Shakespeare's Dramaturgy and Binary Form

Author(s): Bernard Beckerman

Source: Theatre Journal, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Mar., 1981), pp. 5-17
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3207484
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BERNARDBECKERMAN

Shakespeare'sDramaturgyand
BinaryForm

For Shakespeare and his contemporaries, playwriting was a business of turning

stories into theatrical performances. Occasionally, a writer might seize on a notorious
murder of the day as the kernel of a plot, but usually the dramatists relied on collections of romances, assemblages of chronicles, and a smattering of old plays for their
raw material. That their widespread practice is not inherent in the art of the drama can
be seen in the habits of our own writers. O'Neill and Miller - to name only two of the
most prominent American dramatists-may uncharacteristically work over The
Oresteia or explore the archives of Old Salem, but normally the major works that we
associate with their names owe nothing to prior literary or dramatic sources. Instead,
their works grow from a personal, often idiosyncratic root, a genesis far removed
from the Elizabethan tradition of adaptation.
That tradition is of timely interest to us. Because it relied so utterly upon previous
narrative sources, it vividly illustrates how a literary art is reshaped into a presentational one. When a playwright turns a story into a script, he has to arrange characters,
events, and sentiments in a sequence of playable units or scenes. He must artfully connect these scenes with one another, and his artistry as a dramatist will be evident in
the way he makes the connections. But he must also create scenes that have an intrinsic interest. Not only must their content be appealing, but the way the author arranges
that content must afford the actor the opportunity to project a vivid action. To arrange theatrical content effectively the writer must exploit the advantages and overcome the constrictions that inhere in the act of presentation itself. Central to presentation is the obvious fact that the performer, not the page, is the medium. He is autonomous, disconnected from text or creator, seeming to be his own creator, whatever persona he adopts. Moreover, because he carries out his work in immediate contact with
an audience, his effectiveness directly depends on a capacity to make himself felt. He
must not only be present before an audience in bodily form; he must be there before
them as a vibrant presence. The dramatic writer has the task of devising scenes that
support and utilize the presence of the actor.
In the course of the last half of the sixteenth century, Englishplaywrights found disBernard Beckerman is BranderMatthews Professor of Dramatic Literature, and Chairman, TheatreArts
Division, Columbia University. He has published extensively on Shakespeare, and has seen his Dynamics
of Drama: Theory and Method of Analysis experience an additional printing this last year.

TI,March1981

tinctive ways of transforming romantic narrative into dramatic presentation. As

models they had the examples of the morality interludes and the classic drama. They
could pick and choose among several ways of formulating plays and scenes. Each
choice entailed consequences that had to be faced. Take, as one case, the matter of cast
size. The number of people a writer puts on stage at any one time keenly affects a
player's ability to make his presence felt. One performer can readily make contact
with an audience. Two performers can relate either to the audience or to each other.
As numbers grow beyond two, the possibility increases rapidly of diluting a coherent
sense of presence unless the larger number of performers is choreographed carefully.
The more a writer expands his cast, the more skillful he has to be in ordering the action
to prevent this dilution of the performer'spresence.
Two plays of the mid-sixteenth century show that the writers of the time faced this
problem squarely. When George Gascoigne adapted Ariosto's I Suppositi into English
as Supposes, he retained Ariosto's limited number of characters and in so doing set an
example for maintaining the circumscribed cast of Greek and Roman drama. In contrast, J. Jeffere, if indeed he wrote The Bugbears, increased the size of the cast that he
received from Grazzini's Della Spiritata. Where two old men acted in tandem, he
added a third.' These two adaptations illustrate the choice facing the English writer.
As we know, the latter habit of enlarging casts prevailed for English Renaissance
drama. In effect, English dramatists made a collective decision on this point. But
since, at the same time, they adopted many of the situations treated by Italian writers,
they had to find appropriate new scene forms that would assure effective presentation
while still accommodating large casts.
Shakespeare's early plays nicely illustrate Elizabethan scene organization in this
respect. They already show signs of his extraordinary genius even though, as beginner'swork, they still reveal their mechanics in a less-disguised fashion than do his later
plays. In particular, Two Gentlemen of Verona offers special illumination.2 It utilizes
themes and forms that appear in Shakespeare's later comedies, and yet the play is
spare and shows evidence of tight, even strained, control. Its scene structures, though
not entirely effective, do display an elemental mastery of the presentational art.
Since our starting point is the act of presentation itself, our first concern is with the
medium of presentation. Can inanimate objects serve as a means of presentation, for
example? Triumphal arches rather than living performers served to welcome James I
to London when he entered for his coronation. And at some periods in theatrical history, the stage setting may threaten to overwhelm the performer. Indeed, Inigo Jones's
transformations from rock to cavern or from gate to palace put the emphasis on spatial display rather than the efforts of the players. But these occasional presentations
where the performer is subordinated to the physical stage are not characteristic of
Elizabethan theatre as a whole. There the players reigned, splendid in their sumptuous
1 Cf. The
Bugbears (1564), Act IV, scene ii, 1-65, printed in Early Plays from the Italian, ed. R.W. Bond
(New York: B. Blom, 1967 reprint) with Anton-francesco Grazzini, Della Spiritata (or La Spiritata), IV. iii,
printed in A. Grazzini, Teatro (Bari: Guis. Laterza & Sigli, 1953), pp. 153ff.
2 All citations to Two Gentlemen
of Verona are taken from the Pelican edition of the play published in
William Shakespeare, The Complete Works, ed. Alfred Harbage (Baltimore: Penguin, 1969).

