The dramatic potential of time in Shakespeare

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The Dramatic Potential of Time in Shakespeare

Jacek Mydla

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The Dramatic Potential of Time in Shakespeare

To the memory o f my mother, Helena

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Prace Naukowe

_r

Uniwersytetu Śląskiego w Katowicach

nr 2055

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J a c e k M y d lą

The Dramatic Potential of Time in Shakespeare

W ydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego

K atow ice 2002

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E d ito r of the Series H istoria L iteratur Obcych Aleksander Abłamowicz

Reviewer Andrzej Wicher

0S-31116

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Table of Contents

2.1.4. O time, cease thou thy c o u r s e ... 67

2.1.5. The giddy rou n d o f F o rtu n e’s w h e e l ... 69

2.1.6. T o unm ask falsehood and bring truth to l i g h t ... 71

2.2. T he time o f r h e t o r i c ... 73

2.2.1. A ttending tim e’s l e i s u r e ... 73

2.2.2. This helpless sm oke of w o r d s ... 75

2.2.3. How slow tim e goes in time o f s o r r o w ... 79

C o n c l u s i o n s ... 81

3. C o m i c t i m e ... 84

3.1. Verbalised time in the exposition of L ove’s Labour’s L o s t ... 84

3.1.1. Spite o f corm orant devouring T i m e ... 84

3.1.2. Till painful study shall outwear three y e a r s ... 87

3.1.3. T h at’s too long for a p l a y ... 92

3.2. The seizing o f occasion in the climax o f A ll’s Well That Ends Well . . . 97

3.2.1. The instant and its the forward to p ... 97

3.2.2. This exceeding posting day and n i g h t ... 99

3.2.3. Sixteen businesses, a m o n th ’s length a - p i e c e ... 104

3.2.4. And time revives u s ... 107

4 . T r a g i c t i m e ... i n 4.1. Violated time in the exposition of M a c b e t h ... I l l 4.1.1. H ours dreadful and things s t r a n g e ... I l l 4.1.2. Fruitless crown and barren s c e p t r e ... 114

4.1.3. The future in the i n s t a n t ... 117

4.1.4. The present ho rro r and the time, which now suits with i t ... 123

4.2. F atalistic time in the climax in Romeo and J u l i e t ... 128

4.2.1. T he yoke o f inauspicious s t a r s ... 128

4.2.2. Love-devouring d e a t h ... 133

4.2.3. M ost miserable h our th a t e’er time s a w ... 136

4.2.4. N othing slow to slack this h a s t e ... 139

Conclusions to C hapters 3 and 4 ... 144

5. T i m e ’s m u l t i - d r a m a : A m e t a - d r a m a t i c r e a d i n g o f T h e T e m p e s t . . 149

5.1. T he time ’twixt six and n o w ... 149

5.2. D o st thou f o r g e t ? ... *51

5.3. T h ’occasion speaks t h e e ... 153

5.4. C orrespondent to c o m m a n d ... 156

5.5. T he pow ers, delaying, n o t f o r g e ttin g ... 158

B i b l i o g r a p h y ... 159

S tre sz c z e n ie ... *^3

Z u s a m m e n f a s s u n g ... 174

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Acknowledgements

I would like to extend m y gratitude to my adviser, Professor M arta G ibińska-M arzec, to whom I rem ain deeply indebted for her gift of m aking Shakespeare’s texts come alive.

I would like to thank my PhD dissertation reviewers, Professor Wojciech K alaga, Professor Jerzy Lim on, and Professor Andrzej Wicher; their com m ents have helped m e give this work a m uch m ore consistent shape.

T o D avid Schauffler, who kindly offered help with rereading and correct

ing the m anuscript, this book owes m uch of w hat it can boast of clarity.

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Preface

No study of Shakespeare can pretend to be ploughing untilled terrain.

Like alm ost all other aspects of Shakespeare’s works, that o f time has undergone extensive critical treatm ent. The considerations I undertake m ay not add a new dim ension to what has been the subject o f m any a fruitful investigation. M y aim is to take ap art the deck o f conventionally placed emphases and, after giving them a reshuffle, to look forw ard to an increase o f crops in a field th at has already proved so fertile. It is indubitable that m any essential features o f time in Shakespeare’s d ram a have been brought to light and successfully explored. Despite this, a unifying synthesis still lies ahead, and the aim o f this study is to m ake this future seem less rem ote and the prospect of grasping it less forbidding.

