Mise-en-scene
After considering the many workings of plot and subplot, it is important to hone in on dramatic features within the scenes. While Shakespeare’s stage directions are far more open to interpretation than those of postmodern playwrights, the quantum we are given can be quite telling. Despite the lack of words used to describe how a scene might be set out, you can infer this from the dialogue and use it in your analysis.
For example, The Tempest has many scenes that we can imagine to be visually striking, despite not being able to see them from merely reading the play. The play opens in media res in the midst of a raging tempest in which a group of Italian courtiers are angrily arguing with the boatswain for telling them to get out of his way. Though this is not a comedic scene, the image of these courtiers, who are likely dressed in garishly luxurious courtly garb, stumbling around soaking wet aboard a sinking ship, is quite absurd. However, this element of comedy is not incorporated by every director of the play – some may choose to focus on the action and the morbid echoes of the sailors screaming for their lives. As the staging of this scene is open to interpretation, you could argue either way.
Monologues, soliloquies, and asides
While the directions for the mise en scène might be somewhat vague, there is no lack of substantial dramatic techniques. The ways in which the characters interact with both the audience and the other characters in the scenes are very significant, and should be considered in your analysis. As you’ll notice, there is considerable variety in the number of characters on stage at any one time during the plays; sometimes a lone character shares their thoughts with the audience, and sometimes a large group of characters all appear to be talking over the top of one another. This variation paves the way for a number of dramatic techniques, which you will most likely have heard of:
- Dialogue is conversation between two or more characters, and forms the vast majority of the words of the play.
- A monologue is long speech given by a single character to the other characters on stage with them. The other characters on stage can hear the monologue being said and react to it.
- A soliloquy is also a speech said by a single character; however, it is said such that no other characters can hear it: usually there are no other characters on stage.
- An aside is a comment made by a single character, sometimes only one or two lines and sometimes considerably longer. It is made in the middle of a scene with other characters on stage; however, the other characters do not hear it.
Both asides and soliloquies may be said directly to the audience or may be styled as if the character is speaking to themselves. In both cases, the words spoken by the characters in asides and soliloquies represent their true thoughts: while they may be mistaken, they may not purposely lie. As such, asides and soliloquies are the audience’s window into the mind of the character speaking them, making them very useful for your analysis.
For example, in Macbeth, after hearing the witches’ prophecy that he will be king, he speaks in an aside, revealing his consideration of the possibility of murdering Duncan. While he is deeply unsettled by such “horrible imaginings”, he declares that the prophecy “cannot be ill”, and admits “I yield to that suggestion” (Act 1 Scene 3). Yet immediately following this, he confidently says aloud to Banquo: “If chance will have me king, why chance may crown me / Without my stir.” Here, we see his confused inner state hidden behind a confident façade – a façade that forms a barrier which cuts him off from his friends, foreshadowing his eventual demise.
In Othello, Iago often reveals his psychological machinations to the audience in the form of monologues. For example, in Act 2 Scene 3, he remarks that “So will I turn [Desdemona’s] virtue into pitch / And out of her own goodness make the net / That shall enmesh ‘em all.” While this mode of confessing his innermost motivations to the audience may seem artificial, it gives us a glimpse into the malignant darkness of Iago’s psyche. Through these monologues, the audience realises that Iago has no concrete motivation, only hatred of goodness in others and love of manipulation, banishing all possibility of sympathy for him.
Metatheatre
As mentioned above, Shakespeare often employs plots within plots that draw his audience’s attention to the fact that they are indeed watching a play. While this is quite overt, there are also other, much subtler metatheatrical techniques used by Shakespeare throughout his plays. Whilst a director of the play might portray any asides or soliloquies as the character speaking to themselves, there are a few instances in Shakespeare’s plays in which the character is undeniably speaking to the audience. Such instances are very helpful in determining the central message Shakespeare is trying to convey for that particular play.