BINARYFORMIN SHAKESPEARE

garments and masters of the open stage.

Given the reliance of Elizabethan presentation on players operating freely in space,
we can then consider how such a play as Two Gentlemen of Verona uses players. How
many does it employ? How are they grouped? What do they do? There are twenty
scenes in the play. Many of these scenes - fifteen to be exact - have sub-scenes produced by internal entrances and exits or, in several cases, by shifts in the course of
events. Some of the sub-scenes require one actor; the most populous scene requires
nine. Others call for two, three, four, or more players. A check of the entire play,
however, shows unequivocally that Shakespeare relies on relatively few characters to
carry most of the scenes. Somewhat over fourteen percent of the lines are spoken by a
single player alone on stage. Over forty-six percent of the text calls for two players.
Thus, about sixty percent of the play demands no more than two on stage at any one
time. Of the remaining portion of the play, about 350 lines or a little over sixteen percent require three actors, and about 510 lines or somewhat over twenty-three percent
require four or more performers.
In themselves, these statistics are not very meaningful, but they become meaningful
and quite transformed when we examine the scenes that have three or more actors on
stage. First, we can look at a sequence such as the one between Julia and Silvia in the
fourth act (IV.iv. 106-176). Julia brings Proteus's letter and ring to Silvia and is supposed to fetch a portrait. Three people appear on stage simultaneously. One of them is
the servant addressed as Ursula. But Ursula never speaks. In effect, the scene is a duet
with the third person as a mute. Similar to this is a scene in the first act (I. iii. 44-77).
Proteus'sfather, Antonio, consults Pathino about his son. The two are alone on stage.
Then Proteus enters and the scene goes on between Antonio and Proteus. Throughout
the exchange between father and son, Pathino remains mute. As a presentational
structure, the scene is another duet.
The use of mutes extends beyond such trios, moreover. When the Duke enters to tell
Valentine that Proteus has arrived in Milan (II. iv. 46-83), Silvia, Thurio, and possibly Speed are present on stage. But though the Duke addresses Silvia in passing as he
enters, the entire sub-scene is carried out solely between Valentine and the Duke. Here,
too, the sequence takes on the essential form of a duet. Throughout the play subscenes amounting to over 230 lines fall into this category of duet with attendant
mutes.
From a presentational point of view, a duet with only two people and a duet with
mutes have analogous but not identical structures. While a mute servant may play a
minimal part in the effect of a scene, the presence of Silvia and Thurio as witnesses of
the duet between the Duke and Valentine adds a dimension to the action. In performance, they are bound to react to what is said though their reactions would be quite
subsidiary to the main action. Shakespeare, however, does not give us a clue to their
possible responses. Rather than diffuse focus, he is content to stress the binary nature
of the scene.
As we have seen, one way of structuring multi-personed scenes is to compose them
as duets with mutes. But this is not the only way in which duets serve as the structural
basis of multi-personed scenes. Several times in Two Gentlemen Shakespeare puts