All agree th at Shakespeare’s w ork appeared at a very specific historical juncture. One aspect o f this specificity lies in the fact th at the Renaissance revival o f the past brought to the foreground a rich legacy o f culturally blended concepts and images. In this respect, the ‘em blem ’ is m ost illustra

tive. C om bining m oral instruction with its artistic if crude visualisation, the emblem evidently catered to the epoch’s need to inject fresh wisdom into received form s. This phenom enon highlights the specificity o f the Renaissance, its peculiar blending o f the new with the old. Shakespeare’s o u tp u t is in no way exceptional, although its m ultifaceted dependence on the cultural legacy is too extensive to pinpoint in any single study. Shakespeare’s debt to the great classics, such as Seneca, Ovid, Plutarch, and to m any m inor authors, whose works supplied him with a backbone o f narrative and m arrow o f opinion, has been thoroughly studied. Shakespeare’s theatre was a m elting p ot in which this traditio n was reshaped, reused, and eventually relived. A t the same tim e, any awareness o f Shakespeare’s indebtedness to the past, no m atter how acute, ought n o t to be used to discredit his originality. On the contrary, a heightened sensitivity to his influences ought to help us redirect our view in o rder to grasp Shakespeare’s dram atic genius.

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A crude way o f seeing the theatre as a place where showing collaborates with telling will help us adjust the basic emphases. Unlike dram atists who, like Seneca, had put telling before showing, Shakespeare seeks to balance both com ponents. Shakespeare’s d ram atisation o f his source narratives seems to have been driven by the intent to find a w orking com prom ise between these two discrete m odes o f representation. However, in favouring the m im e

tic com ponent he did n ot go as far as his successors did. Saving as m uch as possible from the usually epic sources of his plays, Shakespeare’s art was intent on reshaping them to convey a specific effect. The process invol

ved m oulding narrative time into dram atic time, a leap over a gap which is m uch wider than one is norm ally inclined to accept. Unlike the d ram a tist, a storyteller works under no specific tem poral pressure. The form er, on the other hand, has at least three clocks to co-ordinate: th at o f n a rra tion, th a t o f perform ance, and th at of reception. It is a platitude to say that dram atisation o f a narrative involves selection of m aterial with respect to its m im etic potential plus a great deal o f tem poral com pression. This com m onplace outer skin however conceals a m uch trickier core. Left unex

plained are reasons for tem poral compression. F o r Shakespeare did not compress narratives simply in order to conclude before floodlights went out.

H ad this been his purpose, no dram atic tim e could ever have emerged in his plays as an irreducible quality, rather than as a side effect o f the storyteller’s tem poral restraint. D ram atic time is the jo in t action o f mimetic and figurative-conceptual com ponents of the dram atic language. On the stage, telling and showing relate to one another, or the playw right correlates them in order to com ply with the dem ands o f the tem poral econom y o f live perform ance. W hat m akes a successful dram atist is the ability to m eet this dem and constructively, which m eans to produce a unified, sustained artistic effect.

T he criticism of time in Shakespeare has come a long way. A long this way, two things have become clear: One is Shakespeare’s indebtedness to a rich cultural legacy. On its own this vein of Shakespeare criticism allows us to say th at Shakespeare’s plays are also plays abou t time, or tre a t abo ut the essential hum an involvement with time as the condition o f existence.

The second insight concerns technique. Shakespeare has long been recogni

sed as a tim e-conscious dram atist, i.e. one whose plays effectively use the running tim e allotted for perform ance. W hat has been left unexplored is how Shakespeare’s plays succeed in sim ultaneously representing and utilising time. In other words, this question concerning the dram atic function of represented time opens a field where a late-com ing researcher can still hope to find enough space to ‘bustle in’. O ur understanding of Shakespeare’s dram atic clock, his technique o f building up dram atic tension, has to tone with our knowledge concerning the clock built into the worlds o f his plays,

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and with how the characters respond to it. In this way, time as the com m on subject m atter unifies our efforts th at aim at investigating its dram atic potential.

The design of the analysis

This analysis o f dram atic time in Shakespeare consists of five m ain parts.

The In trod uctio n (C hapter 1) has two chief concerns. First, basic approaches to the time problem in Shakespeare are critically examined. Second, a glance at the broader problem o f tim e in literature helps us to establish m ethodological priorities and to whet and prime interpretive tools.

C hapter 2 examines Shakespeare’s poetry and poetic narratives with the purpose o f exploring the rich repertoire of verbal representations o f time. In the first section o f this chapter, we shall discuss Shakespeare’s rhetoric of time, the num erous tropes and images at work in his poetry, as well as their use by the lyric speaker and the epic narrators. This is a necessary stage inasm uch as poetry is the constitutive m edium o f Shakespearean dram a. M oreover, the poem Lucrece raises the problem o f the tem poral value of rhetoric.

In C hapters 3 and 4, we shall explore segments o f the action in a selection o f plays (comedies and tragedies) with respect to how represented time builds up dram atic time. Sum mary sections at the end of both these chapters will lead us on to further problem s.

C hapter 5 presents a m eta-dram atic analysis o f The Tempest. Here analysis is m eant to substitute for a conventional listing o f conclusions. It is my belief th at transaction with yet another, albeit m uch bolder than the previous, dram atisation o f tem porality is the m ost fitting consum m ation to an inves

tigation into the always living texture o f dram atic time.

T he Bibliography consists o f two parts. T he first lists Shakespeare’s works and oth er prim ary sources. The second is ordered them atically and its m ain section contains publications concerned with time in Shakespeare.