A famous and obvious example of this is the Prologue to Romeo and Juliet; “Two households, both alike in dignity / In fair Verona where we lay our scene.” Spoken by the Chorus, this introduction summarises the entire play in a fourteen line sonnet. By mentioning the “lay[ing of] our scene” and referring to the play as “the two hours’ traffic of our stage,” the Prologue clearly draws attention to the fact that the following story is a play, adding a sense of inevitability and hopelessness to the story of the lovers: their tragic ending has quite literally already been scripted for them.
Instances of characters speaking directly to the audience also show up elsewhere; in the epilogues of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest, Puck and Prospero respectively speak directly to the audience, asking for their farewell applause and thus directly drawing attention to the fact that they are watching a play. Puck asks the audience not to be “offended,” which is perhaps Shakespeare’s anticipation that the rather absurd play might be met with criticism. Puck suggests that those who are offended by the play imagine “that you have slumbered here” – directly referencing the title of the play. In a similar manner, Prospero asks for the audience to forgive him through their applause: “release me from my bands / By the help of your good hands.” This poignant ending puts Prospero’s fate in the hands of the audience, suggesting that we as humans can decide our own fate to some extent. Furthermore, many people believe that Shakespeare knew at the time that this might be his last play, and that this final speech is his farewell to his faithful audience.
Music and song
Whether for a burst of comic relief or a moment of melancholy, Shakespeare plays often feature music and songs. These songs appear in comedies, tragedies and histories alike, and serve all kinds of purposes, not all of which are immediately obvious to a modern audience.
For example, in Twelfth Night, Feste the clown often sings to entertain his social superiors, often seeking to remind them of their own mortality through the lyrics. However, Feste’s final song “When that I was and a little tiny boy,” delivered alone on stage, seems more directed at the audience than the characters, whose fantastical world has already vanished. The song transports the audience back to the real world, where “the rain it raineth every day,” taking us through a man’s story from “a little tiny boy” to the “beds” of his old age, suggesting the inevitable nature of ageing and death – just as the play itself must end. The final couplet “But that’s all one our play is done / And we’ll strive to please you every day” breaks the boundary between fiction and reality, suggesting that the clown, an apparently foolish character, is the only character to be meta aware of his existence. He is observing the theatrical audience as much as he observes the Illyrians.
In Hamlet, Ophelia’s songs (Act 4 Scene 5) feature dominant death and burial motifs, alluding to both her father’s death and the metaphorical death of Hamlet’s love for her. Although she does not sing of factual events, there seems to be an abstract relevance to the person to whom she sings each song. To Queen Gertrude, she sings a song about a lover who goes to his grave bereft of “truelove showers,” hinting at Gertrude’s lack of mourning for her dead husband. To Claudius, the amoral seducer, she sings the melancholy lament of a girl who has been seduced and then abandoned by her lover. This also echoes her father and brother’s warnings to her about Hamlet, who, ironically, rejected her without consummating their love. Finally, to Laertes, she sings of an old man who “never will come again.” This too, however, is complex: it initially seems like another lament for a lost lover. Her mind, released from the bonds of reason, merges her father’s death and Hamlet’s departure, leaving her with an overwhelming sense of loss.
The Tempest is punctuated throughout by the songs of Ariel, Prospero’s androgynous fairy servant, who is the agent of most of the play’s action. The beguiling and personified voice of magic throughout the play, Ariel uses his magic appears to exert the majority of its power through song: it is his singing that sends Gonzalo and Alonso to sleep, kickstarting the regicidic plot of Antonio and Sebastian. Despite bringing about the eventual justice at the end of the play, Ariel’s songs during the play represent trickery and illusion: he wakes up Alonso and Gonzalo just in time to discover the regicidic plot, and taunts the lost Ferdinand with a false song describing his dead father. Despite its confronting subject matter, this song contains beautiful and highly visual imagery of Alonso’s bones being made into coral, and his eyes becoming pearls. Accompanied by the whispering alliteration “full fathom five thy father lies” (Act 1 Scene 2), the song is an elegant eulogy that is almost comforting – yet its dramatic irony lets the audience see that Ariel is a true master of deceit for Alonso is very much alive.