TI, March 1981

more than two people on stage at one time, but arranges the action as a sequence of
duets. Such a sequence occurs in the fourth act (IV. iv. 37-57), where Proteus questions the disguised Julia for a few lines, and then has a longer sequence with Launce.
While he speaks to Julia, Launce is mute, and when he speaks to Launce, Julia is mute.
Of similar structure is the extended scene where Thurio has musicians play before
Silvia's window (IV. ii. 16-83). This scene too is arranged in a sequence of duets: Proteus and Thurio, the Host and Julia, a song to Silvia, the Host and Julia, and finally
Proteus and Thurio. Altogether duet sequences in Two Gentlemen account for over
160 lines.
The third way in which a scene emerges as a disguised duet is evident in the scene
where the outlaws capture Valentine (IV. i. 1-76). Five people are on stage: Valentine,
Speed, and three outlaws. Much of the scene is taken up with the outlaws interrogating Valentine. The order of interrogation runs so that no one outlaw dominates. They
alternate questions in irregular sequence. Each outlaw makes demands upon Valentine in an identical manner. In effect, their speeches are interchangeable, with the
result that the three outlaws together compose a single dramatic force. From the point
of view of numbers, the scene is a quintet. But from the point of view of presentational
structure, it is mainly a duet. Again, the presence of three outlaws instead of one or
two makes the menace of banditry more ominous and challenging than it would be
otherwise. On stage, multiplying numbers of performers who act in concert does
arouse visceral excitement. But it does not change the underlying dramatic structure.
In Two Gentlemen this type of scene, where one character is opposed to several figures acting as one, only occurs three times, for a total of 121 lines. It mainly involves
the outlaws, and so is rather simplified. But, as we shall see, Shakespeare comes to use
this kind of multiplicity more subtly when he composes his master works. And even
though this technique of multiplying figures is one that he uses more skillfully than
most dramatists, it is not a technique unique to him. The division of a single thrust of
acting energy among two or more actors is represented in earlier English drama such
as King Darius and The Most Virtuous and Godly Susanna, and we find Marlowe using the technique most adroitly in Tamburlaine.3In its essentials, the distribution of a
single dramatic force among several figures is akin to the phenomenon called redundancy in information theory.4 Redundancy defines those cases where the same message is conveyed by more than one carrier.
If we now add the portion of Two Gentlemen using this technique of redundancy to
the scenes with mutes and sequences of duets, we discover that we are dealing with
almost a quarter of the play. Added to the sixty percent of solos and duets we counted
previously means that about eighty-five percent of the text consists of scenes organized as solos and duets. Before examining the remaining fifteen percent of the play, let

3
King Darius (1565), D2r-3r; The Most Virtuous and Godly Susanna (1569), Malone Society Reprint
(Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1937), lines 344-351; Tamburlaine, Part I, III. iii in The Works of
Christopher Marlowe, ed. C.F. Tucker Brooke (Oxford: Clarendon, 1910), pp. 40ff.
4 Terence
Hawkes, Structuralism and Semiotics (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1977) attributes a
similar notion to Fredric Jameson, pp. 89-90; and Roman Jakobson in Fundamentals of Language (The
Hague: Mouton & Co., 1956) speaks of redundant features of a folk song, pp. 79f.

BINARYFORMIN SHAKESPEARE

us consider the reasons why so large a portion of the play is cast into the form of duets.
The root of the explanation rests in the nature of presentation itself. As I have previously remarked, a static display may serve as a presentation. Its power will depend on
a capacity to fill space with beauty and strangeness. But a static object has limited
power to sustain attention. It is the active force in presentation, the temporal element
that dominates, and the performer embodies or rather modulates that force. As a
player, the performer engages in both showing something to the audience and transforming that audience. He works upon the audience's sensibility and imagination. To
do so requires considerable expenditure of energy, both to hold attention and to effect
the transformation of the audience's mind and heart. One way of doing this is by playing directly to the audience. That may involve demonstrating something, telling a
story, or even challenging the spectators. An example of this direct working upon an
audience is Launce's tale of his hard-hearted dog. He addresses the audience as "sir,"
says "look you," indicating the dog, and ends by craving sympathy when he says, "But
see how I lay the dust with my tears"(II. iii. 1-32). Throughout he plays off the dog by
pointing at its indifference. For the audience the effectiveness of the demonstration
depends in part on the casting of the dog. Indifference in a wolfhound would not produce the same effect as indifference in a basset. But the appeal of the comedy primarily
derives from Launce's attempt to gain the audience's sympathy, a sympathy he does
not get from the dog. The fact that the audience is more likely to laugh than to weep
supplies the dynamics of the soliloquy. The audience's laughter acts as a counterforce
against which the actor playing Launce works. Ideally, the more he appeals to the
playgoer, the greater should be the laughter, thus producing that fruitful tension
which underlies so much of theatrical presentation.
Although the tone of Launce'sspeech is softer, his working upon the audience is a
direct descendent of the way the Vice worked upon audiences in the interlude. Launce
challenges the audience to support him; the Vice usually challenged the audience to
emulate him. Often the Vice tried to undermine or seduce the audience, claiming to be
well known to the crowd.5 Since the Vice was assumed to be at odds with the populace, he delighted it by being frightening sometimes and outrageous most of the time.
The Vice, of course, was not the only figure to make use of direct contact with the
audience. The Virtues too addressed the audience, pointing to themselves as models
and admonishing the audience to seek goodness. In Like Will to Like, Virtuous Living
takes St. Augustine as a text for a lengthy speech on virtue and honor.6 As he speaks,
he becomes increasingly direct in his address. In this instance, as in the cases of the
Vice, the vigor of the presentation depended on the performer projecting upon the audience an attitude which he then proceeded to play with or transform. That dialectic
of assertion in the face of an actual or assumed resistance is, in effect, a duet between
player and audience.