This is ju st an overview o f the contents. E xplanations concerning the structure o f the study will be given in the Conclusions section at the end of C hapter 1.

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1. Introduction: Time and drama

1.1. The drama of time

1.1.1. Time in literary criticism

The way time defies systematic exam ination has an effect on m any fields o f scholarly interest. As G. F. W aller rem arks, ‘ “T im e” , as so m any treatm ents o f the topic show, can become a category so unhelpfully vague, so m uch a conceptual imperialist, th at it is extendable to include any m atter of hum an concern in which the eager scholar chooses to be interested. All events occur, by definition, in time, and all m ay be defined in terms of tim e.’1 This diagnosis does not inspire hope: In literary criticism, a scholar pursuing the problem of time ends up in a m aze where alleys forever connect and disjoint as aspects of the tricky subject variegate and m ultiply. If one decides to pursue tim e in one of these aspects exclusively, one can hardly be sure th at the favoured approach is relevant to any other dilemm a th at time poses. The devious nature o f time, the intractable ‘collective singular’, as Ricoeur calls it, seriously affects the m ethodological premises and often jeopardises m any a daring theoretical venture.2 It seems th at only interdisciplinary efforts m ay be capable of eluci

dating num erous intractable complexities. If this is the case, then literary studies can m ake their contribution to the com m on pursuit by exploring the sedim entation o f the hum an experience of tem porality in literary works over the centuries. This is o f course exactly w hat critics have been doing. This too is our prim ary goal when em barking on another study o f tim e in Shakespeare.

1 G. F. W aller, The Strong Necessity o f Time. The Philosophy o f Time in Shakespeare and Elizabethan Literature (The H ague & Paris: M outon, 1976), p. 2.

2 Paul R icoeur, Time and Narrative, trans. K athleen M cLaughlin & D avid Pellauer (Chicago

& L ondon: The University o f Chicago Press, 1983-1988), vol. 3, p. 6.

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T h at literary criticism is pivotal for the study of tim e is an idea th at has a great num ber of advocates, and one th at has now m any com m onplace form ulations. P oulet’s Studies in Human Time, based on rich literary m aterial, is a very good case in point. ‘T he greatest works of literature — writes W aller

— m ake intellectually penetrating dem ands upon us in that we are challenged to apprehend som ething about ourselves, encountered in the actual process o f viewing or reading a play or poem .’3 A lthough each literary genre can be regarded as an encryption o f tem porality, this view seems to be particularly relevant to dram a, and especially to tragedy. As de Romilly p ut it in her book on G reek tragedy, ‘There is no tragedy that does not deal with tim e.’4 And Paul Ricoeur claims th at ‘the tragic muthos is set up as the poetic solution to the speculative paradox o f tim e’5.

However, the study o f time in literature can m ean different things, depending on the m eaning o f time. N ot only is the literary w ork o f art an intrinsically tem poral object. The process o f its cognition too is affected by time. F urtherm ore, the so-called represented or fictive world, being an illusion of reality, m ust also be an im itation o f time as reality’s basic, if invisible, constituent. ‘T im e’ — wrote K a n t — ‘is a necessary representation, lying at the foundation of all our intuitions. W ith regard to phenom ena in general, we cannot think away time from them , and represent them to ourselves as out of and unconnected with tim e ... .Tim e is therefore given a priori. In it alone is all reality o f phenom ena possible.’6 As an all-penetrating condition, time affects the entire m im etic process: com position, representation (creation), and recep

tio n .7 Even K an tian generalisations can take on literary-critical flesh, as was the case with Bakhtin and his pursuits o f chronotopicity, the intrinsic spatiotem poral organisation o f any narrative representation of reality. A ccord

ing to Bakhtin, no ‘entry into the sphere of m eaning’, let alone any form of literary mimesis, can be accomplished w ithout the presupposition and use of some form of spatiotem poral representation, for which he coined the term ch rono top e.8

3 W aller, The Strong N e c e s s ity ..., p. 171.

4 Jaqueline de Romilly, Time in Greek Tragedy (Cornell U niversity Press, 1968), pp. 6-7.

5 R icoeur, Time and Narrative, vol. 1, p. 38.

6 Im m anuel K an t, Critique o f Pure Reason, trans. N orm an K em p Smith (N ew Y ork: St.

M artin ’s Press, 1965), p. A 31 (reference to the original pagination).

7 Cf. R icoeur’s distinction between three ‘m om ents’ o f mimesis: m im esis,, m imesis2, and mimesis3; Time and Narrative, vol. 1, p. 46. Since the process of experience becom ing muthos involves transposition, mimesis, can be regarded as prefigured time, mimesis2 as configured time, and m im esis3 as refigured time; cf. ibid., pp. 53 ff.

8 M ikhail B akhtin, The Dialogic Imagination. Four Essays, ed. Michael H olquist, trans. Caryl Em erson & M ichael H olquist (A ustin: University o f Texas Press, 1994), p. 85. Cf. also Sue Vice,

‘T he C hronotope: Fleshing out the Tim e’, C hap. 5 in idem, Introducing Bakhtin (M anchester

& New York: M anchester UP, 1997), pp. 200 ff.

