Recovering Shakespeare's Theatrical Vocabulary

The terms invoked in this book's title trail with them various problems. To concentrate upon recovering X from the past, especially the theatrical past, is to set in motion a process that makes some readers and many theatrical professionals uncomfortable, even hostile. Admittedly, historically oriented scholars attuned to such disciplines as philology, iconography, and “ideas-of-the-time” contextual interpretation will find my goals and methods familiar, even self-evident. Such scholars will agree with John Shearman who, in his study of Mannerism, notes that “contemporary standards” of our age not only “do not give the right guidance to understanding a past age” but, in fact, can be “a positive hindrance.” Rather, he argues: “In decoding messages from the other side we get more meaningful results if we use their code rather than ours,” for “wherever possible a work of art should be interpreted by throwing it back into the nest of ideas in which it was born.”

As practiced for several generations, however, the invocation and application of a Renaissance “nest of ideas” or “code” in Shakespeare studies has led to many oversimplified formulations and interpretations, so that post-structuralists attuned to indeterminacy, free play, and the death of the author may understandably be dubious when confronted with claims about “recovery.”