5 The most developed example of the Vice playing with the audience occurs in George
Wapull's treatment
of the Vice Courage in Tide Tarrieth No Man (1576).
Ulpian Fulwell, Like Will to Like in Tudor Interludes, ed. Peter Happ6 (Baltimore: Penguin Books,
1972), pp. 34-35.

10

TI,March1981

By the time Shakespeare came to write Two Gentlemen of Verona in the early
1590s, however, direct contact like that of Launce'swith the audience was becoming
increasingly rare. From the late 1570s on, there was a sharp reduction in such usage.
While direct contact with the audience was never entirely abandoned, it came to be
used more and more occasionally. At the same time writers sought to exploit the
soliloquy more fully, not as an instrument of contact with the audience, however, but
as a means of displaying passion and dilemmas. We find some examples of this kind of
soliloquy in Two Gentlemen. Two speeches of Julia in the first act (I. ii. 105-130) will
illustrate the problems Shakespeare met in channeling presentational energy indirectly. In the first speech, Juliachides herself for failing to accept Proteus'sletter; in the
second, she laments tearing the letter and tries to piece it together. The first soliloquy,
however, fails to indicate the focus of Julia'senergy clearly. When she remarks that "It
were a shame to call [Lucetta]back again"(51), it is not apparent to whom or what her
words are addressed. Her second soliloquy, on the other hand, more explicitly structures her energies. Shakespeare has Julia address her "hateful hands" (106) or plead
with the good wind to be calm (119). As writers did before him, Shakespeare here introduces apostrophe as a device for channeling acting energies. This device is one of
the most widely used to provide actors with lines that allow them to project presentational energy to an audience indirectly. For a time in the 1570s writers exploited this
type of soliloquy fully, but by the 1590s, it too assumed less prominence in the total
organization of a play. In Two Gentlemen Shakespeare still gives nearly fifteen percent of its lines to one or another form of the soliloquy. But this is unusual. Most of his
early plays devote no more than three to six percent of their lines to solo appearances
with Henry VI (Pt. III)going as high as nine. By comparison, Hamlet, which seems to
epitomize the importance of the soliloquy, devotes less than seven percent of its lines
to it.
The effective de-emphasis of the solo performer during the last quarter of the sixteenth century threw greater weight on exchanges between characters and so between
the players. Presentation, instead of relying on direct contact between actor and audience, increasingly became a matter of indirect contact. That is, the pressure of the actor's presence, instead of being projected at the playgoer, was applied to one or more
fellow actors. Yet the indirect exchange had to duplicate in its essentials the elements
of the direct exchange. In direct exchange, the performer takes the lead. While the audience is overtly passive for the most part, internally it shifts between yielding and resisting the thrusts directed at it by the performer. The first-rate performer plays upon
these internal shifts as on an instrument.
When, however, the player turns his attention to another player, his presentational
energy is transmitted to the audience indirectly. One player serves as presenter,
another as receiver. The audience is now a participant once removed. It cannot experience the feel of the player's energy directly and thus must sense it vicariously. At times
the receiver'sreaction serves as a substitute. When this happens, the reaction has to be
made manifest, and this is done by the reacting player providing a resistant or contrasting energy to the one offered by the presenter. Through this assertion and
counter-assertion of energy they create an interchanging presence which permits an
audience to become imaginatively engaged and emotionally attached.

