Scripting Stage Space in Oedipus the King and Hamlet

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Recommended: Literary Analysis

"Literary people have long been studying and teaching plays as if they were meant to be read rather than performed."

"A central part of a play's meaning is the way it was originally designed to work on stage."

William Shakespeare's Hamlet and Sophocles Oedipus the King have long been included on academic lists for scholarly study as literary texts. As someone who has studied both texts in just the manner Hornby mentions, I would suggest that what is lost when a scholar treats a play text as literature is precisely that `central part of the play's meaning' which is illuminated by consideration of how a play was `designed to work on stage'. I intend to look at the crucial opening moments of each play, heeding Hornby's words, and keeping the text's status as `pretext' to an eventual performance very much at the forefront of my analysis.

Sophocles' Oedipus the King was designed to work on an Athenian stage . Great amphitheatres, like those at Athens and Epidauros would hold thousands of citizens who would be seated in a semi-circular tiered theatron looking down upon the acting space. Central to this space was the skene, which represented the wall of a building, and would be entered by a central door. There would have been a rectangular stage in front of the skene for actors and a semi-circular orchestra for the chorus. The audience would be able to see the stage, each other and also the surrounding landscape beyond the amphitheatre. The theatre place, and the way the play was designed to be viewed on stage certainly contributed much to the play's impact and message.

The shape of the theatre allows each spectator to see some of his fellow spectators as well... so they could see and respond to their collective reaction t...

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...n, Elaine. & Savona, George. Theatre as a Sign-System: A Semiotics of Text and Performance (London: Routledge 1999)

Beacham, Richard C. `Staging Greek Tragedy: Insights on Sites' (University of Warwick 1987)

Bulman, James C. Shakespeare, Theory and Performance (London: Routledge 1996)

Hornby, Richard. Script into Performance (New York: Applause 1995)

Kermode, Frank. Shakespeare's Language (London: Penguin 2001)

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet, ed. Rylands, George. (Oxford: OUP 1993)

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet, ed. Jenkins, Harold (London: Thompson 2003)

Sophocles. The Theban Plays, Oedipus the King, tr. Watling, E F. (London: Penguin 1974)

Sophocles. Oedipus Rex (New York: Dover 1991)

Sophocles. Oedipus Tyrannos, tr. Wertenbaker, Timberlake. Faber:1992 (class handout)

Tillyard, E M W. The Elizabethan World Picture (Middlesex: Pelican 1982)

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