors, setting up the quarto text from such a prompt-copy, might simply ignore stage directions because they took up too much space, or placc them in the wrong place for the sake of convenience, or reduce them to fit the space available, and so on.Basing any kind of in terp retatio n of a text on a stage d irection needs to be done, therefore, with a little m ore circum spection than B irringer displays.A m ore informed knowledge of the procedures of textual criticism might have saved him from making the kind of assured statem ent he makes here, and to m oderate his claims more in the spirit of the kind of tentative conclusions textual critics com e to when they talk about anything related to a Shakespearean text.

The world of literary theory
The point has been made, and little more need be said about it.I would now like to turn briefly to a discussion of the thesis underlying B irringer's argum ent throughout his essay, for, as with his attitude to Shakespeare's editors, it seem s to be based on a fundam ental fallacy, not quite as concrete as getting the relationship betw een text and perform ance wrong, but still clear enough.
Essentially it becom es ap p aren t from his article th at B irringer is seeking a fter a post structuralist ideal in which the real world, or any aspect of it (including presumably theatre) is se e n "less as o p p ressiv ely d e te rm in a te th a n as y et m o re sh im m e rin g w ebs o f undecidability stretching to th e horizon" (E ag leto n , 1983:146); w here th e re a re "no determ in ing or unifying principles, no c ertain know ledge, no 'really s'" (W ashington, 1989:105), w here "Nothing is to be taken for granted" (B irringer, 1987:12); w here the "dynam ic process" of th e a tre is "always u n p red ictab le, u n c e rta in , and u n rep eatab le" (Birringer, 1987:7); where "we never know where we stand" (Birringer, 1987:13).With the burgeoning interest in literary theory of the last decade, such attitudes should be familiar enough by now not to req u ire lengthy explanation, although p e rh a p s the obligatory reference to the work of Jacques D errida should be made here.O ne should acknowledge the contribution to literary studies of such theorising, perhaps its most valuable being to point out the ideological basis of all criticism and so provide tools with which to question the kind of self-righteous moralising that dogged literary criticism in the early part of the twentieth century.But, like many theories, it has at times been taken too far, and for all its claims to question authority, has becom e a new authority in itself, a disguise for what W ashington calls "the dictatorship of the critic" (1989:102), as dogmatic and overbearing as those systems of belief that it sought to displace^.Equally, on the m ore practical level, it ^ W hile acknowledging the value of post-structuralist criticism, I am, as is evident from this article, extremely sceptical of the excesses which it has led to.Such works as Peter W ashington's referred to in this article, or the m ore recent review article by Claude Rawson (1991:11-15), do a far better job of questioning this type of criticism than I could ever do.
has quite rightly been criticised for tending to live exclusively in the 'never-never land of theory' (Washington, 1989:173), producing as a consequence little actual engagem ent with literary texts, little that is practical at all, becom ing at its w orst "the last uncolonized enclave in which the intellectual can play, savouring the sumptuousness o f the signifier in heady disregard of whatever might be going on in the Elysée palace or the Renault factory" (Eagleton, 1983:141); or, in the case we are examining, 'of whatever might be going on' in the theatre where plays are actually performed.

The world of reality
For theatre is, of course, pre-eminently a practical type of cultural activity.If one were to c o n c en trate on perfo rm an ce (w ithout m aking such an em phasis th e basis o f a new authoritarianism ), then what actually happens in the production of a play?If one focuses on essentials, what seems to happen is a continuous process of limiting possibilities rather than keeping an infinite num ber of such possibilities in play throughout any performance.O ne may well start with a g reat num ber of possibilities (but not even then, surely, an infinite num ber) when one looks at that rough working docum ent called a text, or script, before one starts cutting and editing, plotting and casting and rehearsing -but in the process of turning possibilities into actualities, one commences a process of limiting those possibilities immediately, and does so increasingly as the production develops towards its consum m ation in perform ance.Considerable work has been done on the contradictions betw een critical theory and literary practice, to test the validity of the claims of m odern theorists (as a reaction, one suspects, to those who take their theorising too far), and the results have been highly illuminating.There follows a quotation from G abriel Josopovici's The world and the book (1971) which illuminates the point precisely, and places it within the broad m odern attem pt to do away with limitations entirely: This distinction [between possibility and actuality] has ... been at the heart of m odern developments not just in the arts but in a whole range o f disciplines .... Saussure's fam ous distinction between langue and parole is nothing other than the application of this distinction to language.... Roland B arth es's radical critique of lite ra tu re ... is based on the discovery that w riters do not usually recognizc the ways in which their paroles (their choices out of the pool of possibilities which is the langue, are conditioned by their social context and by the forms they have decided to em ploy....In his later work, B arthes seem s to take it for granted that all literatu re moves inevitably tow ards a mode of total possibility -a la/igue without parole ....For (he) fai![s] to take into account the tension that exists in each writer between the awareness o f possibility and the necessity o f choice .... (Josipovici, 1971:299-300; my emphasis in the last line) W ashington (1989:91) m akes precisely the sam e point about the act of interpretation, which seems at first to have far greater scope for open-endedness: ... in reality -even in acad em ic reality -in te rp re ta tio n s a re lim ited at any one tim e to a few alternatives.W e may agree in principle that a text can mean an infinite num ber of things: its actual meanings are limited, though not prescribed in detail, by the context.