11

BINARYFORMIN SHAKESPEARE

To maintain indirect presentational exchange, however, requires concentration of

effort. That is why the duet is so central to dramatic presentation. It enables each performer to concentrate his forces and so enables them jointly to gain ascendency over
the audience while permitting the audience to assert its presence. Laurence Olivier
acknowledged the primacy of the duet when he recently remarked that "the greatest
heights in drama are always between two players."7As fundamental and as prevalent
as the duet is in dramatic art, it deserves far greater study than it has received. If I am
correct, a dramatist'sartistry is largely determined by his skill in shaping and ordering
duets.
In Two Gentlemen of Verona, Shakespeare sets forth binary interplays and contrasts in a variety of ways. He pits Valentine's mockery of love against Proteus's lovesickness (I. i) and then later reverses the situation by making Speed the mocker and
Valentine the lover (II. i). He utilizes a variety of persuasion scenes to set one person
against another. The persuasion scene is an elemental and widely used strategy to
create a contrast of purpose and energies, and Shakespeare uses it one way or another
about a dozen times in the course of the play. Persuasion is popular because it so
neatly makes a duet, pitting an active force, the persuader, against a resistant force,
the one who must be persuaded.8 So intent is Shakespeare on creating a vigorous duet
that he even uses the form of persuasion when there is no need for a person to be persuaded, as in the scene between Antonio and Pathino (I. iii).
Shakespeare's reliance on the duet can perhaps be best appreciated by examining
the last scene of the play. The scene opens with a soliloquy by Valentine. Then Silvia
rushes in pursued by Proteus and trailed by the disguised Julia. There follow three
duets. First comes Proteus forcing himself on Silvia (19-59). Valentine and Julia each
make a single comment on what they see. Next comes a duet where Valentine castigates Proteus and, when Proteus repents, yields Silvia to him (60-83). Finally, after
Julia swoons and recovers, she plays a duet scene with Proteus (84-121). Valentine
manages the transition into and out of the last duet, but the duet itself is an exclusive
exchange between Julia and Proteus. To assure concentration of effect, Shakespeare
keeps Silvia and Julia mute through the second duet, and Silvia through the third. By
ordering his figures in these dominant and subordinate ways, he maintains presentational focus and the vigor that goes with it.
As we have just seen, Shakespeare utilizes mute figures - even arbitrarily- in order
to achieve proper emphasis. Indeed, the use of mutes is the principal device for achieving duets in Two Gentlemen. There he relies on redundancy infrequently, and while
he at times blurs the segmentation and leaves the dramatic movement uncertain (III.
ii), he does arrange scenes into sequences of duets. But keeping a character mute is a
relatively simple if occasionally awkward way of securing the concentration of a duet.
Silvia and Thurio are suppressed at the Duke's entrance in Act II, scene iv, and Silvia
7 Curtis Bill
Pepper, "Talking with Olivier," The New York Times Magazine, March 25, 1979, p. 60.
8 For further discussion of structures of
persuasion, see my articles "Shakespeare and the Life of the
Scene," in English Renaissance Drama, eds. S. Henning et al. (Carbondale, IIl.: Southern Illinois Univ.
Press, 1976) pp. 36-45 and "Shakespeare's Industrious Scenes," Shakespeare Quarterly, 30 (1979),
138-150.

12

TJ,March1981

once again in the last scene. At this early stage of his career, Shakespeare seems to
choose effectiveness of presentation over dramatic logic. Laterhe accomplishes both,
as evident in Hamlet.
Throughout Hamlet, Shakespeare makes far greater and subtler use of redundancy
than he did in Two Gentlemen. Indeed, we might say the emblem of redundancy can
be found in the figures of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who in two persons compose
one sychophancy. As we trace their appearances in the play, we witness an interesting
use of dramatic redundancy.9 The two friends of Hamlet appear in eight scenes (II. ii;
III, i-iii; IV, i-iv) divided into eleven separate segments.
Their opening remarks immediately link them as a single voice. Rosencrantz
responds to the appeal of Claudius and Gertrude by saying:
Bothyour majesties
Might,by the sovereignpoweryou haveof us,
Put your dreadpleasuresmoreinto command
Thanto entreaty.
Guildenstern picks up the thread with the continuation of the half line:
Bothwe bothobey,
And heregive up ourselvesin the full bent
To lay our servicefreelyat your feet,
To be commanded.
[II.ii. 26-32]
Here Shakespeare uses redundancy not only to assure dramatic concentration but also
to characterize these figures. But lest we think redundancy in Hamlet is only confined
to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, we should note that in the same segment Claudius
and Gertrude also act redundantly to entreat Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to visit
the queen's "too much changed son" (36).
Later in the same scene, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern do visit Hamlet. Their
remarks continue to be echoes of each other. Shakespeare stresses this by the way he
orders the dialogue between them and Hamlet. At first, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
pretty much alternate speeches to Hamlet, so that the dialogue runs: Guildenstern,
Rosencrantz, Hamlet/Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Hamlet/Rosencrantz, Hamlet/
Guildenstern, Hamlet/. This is repeated. Then for three pairs of speeches it is Rosencrantz, Hamlet, followed by Guildenstern, Hamlet. Then both answer Hamlet, after
which there are sixteen pairs of speeches, eleven involving Rosencrantz. The fact that
it is rare for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to speak sequentially in the meeting with
Hamlet only emphasizes the singleness of their dramatic presence.
In their next scene (III. i), Rosencrantz and Guildenstern report to the King and
Queen. They give a continuous report of their encounter with Hamlet. Unless we
know the text by heart, however, we would be hard put to divide the lines between
them.