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Time in Shakespeare has received extensive treatm ent in post-w ar criticism.

A num ber o f studies have been devoted to its various aspects. A part from a great deal o f articles, there have also appeared some m ajor undertakings.

As one m ight well expect, each of them presents a different approach. In addition, this diversity is reflected, on the m ost superficial level, in the astonishing variety o f term inology. As several interests lead to different findings, scholars have pursued a wide range o f ‘tim es’: dram atic, tragic, theatrical, n atu ral, augm entative, organic, eschatological, sacram ental, em u

lative, redem ptive, even anachronistic. W hat causes this confusion of terms?

Is any unifying insight to be hoped for? These problem s seem as perplexing as the nature of time itself.

The basic question has to be repeated time and again, ‘W hat is tim e in Shakespeare?’ Is it feasible to heal the vagueness and polysemy o f time?

H ardly, if one is constantly at a loss at which port to lower anchor. ‘It is easy enough — continues W aller — to accum ulate a vast array of contrasting and contradictory references to Time, the destroyer, the fulfiller, the cannibal, the bountiful, the thief, in Renaissance literature. W hat m atters m ore and is m ore difficult, is to pin dow n the subtleties of tenor, the discrete intellectual or em otional contexts into which such com m onplaces are put by individual writers and artists.’9 T h at attem pts to remedy tim e’s vagueness are rarely successful is shown in passages in F. M . T u rn e r’s book, Shakespeare and the Nature o f Time. Setting out to study ‘Shakespeare’s ideas abo ut tim e’, T urner detects ‘two great them es’ in the sonnets: love and Time the D estro yer.10 This suggests th at either Shakespeare depicts only a single aspect of time or th a t the scholar has reasons to give one preference. Both assum ptions are dubious. To m ake things worse, T urner borrow s the term ‘increase o f entropy’ from the jargon o f contem porary science to forge his tools o f in terp retatio n .11 The problem o f course is that, however philosophic it m ay be, a sonnet or a tragedy uses tim e as a m eans to an artistic end. To forget this is to m istake a poem by Shakespeare for a student’s essay in science.

It is alm ost routine am ong scholars — both literary critics and philoso

phers — to begin their investigations with the quote from Book X I of A ugustine’s Confessions'. ‘W hat then is tyme? If no m an aske m e the question, I know; but if I pretend to explicate it to any body, I know it n o t.’12 This is com m only understood to be reason’s white flag hoisted to signify its surrender after an assault on the perplexities o f time. However, a positive

9 W aller, The Strong N ecessity. . . , p. 2.

10 Frederick M . T urner, Shakespeare and the Nature o f Time (Oxford U niversity Press, 1971), p. 7.

11 Ibid., p. 11.

12 In ibid., p. 10.

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m eaning of this statem ent is rarely heeded. T he inability to verbalise our intuitive knowledge follows our intim ate fam iliarity with time. The m ind m ay be bound to run into paradoxes when trying to get to grips with time, but this does not entail any incapacitating verbal inability. A reader o f Shakespeare m ay soon conclude th at the reverse is true, th at perhaps m an has to o m uch to say about time. However, time m ay not have a single m eaning at all. As Agnes Heller points out, the Renaissance did not produce a comprehensive, abstract notion of tim e.13 N or are we obliged to presuppose any such uniform ity in Shakespeare.

1.1.2. Two main approaches to the problem of time in Shakespeare

A m ethodologically accountable investigation tends to specify a m eaning o f time. T he critical legacy presents two m ain trends depending on how scholars m eet this dem and. Roughly distinguished, the two approaches are historical-philosophical, and literary-critical. T he first tends to establish its m eaning of time by recourse either to the history of ideas, to iconography, or to any borrow ed concept th at the critic finds pertinent. The other is concerned with the instrum ents used in conjuring up fictional realities, and especially the dram atic mimesis th at builds up tension and sustains the rhythm intrinsic to dram a. Rarely do these two approaches go hand in hand. C onceptual time- criticism is usually well pleased when a particular idea of time can be ascribed to the dram atist him self (‘Shakespeare’s idea o f tim e’), the characters (‘O thel

lo's fatalism ’), or the fictive world as such (‘em ulative time in Troilus and Cressida'). Criticism preoccupied with dram atic time (a species o f the literary- critical approach) usually leaves off after establishing a ‘tim e-schem e’ o f a given play or after exposing the elements th at sustain the dram atic tension.

The latter type o f criticism pays little attention to non-referential (non- mimetic, non-deictic) uses of ‘tim e’ and words semantically related to it.

