Barnardo' line “How now Horatio, you tremble and look pale,” delivered just after the ghost's exit in Act I, scene i of Hamlet, is at once a description of Horatio and a thematic statement about the effect of tragedy. By the end of the play, this phrase has come to signify the way amazing, horrifying, and profoundly tragic events affect the spectators: Hamlet addresses the “mutes or audience” to the “act” he, Laertes, Claudius and Gertrude have just performed as “you that look pale, and tremble at this chance” (V, ii, 334). When a character describes another in this way, the utterance constitutes a verbal cue: it tells the audience what is happening on the stage, or how the other characters are reacting to past or present events. A verbal cue can be thought of as a spoken stage direction, to use Raymond Williams' term, one which serves as a signal both to the actors and to the audience. Shakespeare repeatedly resorted to verbal cues in representing the ghosts, witches, and other supernatural visitations that figure prominently in Hamlet, Macbeth, and less prominently, in Richard III and Julius Caesar. Regardless of how they are represented on the stage, supernatural characters are essentially imaginative projections, who exist as much through the speeches and described reactions of others as through what they themselves say and do. Verbal cues thus serve as part of the characterization process; they help to define these creatures in terms of their effects on others. And as a theatrical strategy, the cues employ language to summon up visions in the mind of the spectator, creating images that no stagecraft, however spectacular, could equal.

Although The Alchemist, one of the great comedies of the English Renaissance, has received considerable attention from critics, very few have been interested in examining the play as something that is realized in three-dimensional space. Jonson's language creates character and dramatic tension, as well as thematic and metaphoric resonances, with such fullness that the literary critic is tempted to read the play as literature only. Jonson, however, was not writing closet drama any more than Shakespeare, and it is important for understanding the play to try to envision the original staging—something which, I feel, has not been sufficiently done. William A. Armstrong's belief that Jonson was convinced “that the profoundest intimations come by the ear, not the eye” (p. 61) seems to me an oversimplification. The Alchemist reveals that the ear and eye are not necessarily opposed, nor even merely complementary. They are interconnected and interdependent. The stage sets up the metaphoric dimensions and dynamics of the play. This approach to The Alchemist concentrates its extraordinary busyness— a busyness which makes the play so difficult for first readers— into a relatively simple, but charged, set of defining tensions and movements.

In the honor roll of nineteenth-century theatrical producers of Shakespeare, the name Frederick Balsir Chatterton has never been entered. Even in his own time he was often considered more of an entrepreneur or entertainer than a serious advocate of Shakespeare. Since then he has either been ignored or ridiculed by critics and historians, the lone exception being Odell, who gave Chatterton's productions their only serious attention. What historians remember instead is Chatterton's infamous maxim— “Shakespeare spelt ruin and Byron bankruptcy”—a saying he did not invent and did not totally believe.

Several years ago an article in this journal called attention to the Elizabeth Robins Collection then acquired by the Fales Library of New York University. In addition to her many other accomplishments, Robins was a gifted writer who kept extensive diaries and exchanged voluminous letters with her family, friends, and associates. All these, as well as her accounts, manuscripts, drafts, and scrapbooks, constitute a massive assemblage that had been barely sifted at the time of the article and that is still not fully catalogued. It comprises a treasure-trove for scholars of the history of the theatre, literature, and American and English history.

“Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument.” With this statement and related discussion Carl Jung suggested that the decision to work as an artist is involuntary; however he did not actually explain the nature of being “seized.” Working with numerous artists, reading about many others, and examining the specific example of Robert Edmond Jones, I would suggest that the artist is both seized by and seizes the innate drive and that it is a process which occurs over time. An examination of Jones's childhood, education, and early production experience reveals the complex nature of his progression toward a career as a theatre artist.