9 All citations to Hamlet are taken from the Pelican edition of the complete works.

13

BINARYFORMIN SHAKESPEARE
He does confesshe feels himselfdistracted,
Butfromwhat cause'a will by no meansspeak.
Nor do we find him forwardto be sounded,
Butwith a craftymadnesshe keepsaloof
Whenwe wouldbringhimon to someconfession
Of his truestate.
[III.i. 5-10]

The Queen then asks: "Did he receive you well?" They answer:
Most like a gentleman.
Butwith muchforcingof his disposition.
Niggardof question,but of our demands
Most free in his reply.l0

[III.I. 11-14]

Having thus established this kind of redundancy, Shakespeare begins to vary his
handling of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Laterin the action, after the debacle of the
play-within-the-play, he introduces Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to convey the
King's distemper. But instead of using the two characters redundantly this time,
Shakespeare adopts the mute technique. First, Guildenstern has a duet with Hamlet
(284-306), then Rosencrantz has his duet (307-330), and lastly a second duet with
Guildenstern follows when Hamlet challenges him to play upon the recorder (331357).
Thereafter, Rosencrantz increasingly comes to speak for both. In the remaining five
scenes in which they appear, Rosencrantz speaks twenty-seven lines, Guildenstern
only five. Moreover, Guildenstern speaks only one line in the last four scenes while
Rosencrantz speaks thirteen. Thus, through the course of the play Shakespeare has
shifted from reliance on redundancy to use of Guildenstern as a mute in order to maintain his dramatic line.
EarlierI stressed the centrality of the duet as a prime feature of Two Gentlemen. It
accounts for eighty-five percent of the comedy. But what about the remaining fifteen
percent? How is that portion of the play organized?
Two Gentlemen contains nine segments totalling about 340 lines that have more
than two active characters on stage at one time. Most of the segments are trios (II. i.
87-124; II. iv. 84-96; 97-118; III. i. 188-260; IV. iv. 122-139; V. ii. 1-29; 84-133). A
few segments do involve more than three people actively, but such moments are infrequent. Yet whether we deal with trios, quartets, or even larger groups, we have to
consider the same technical problem. If presentational intensity depends on a concentrated interchange, how can that be achieved when three different forces are on stage
simultaneously? Here we should distinguish between forces and figures. While three
figures can be organized in dominant and subordinate combinations, three forces embodied in three different actors tend to diffuse the focus of a scene. Ultimately, in this
type of scene dramatic effect will be determined by how three or more forces are related to each other and to the audience.
10The lines are divided as follows: 5-6, Rosencrantz; 7-10, Guildenstern; 11, Rosencrantz; 12,
Guildenstern; 13-14, Rosencrantz. Each has the same number of lines.

14

TJ,March1981

One way that Shakespeare utilizes three forces in Two Gentlemen of Verona is by
organizing a trio as a duet with an observer. This arrangement differs from the previous type of duet with mute because the observer has an active - usually speakingpart in the scene. At one point Valentine gives Silvia a love letter he has written for
her, and she returns it to him. Speed, looking on, mocks her (II. i. 87-124). At another
point Proteus woos Silvia while the disguised Juliacomments on Proteus'sallusions to
her (IV. ii. 84-133). Later, Thurio queries Proteus about Silvia's response to his suit
while this time Julia mocks his pretensions (V. ii. 1-29). These three scenes exemplify
one of the standard ways of creating trios and combinations of trios. Two characters
engage in an exchange, in these cases, exchanges of wooing or interrogation. The third
figure, serving as an audience, makes observations and puts the principal action into a
new perspective. Such structures, as we well know, are used frequently by Shakespeare. At the time he wrote Two Gentlemen, however, the scene of observation and
commentary was still in the course of development. The aside, which is essential to
this type of device, had not had a long history in English drama. While we can find
many scenes of eavesdropping for purposes of intrigue, the use of on-stage commentators to give dimension to the observed action only emerges fully in the 1580s. Peele,
Marlowe, and Kyd refine this device, and Kyd in The Spanish Tragedy and Marlowe
in The Jew of Malta exploit it inventively. By contrast, in his early plays Shakespeare
uses it with restraint, as in Two Gentlemen. Most of all he seems interested in finding
ways to integrate the commentary into the action for maximum ironic effect.
The first of the trios I mentioned merely has Speed standing aside mocking Valentine as lover and Silvia as the canny beloved (II. i. 87-124). Here as well as in the other
two trios, the observer seizes upon verbal mannerisms as a spark of mockery. Silvia's
protestations to Valentine: "And yet I will not name [what you should do next] - and
yet I care not-And yet take this [letter] again-and yet I thank you no more"
(108-109) provokes Speed's aside, "And yet you will; and yet another 'yet"'(111). In
this sequence, Speed's presence is tangential. By contrast, the last trio where Thurio
questions Proteus to Julia'srefrain (V. ii. 1-29) is more schematically arranged. Step
by step Thurio questions Proteus as to what Silvia thinks of his leg, face, conversation, valor, birth, and property. Proteus replies in turn to each of the queries. All his
replies except the last are followed by a caustic comment from Julia. As the scene progresses, Thurio's questions and Proteus's answers become briefer, and so Julia'sasides
assume more prominence. By the time Thurio asks his last question, Julialeaps in with
a reply before Proteus.
THURIO:Considersshe my possessions?
PROTEUS: O,

ay, and pities them.