T ibor Fabiny, a H ungarian scholar, proposes to treat these two approaches as equally legitimate in their limited scope o f enquiry. In his w ork on the Wheel of Time as a system of imagery in Shakespeare’s dram as, Fabiny recognises the m erit of alternative approaches concerned with ‘concrete tim e’

and its functioning.14 He m akes a distinction between abstract time and

13 Agnes Heller, ‘Tim e and space: past-orientedness and future orientedness,’ C hapter VI of her book Renaissance M an, trans. R ichard E. Allen (London, Henley & Boston: K egan Paul,

1978), p. 172.

14 T ibor Fabiny, ‘ “ Ripeness is all” . The Wheel o f Tim e as a System o f Im agery in Shakespeare’s D ram as’, in Baliant Rozsnyai, ed., Szeged: A d a Universitas Szegediensis de Attila J ó zsef Nominatae, Papers in English and American Studies, vol. 2 (1982), p. 156.

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concrete time. This draw s on T ib o r Szobotka’s investigation o f concrete time, conceived as a dram aturgical device. Szobotka was concerned with phenom ena such as urgency and density, m ovem ent tow ards the future, the m ost frequent tem poral designations (‘to m orrow ’, ‘d aw n ’), the age o f protagonists, sim ul

taneity o f represented occurrences, etc.15

While recognising the legitimacy and the m erits of both approaches, one wonders how it is possible to venture such disparate inquiries w ithout explo

ding their allegedly com m on subject, especially if one takes into account the self-reflexive representation o f time in dram a. Shakespeare’s plays offer the audience insights into the n atu re o f time, insights th at are m ediated, to be sure, by the dram atic situation in which they participate. This tem poral self- reflexivity is one of the reasons th at call for a comprehensive investigation into both aspects o f time. The ghastly obstetrics of time in Othello (‘There are m an y /e v e n ts in the womb of time which will be delivered.’) and the tem poral orthopaedics in Hamlet (‘The tim e is out of j o i n t . . . ’), thought- provoking in themselves as they are, appear at specific moments in the action, which m akes them fraught with specific dynamics. The m ost sophisticated aphorism s and abstruse saws have patiently to aw ait their cue, as the course of the action can only justify their use and lend them whatever existential im port they seem to possess independently o f the dram atic situation. In other words, ideas are harnessed by the tem poral econom y o f dram a. On the other hand, even a very m undane tem poral reference is a p a rt o f the p lay ’s idiom, and thereby enmeshed into its poetic fabric. The problem s of concrete tim e will be our concern in P art Tw o o f this chapter.

1.1.3. Shakespeare and the history of time

The historical approach comes with two emphases: philosophical and emblematic. Representatives of the first approach (Quinones, W aller) address the problem o f tim e by reviewing the history of the concept (Aristotle, P lo

tinus, A ugustine, m edieval theologians) or em phasising the uniqueness of Shakespeare’s era in the history o f m a n ’s consciousness o f tem porality (R enai

ssance literati and thinkers, the comm ercial tim e sense, P rotestant doctrines).

The latter aspect seems especially relevant, as the scholars are determ ined to grasp the Shakespeare phenom enon by setting it in the context of his unique epoch. Says W aller, ‘In the writings o f Bruno and Shakespeare in particular, we are at the fascinating point where a cultural revolution, involving the

15 Ibid. S zobotka’s study o f concrete time in Shakespeare (‘The Im portance o f Tim e in Shakespeare’s D ram as’) appeared in H ungary in 1965. U nfortunately, I have had no access to this work.

2 The D ram atic...

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m ost sensitive m inds o f a generation, is gaining im petus and self-conscious

ness.’10 A nd Quinones gives a similar idea the following form ulation,

‘A lthough individual notions would undergo noticeable shifts and turns, still the basic conception o f time in the W est was given prim ary im petus by the m en and society o f the Renaissance.’17

Q uinones endeavours to blend ‘the interests of com parative literature, them atics, and the history o f ideas’.18 F o r him time is ‘a them e’, or ‘a fairly recognizable constellation o f attitudes and ideas’.19 Y et his determ ination to prove th a t tim e is ‘a great discovery’ o f the Renaissance is n ot entirely convincing. It is no t clear to what extent this discovery by the emerging new m an is a re-invention rather th an a reconstruction o f time.

T he Renaissance ‘discovery o f tim e’ brings into play such features as fracturing, discontinuity, detachm ent from the processes of life, m echanisa

tion o f its m easurem ent, fragm entation, spatialisation, and the splintering of reality into the objective and the subjective. W ithout getting entangled in a dispute over the novelty o f these ideas we can repeat the previously draw n conclusion: It is necessary to secure their critical relevance by expli

cating the n ature o f their dram atic entanglem ent and potential. A m uch m ore daring species o f the historical approach is found in Gisele Venet’s endeavour to study Renaissance d ram a as a concept in m o tio n .20 This seems to be the only w orkable attem pt to fashion the category o f the dram atic so th at it fits the presupposed conception of the Renaissance ideological unrest co n

ceived as m ovem ent o f forms.

