Unspoken Thoughts and Subtextual Meanings

In rehearsals today actors and directors often speak about’ subtext’. The word was taken from books by Konstantin Stanislavsky, the Russian actor, teacher and theorist, that became widely available in English translations: An Actor Prepares (1936) and Building a Character (1950). For actors, the briefest definition is that ‘subtext is what makes us say what we do in a play,’ an idea that had proved especially useful for acting and producing plays by Anton Chekhov, Stanislavsky’s contemporary and close colleague. Subsequently it was appropriated for acting in films that ordinarily give a more complete and convincing image of actual life than any stage play. Then, more slowly, ‘subtext’ was drawn into wider use and literary, as well as theatrical, criticism.At first, Shakespeare scholars and critics resisted the innovation on the grounds that he was a poet whose meanings and mood were created ‘primarily and entirely by the actual words.’ I joined the debate in two issues of Tulane Drama Review (1963–4) and later in Discovering Shakespeare (1981), from which the following extract is taken.