THURIO:Wherefore?
JULIA:
PROTEUS:

That such an ass should owe [own] them.

That they are out by lease.
[25-29]

In this fashion Shakespeare creates a movement in the trio. Whereas in the first trio the
focus is on the duet of Valentine and Silvia with Speed'sobservations quite secondary,
in the last trio the emphasis shifts to the commentary itself. That the commentary is
somewhat out of character with the Julia we have come to know is less important for

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Shakespeare than the game of playing on words and mocking a fool.

Among the other multi-personed scenes, some combine techniques. One mixes duet
sequences and a trio with observer (III. i. 188-260); another has two observers instead
of one in an essentially triangular relationship (V. iv. 19-59). But of the remaining
scenes, two segments are sufficiently distinct to warrant further examination. One
centers on a verbal duel between Valentine and Thurio with Silvia looking on (II. iv.
1-45). Speed appears at the beginning of the action (1-7), but either leaves or recedes
into muteness. The interesting feature of this sequence concerns Silvia's role in it. She
initiates the action by questioning Valentine's sadness (8). During the word duel that
follows, she remarks at one time, "What, angry, Sir Thurio? Do you change color?"
(23); later she cheers the men on, "Afine volley of words, gentlemen, and quickly shot
off" (31-32). By not taking sides overtly with either party, she in effect is referee between them. It is obvious that both men are trying to impress her, and so the scene is a
kind of trial of wit. Yet as a trial scene, it is rather tame, and Silvia's position as a judge
is not fully exploited.
More interesting is a second segment. It occurs shortly after the one just discussed
and involves Valentine, Silvia, and Proteus (II. iv. 97-118). Whether or not Thurio remains mutely on stage during this sequence is a matter of editorial dispute." I'll not
deal with that issue here. For all essential purposes, the segment is a trio, but a trio arranged unlike any of the trios we have considered so far.
In it Valentine introduces Proteus to Silvia with great warmth. Initially, he urges
Silvia to accept Proteus with "special favor." Silvia replies with reserve. Valentine
then intensifies his appeal by asking her to accept Proteus as "servant"or professed
adorer. Here Proteus seems to defer Valentine's urging by protesting his inadequacy.
Valentine mediates between the two oppositions by telling Proteus to cease claiming
"disability"and pleading once again for Silvia to accept Proteus's service. Proteus affirms his duty and Silvia concedes his welcome. The exchange ends with a reverse
twist when Proteus disallows Silvia's "unworthiness."Structurally, then, we have a
persuasion sequence where Proteus, like a relay racer, takes over Valentine's urging
and transforms it to a defense of Silvia. As a pattern, the scene employs a special kind
of redundancy, yet goes beyond its simple reinforcement by the subtle balance that is
achieved between Valentine's and Proteus's ardor. If there is a weakness in the scene, it
is in its brevity. The scene does not have room to develop Silvia's reluctance, to depict
Proteus's superseding Valentine, and to permit a subtle transformation of Proteus's relationship to Silvia.
Regarding the multi-personed scenes in their entirety, then, we find that in Two
Gentlemen they tend to be realized as trios. The prevalent and most sharply distinguished trio is that of the duet with an active observer. A second pattern less developed in Two Gentlemen, but having a long history in the sixteenth century, is the trial
1 The Folio text may be corrupt between lines 95 and 113. No exit is specified for Thurio. Yet at line 113
he delivers a message to Silvia from the Duke, her father. Editorshave resolved the problem either by giving
line 113 to a servant (first suggested by Theobald) or by adding an exit for Thurio after line 95, and then a
new entry- just before 113.