1.1.4. Shakespeare and the emblems of time

Panofsky’s Studies in Iconology o f 1939, and especially his essay on F ather Time, gave rise to the emblematic approach. A t least two Shakespearean critics, Soji Iwasaki and T ibor Fabiny, are representative. W ithout confining their w ork to the pursuit of influence, both scholars believe themselves to be investigating the dram atic fabric itself. According to Iw asaki, there are two levels o f the theatre: realistic and allegorical. The theatre of icons coexists and interacts with theatre o f dream . ‘Symbolic tableaux are connected by the thread of narrative continuity with their m eanings accum ulated and fused

16 W aller, The Strong N ecessity. . . , pp. 3-4.

17 R ichardo Q uinones, The Renaissance Discovery o f Time (Cam bridge, M assachusetts: H a r

vard University Press, 1972), p. x.

18 Ibid., p. xi.

15 Ibid.

20 Venet Gisele, Temps et vision tragique: Shakespeare et ses contemporains (U niversite de la Sorbonne N ouvelle Paris III, 1985).

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into the ultim ate m eaning o f the play, which is usually revealed in the central symbolic tableau o f the m ain type-scene.’21 The relation between the visual and the narrative takes us back to Lessing’s Laocoon and his typology o f art with respect to its relation to time. The prom inence o f the visual (the term

‘tab leau ’ is o f m om ent) points to a peculiar tem poral paralysis. T he emblem freezes tim e.22 It is, as Iwasaki sees it, m eaning frozen in time, waiting to be revealed. F avouring the iconographic elements in d ram a can lead to ignoring the m im etic dynamics o f the dram atic action, which cannot be reduced to a m ere accum ulation o f m eaning.

Fabiny, as we have seen above, recognises the m erits o f focusing on ‘the categories o f philosophical abstract tim e’, yet him self chooses to enquire into the ‘stuff or backcloth o f history’, which is to be gleaned from the context of the plays. N o t satisfied with studies o f time in Shakespeare th at ignore its dram atic embedding, he seeks an organising principle that w ould illum inate tim e’s condition and the system o f imagery by which it is operated .23 This m ethodological decision, however valuable in stressing the role of the dram atic context o f abstract ideas, is unavoidably biased against dram atic tim e in th at it favours images and ideas. Fabiny hopes to discover a unifying system of imagery, th a t o f the Wheel o f Time, and this is itself sym ptom atic. One can see such decisions as an oblique recognition of the disruptive action o f concrete time, which seems to endanger th at precarious stability which concepts and images promise.

1.1.5. Shakespeare and the philosophy of time

A separate category can be proposed for philosophy-inspired studies o f the tim e-problem such as those em barked on by T urner, Sypher, and K astan.

They seek to establish the m eaning o f tim e independently of the tradition from which Shakespeare’s work arises. The authors ‘m odernise’ Shakespeare by pursuing affinities between ‘his’ ideas and our contem porary scientific and philosophical conceptions. T urner, as we have seen, discovers the idea of entropy in Shakespeare’s sonnets, Sypher the Bergsonian durative time in the tragedies. K astan applies a Heideggerian conception o f the tem poral finiteness of hum an existence.

It is n ot possible to cut philosophy out entirely when investigating dram atic time, especially if philosophy is understood in its broad m eaning, encom pas

21 Soji Iw asaki, The Sw ord and the Word: Shakespeare’s Tragic Sense o f Time (Tokyo:

Shinozaki Shorin, 1973), p. 6.

22 Cf. D avid A. R oberts, ‘M ystery to M athem atics Flow n: Tim e and Reality in the R enaissance’, Centennial Review, 19 (1975), p. 139.

23 Fabiny, ‘T he W h e e l ...’, p. 157.

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sing a variety o f generalisations gathered together rather th an consistently conjoined. But a simple enum eration o f the relevant tem poral m odes — tra n sience, unpredictability, irreversibility, changeableness, retention, m em ory, anticipation — dem onstrates the futility o f any purely conceptual time analy

ses o f dram a. T o detect in poem s and plays ideas m uch m ore carefully, and usually m uch earlier, form ulated by philosophers does not seem like a w orth

while occupation; by their very n ature these pursuits are doom ed to yield trivial or superfluous fruit. F u rtherm ore, there is a discrepancy between an utterance on tim e expressed by a character in dram a and its dram atic function.

This m ay be shown on H am let’s ‘definition’ o f m an as ‘looking before and after’ or M acb eth ’s ‘T om orrow and to m o rro w ’ soliloquy: Such utterances seem to have a solid m eaning which m ay be lifted out o f the dram atic context.

This, however, m ay have little to do with Shakespeare’s idea o f time, or the idea whose m eaning is cooked, so to say, in the oven o f an entire play. The latter can only be construed by looking at the dynam ic environm ent in which ideas and images operate and engage in live interaction.

Use and function define verbal m eaning on the stage. Studies of time in Shakespeare are often explicitly concerned with m eaning rather th an the functional disposition and econom y of lexical units. Criticism intent on digging up ideas runs the risk of petrifying them at the expense o f whatever m ay be essential in the very succession. C ontrary to this, the significance o f tim e has to be derived from the course o f the action. A p art from being a reality-im itating fram ew ork effected through tem poral deixis and reference (see below), time functions as an idea which confers the totality o f a message on the action. The relation o f one to the other: time as mimesis and time as idea, will have to be clarified.