The critique here is of precisely the attitude that Birringer's article reflects: one of striving after infinite possibilities in an ideal world where one never makes choices, of creating art unlim ited by tiresom e realities.B ut w hat does happen in reality?L et us return to the theatre, where reality is of the essence.One makes one's first, most basic choice when one decides what play to produce (Julius Caesar rather than Sizwe B a m i is dead etc.).And then slowly, rem orselessly, one m akes choice after choice, wittling down one's options as one decides on such isssues as in which theatre to stage it (and how many directors even have that choice?), what to cut and what not to cut, who to cast in what role, set design, costume design, etc., all under the pressure of cost, and availability of actors (dram a schools, for example, have a preponderance o f w omen that have to be accom m odated in plays that seem to be written almost entirely for men), and so forth.O ne makes choices and imposes limitations every step of the way.However, this does not seem to be something that should be deplored, but is rather something that is actually essential if a production is to work.In fact, one might make it a basic principle of theatre criticism that a bad production is one that has at bottom made bad choices.
O th er problem s w ithin B irrin g er's article stem from th e sam e base: his tendency to theorise w ithout seeing the contradictions betw een theory and practice -often his own practice (this is, of course, how most theorists can be attacked; W ashington (1989) spends an entire book doing it, thoroughly enjoying him self the whole way).F or example, he rejects hierarchies, yet talks of the perform ance as being 'prim ary' which seem s to be a word implying suprem acy o f som e sort, and suprem acy im plies hierarchy.Equally, he rejects the authority of literary or textual critics, yet writes himself with a tone of authority and a tendency to generalise th a t is so typical of th e type o f critic he rejects, and so irritating in their discourse: "... we have all been at performances where this was not true" (Birringer, 1987:12) (have we?How does he know?);"we never know w here we Stand" (Birringer, 1987:13); (B irringer him self seem s to know precisely w here he stands).He ignores com pletely the practical problem which one experiences when talking 'about' or writing 'about' an immediate experience like a dram atic performance, the problem created by the fact t h a t "... words are mere labels, generalizers, and thus unable to convey anything except th e tire d life o f h ab it, th e p ro g ressio n of in s ta n ts d ev o id o f any m eaning" (Josopovici, 1971:37).And he in the final analysis really only changes from rejecting critics of texts to lauding critics of the texts of performances, which hardly seem to move closer to his stated ideal of placing perform ance as prim ary, since, one would suspect, critics of perform ance would simply appropriate perform ance in the way th at critics of texts have appropriated texts, as the domain for their speculations and 'authoritative' pronouncem ents (see W ashington, 1989:102, quoted above).D espite this, one has a certain m easure of sympathy with what he is trying to do, which seems to be an attem pt to get away from the oracle-like pronouncem ents of critics, literary or dramatic, and to let the perform ance flow as an experience.But, as has been suggested, his effort really seem s to revert to the old academic game of making pronouncements, but with a slightly different focus, this time on performance rather than on text.Has anything really changed?
Possibly a way to escape from such an im passe is to retu rn to the Renaissance dram atic texts which formed the original topic of our discussion, however imperfect they may be in their m odern editions.R enaissance theatre was pre-criticism , pre-intellectual, and p re academ ic, and was therefore in a wonderfully advantageous position to get on with the p ractical processes o f p resen tin g th e a tre , and e x p erim en tin g with all the m yriad of possibilities which Birringer quite rightly implies are present in theatre.Shakespeare and his fellow playwrights were all practical men of the theatre, writing plays which had to work on the stage, their most im portant test, one might suppose, being the size of the box-office receipts at any performance, and their most im portant 'critics' being their audience (as well as, one should acknowledge, the rem arks of the first academic critic, Ben Jonson).Because of this, m odern theatre can probably still learn a great deal from the Renaissance theatre about the process of perform ance and the process of creating working docum ents called scripts, the primary source of such learning being the texts which were produced specifically for perform ance, and which w ere often adap ted as a consequence of experience within performance.And surely the best source of our knowledge of the experience Renaissance playw rights gained over tw enty o r thirty years o f w riting for one o f the w orld's most demanding theatres is the texts.And if one is going to try and learn anything in this way, then surely one would prefer to learn from a text which is closer to the author's original intention -which is where the textual critic has her/his extremely worthwhile contribution to make.