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TI,March1981

or contest where a judge or referee mediates between two rivals. In the period between
1565 and 1590, nearly one out of every two plays contains a trial. Lastly, Shakespeare
uses a trio in which he has the thrust of one character carried over by another. These
three types of trios supplement what we have discovered about the play as a whole. It
is composed of a sequence of duets with occasional triadic sequences. The duets are
varied not only by the differing pairs of characters in them, but also by the variation in
structure, particularly that employing mutes. The structures Shakespeare uses are
relatively simple in this early play, and that may be one of the reasons it is not considered one of his stronger works.
Yet however illuminating these observations about the structureof Two Gentlemen
of Verona may be, it remains inevitable that we should wonder whether they are applicable to other plays of Shakespeare or, indeed, to dramatic construction in general.
Is the arrangement of duets and trios a peculiar feature of this play? Can it be found in
other works by Shakespeare? May it, in fact, be a model of dramaturgy?
In utilizing a binary pattern, Shakespeare merely continued a process that had
begun long before him. Through the sixties, seventies, and eighties of the sixteenth
century, dramatists experimented with ways of organizing multiple plots and many
characters into coherent sequences. Three changes occurred. First, the players and
writers altered the relationship of performer to audience by making it less direct. Secondly, they presented increasingly more complex narratives. And thirdly, they
enlarged the kinds and numbers of roles. Because the writers were in close touch with
audiences and had to produce immediate results, they could readily see what techniques worked well. Gradually, in the course of the seventies and eighties they discovered imaginative ways of building complex binary units.
But the emergence of binary form in the sixteenth century is not merely a matter of
historic interest. The model I propose is one that can serve equally well for other
drama than the Elizabethan. As I see it, theatrical presentation has its own imperatives. Concentration of effect is one of them. To achieve such concentration, the actor
can work directly upon the audience or upon the audience through another actor.
Working upon an audience directly is a popular and exciting form of theatre. Nondramatic theatre such as the magic show and the stand-up comic routine is built upon
the performer'sability to make immediate contact with the spectators. And even in
dramatic theatre, direct appeal is thrilling and provocative under certain conditions.
Within the last generation, for instance, actors have found that they arouse a peculiar
delight in an audience when they break through the tacit barrier that realism has
erected between audience and actor. But this delight is limited, and most dramatic
scenes are presented without having the players acknowledge the presence of the audience; that is, most scenes are played between actors.
Yet if performing as a single player is limited, performing in relationship to more
than one partner at a time is risky. It risks diffusion of impact and loss of audience attention. That is why special structures are required to produce a successful trio on
stage. To place three forces on stage, each of equal interest, is possible, of course. We
see one attempt in the three-ring circus. But it is hard to sustain a triadic force unless
the elements are given a schematic relationship to one another. The most successful of

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these relationships in the drama is the one exemplified in Greek tragedy: a protagonist, a deuteragonist, and an attending chorus. This kind of triangle, really a duet with
audience (a binary form), may well be the paradigm for all drama. The chorus watching a duet echoes our condition, where we the audience both watch the duet and watch
an audience watching duets.
Naturally, there is a gap between the paradigm and an individual work. In drama,
the paradigm reflects the primary level of structure. In any concrete instance, the presentational elements are varied for aesthetic and expressive purposes. Writers of
modern naturalistic plays, for instance, have a tendency to write many short duets for
different pairs of characters, the action moving by shifts from one pair to another.
Even Chekhov, who juggles many people on stage at one time, combines shorter and
longer duets with an occasional trio to build his acts. Consider the third act of The
Cherry Orchard. It opens with a duet between Pishchik and Trofimov, followed by a
brief duet between Varya and Trofimov. The action continues with a return to
Trofimov and Pishchik, and then a duet between Mme. Ranevsky and Trofimov. For
a while Charlotta carries the action by performing tricks to a group of onlookers who
act redundantly.12 A trio among Mme. Ranevsky, Varya, and Trofimov follows with
Trofimov acting as commentator-satirist. Then there occurs one of the major scenes in
the act and indeed in the play. It is a duet where Mme. Ranevsky and Trofimov have
dispute about love. A series of brief duets then serve as a transition to Lopahin's arrival with the news that he has bought the orchard. Inserted in Lopahin's report is a
brief duet between Gaev and Mme. Ranevsky. Lopahin tells the story of the auction to
the guests, but the dominant reaction is one of shock, which reflects Mme. Ranevsky's
state. The last segment of the act is a final duet between Mme. Ranevsky and her
daughter Anya with Trofimov looking on mutely. Chekhov's genius is his ability to
make events flow from one duet and trio to another in an apparently seamless way,
and one of his great dramatic skills is the ability to enfold one duet within another as
he does when he puts the Varya-Trofimov duet within the continuing duet of
Trofimov-Pishchik.
A

My hypothesis then is that binary structure is the basis of all dramatic presentation.
Playwrights periodically seek to break out of its bonds, and that very urge to exceed
the limits of binary form is one of the creative resources of the theatre. Sometimes this
urge to break out of the binary arrangement leads to new ways of combining solos,
duets, and trios, as Chekhov found. More usually, however, it is the capacity of
writers and actors to exploit the inherent power of the solo, the duet, and the trio that
produces reverberant drama. Shakespeare, of all dramatists, was most richly endowed with that capacity.

12

Reactions to Charlotta as displayed by Pishchik, Trofimov, the Stationmaster, and Mme. Ranevsky,
contribute in parallel ways. (The leitmotif of Pishchik's response is an exclamation of astonishment,
repeated four times in a single page of dialogue, and usually translated as "fancy that!")