Annotating Silence: Speechless Eloquence

On the pages of a book, Shakespeare’s words say everything for a reader and can arouse endless reactions, associations, and visual images. But his playscripts were written to do more than that. In theatrical performance, with the help of actors and their many supporters, they take on a living presence and a spectator views a complex phenomenon, a re-making of the everyday world that transforms ordinary events and can transcend or intensify ordinary experiences. The words are still there but as part of an event in which they have meanings that a reader might never consider and, indeed, might judge to be impossible or plain wrong. Words are eaten up in performance and digested, with much added, subtracted, accentuated, or ignored. They give rise to a happening on stage that on every occasion is unique and, to some degree, surprising.