1.1.6. Anachronistic time

T o emphasise th at the significance o f tim e transcends its role as a m eans of generating dram atic tension, scholars often resort to contem porary philo

sophical concepts. One such attem pt has been to identify tragic tim e as

‘anachronistic’ and thus essentially opposed to the chronom etrie succession th at is characteristic of the epic, or a chronologically patterned and causally ordered narrative. Wylie Sypher distinguishes four conceptions o f tim e rele

vant for the dram a: simple chronicle, the cycle of F ortune, Aeschylean time o f retribution, and psychic d u ratio n .24 D raw ing on Bergson’s distinctions, the au thor contrasts ‘durative o r psychic tim e’ with ‘serial or chronom etrie tim e’,

24 CX. Wylie Sypher, The Ethic o f Time: Structures o f Experience in Shakespeare (New Y ork:

The Seabury Press, 1976), pp. 4 ff.

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and juxtaposes lived o r durative time with tim e th a t is fragm ented, chro n o m etrie, N ew tonian or serial.25 T hus, in order to answer to its genuine calling which is the representation of the Bergsonian sum m ation of existence, tim e in dram a has to be anachronistic. Tragedy th at is conscious o f its nature, i.e. in sounding the depths o f hum an existence, relates to the tem porality o f our consciousness rath er than the sequential and causal order o f external incidents.

Sypher com pares Macbeth with Oedipus and argues th at both are static in the sense o f positing a personal, existential identity whose gradual self-recognition m akes up the action.

T he tragic act is a sum m ation o f w hat we were, are, and will be; it is synoptic. The seemingly discontinuous intervals o f the psychic life have antecedents and projections th a t testify to the endurance o f the self. O edipus was blind before he blinded himself.

M acbeth was a bloody m an before he m urdered D uncan or perform ed the act th at expressed his m oral being. The tragic act has behind it, w ithin it, a totality o f existence, even if we drag our past behind us unaw are. T he m oral life a t its freest and fullest is anachronistic.26

In tem poral condensation lies then the essence of tragic time; durative time characteristic o f the tragic experience is a stasis.

However, even if regarded on an exclusively ontological basis, tragedy seems to presuppose m ore th an accum ulative duration. H orst Breuer, who himself investigates the disintegration of time in Macbeth, sees this very clearly.

Time ideally conceived acts as a unifying principle:

T im e . . . is m ore th an ju st a sequence o f recognisable portions o f d u ratio n follow ing one another. Tim e m eans orientation, organisation, co-ordination, purpose, coherence, wholeness; one m om ent is m eaningfully connected with other m om ents; there are causal relations and final intentions; the present is instructed by the p ast and encouraged by the future; and every instant, every ‘syllable o f recorded tim e’ is governed by order, developm ent, rem em brance, progress, survey, expectation, confidence. T he idea o f time is the idea of control — the individual’s control o f his life, a n a tio n ’s control o f its history, the artist’s control o f his m edium .27

This is a m uch-needed com plem entation of the idea o f anachronistic time.

Otherwise one would have to ignore huge portions o f every play in which the tragic synopsis o f existence does n ot come to shine through.

Furtherm ore, Sypher pays little attention to Shakespeare’s actual working out of the tragic sum m ation o f existence, to tim e’s role in generating dram atic

25 Ibid., p. 91. In a Bergsonian m anner she distinguishes between ‘lived tim e’ and ‘th ought tim e’. Cf. passim.

26 Ibid., p. 92.

27 H orst Breuer, ‘D isintegration o f Tim e in M acbeth’s Soliloquy: “ T o-m orrow , and to-m orrow and to-m orrow ” ’, The Modern Language Review, 71 (April 76), pp. 257-8.

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tension. It is disputable w hether Shakespeare’s technique works hand in hand with durative time. As we shall see, dram atic tim e, and Shakespearean d ra m atic tim e especially, is fragm ented and segmented, and as such is closer to ‘cinem atography’, which bore the bru nt of Bergson’s criticism as distortion of lived d uratio n by the intellect.28 One thinks here o f w hat M ax Bluestone calles ‘adaptive m anipulation o f tim e’ by dram a. The suggestion th at a tra gedy, especially one based on historical sources, assumes a tem poral stasis contradicts a view th at m any critics agree upon: Shakespeare stylised and m anipulated time. ‘T he timelessness o f the sources’ — writes Bluestone —

‘therefore elicits a profound reaction from Shakespeare and his con tem po ra

ries, whose adaptations regularly underscore the relevance o f tim e and the reality o f change. Progressively discovering him self through the scattered m om ents o f the Elizabethan dram a, the dram atic protagonist lives very m uch in tim e’s flow.’29 This view does not refute Sypher’s assum ption o f the existential weight of the tragic experience, yet is a substantial addendum and a m ethodological caution.

A no ther problem concerns time dimensions. The conception o f tragic anachronistic tim e places all m om ent in the past. This is in agreem ent with Bergson and his preoccupation with m em ory. Hence the fam ous m etap h o r o f a snowball: ‘M y m em ory is there, which conveys som ething o f the past into the present. M y m ental state, as it advances on the road of tim e, is conti

nually swelling with the d uratio n which it accumulates', it goes on increasing

— rolling upon itself, as a snowball on the snow .’30 P ostponing a m ore in-depth discussion to the next p a rt o f this chapter, let us here m erely point out the existence o f an alternative view. A great num ber o f critics argue th at the future m akes up the essence o f the dram atic action, and treat time as a principle o f change rather th an as a stasis fraught with existential m om ent.

Sypher’s contention is all the m ore disputable in th at Macbeth is a play where the prim acy o f the future in d ram a is worked into an im posing them atic concern. D ram atic time propels the action in a discernible direction, namely into th at o f the inevitable future; the d ram atist stages hum an time, or time th at is essentially goal-oriented, thus also future-oriented.

Conventionally, character is subjected to action rather th an the other way round. A ccording to A ristotle, in ethics the subject logically precedes action, but in poetics this order is reversed and action governs ethics.31 If too m uch

28 Cf. M ax Bluestone, From Story to Stage. Dramatic Adaptation o f Prose Fiction in the Period o f Shakespeare and his Contemporaries (The H ague & Paris: M outon, 1974), pp. 213 IT.

29 Ibid., p. 232.

30 H enri Bergson, Creative Evolution, trans. A rth u r M itchell (London: M acm illan & Co., 1911), p. 2.

31 Cf. R icoeur, Time and N arrative, vol. 1, p. 37. T he relevant statem ent in A ristotle’s Poetics is as follows: ‘N ow character determ ines m en’s qualities, b u t it is by their actions th a t they are

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The time o f dram a 23 em phasis is placed on the character, tim e loses its direction altogether. The inevitable dram atic distortion o f the living continuity of experience cannot simply be ignored for the sake o f giving prom inence to the critic’s philoso

phical preferences. The future-orientedness o f the hum an time in dram a is o f course yet anoth er philosophical statem ent com peting against others. It is however one which has advocates on both sides o f the negotiating table, am ong philosophers as well as am ong theoreticians o f the dram a. Instead of Bergson’s, one could ado pt other contem porary philosophical perspectives which give preference to the future rather than the past. M artin H eidegger’s existential herm eneutic o f the hum an being is future-oriented and stresses the m eaning o f the anticipative resoluteness as the foundation o f an authentic attitude to tim e.32 Theories of d ram a on the whole univocally stress th at goal-pursuing hum an actions are the ontological foundation o f the represented reality in d ram a.33

1.2. T he tim e o f d ra m a

It appears evident, then, that there is a distinct limit, as regardi length, to all works o f literary art the limit o f a single sittin g .. . Within this limit, the extent o f a poem m ay be made to bear m athematical relation to its m e r it.. . .

E dgar Allan Poe, The Philosophy o f Composition

1.2.1. Three aspects of time in dram a

We have already m ade a rough division o f the aspects of tim e relevant to a literary work. Let us now see how they particularly relate to a w ork o f dram atic art. A n exemplary division is found in K eir E lam ’s book The Semiotics o f Theatre and Drama. Elam distinguishes four ‘tem poral levels’

happy or the reverse. D ram atic action, therefore, is n o t with a view to the representation o f character: character comes in as subsidiary to the actions. H ence the incidents an d the p lo t are the end o f a tragedy; and the end is the chief thing of all.’

32 Ibid., vol. 3, p .- 83.

33 Cf. K eir Elam , The Semiotics o f Theatre and Drama (L ondon & New Y ork: Routledge, 1980), pp. 124 ff. Cf. also H ebeisen’s definition o f the hum an action (Handlung) as goal-oriented;

H ans-M artin Hebeisen, Versuch einer ontologischen Analyse der Z eit und der Handlung unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Ä sthetik des Dramas (W innenden: Buchdruckerei M üllerschon, 1961), p. 56. A com prom ise between the past and the future is sought by the renow ned critic o f Shakespeare W olfgang Clemen; cf. his ‘Past and F u tu re in Shakespeare’s D ra m a ’, Proceed

ings o f the British Academ y, 14 (1966), p. 240. Cf. also below, the section on dram atic time, 1.2.5.

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in the d ram a .34 Level one is discourse time, o r the fictional now. the tem poral deixis which actualises the dram atic world. Next, there is plot time, or ‘the order in which events are shown o r rep o rted’. The third level is chronological time, or ‘the actual ordering o f events’ including occurrences within the represented world o f a play which are m ental constructs o f the audience or readers. The fourth level is historical time, or the tem poral setting which a play m akes ostensively actual.

E lam ’s plot time is the to-be-actualised, potential tem poral structure o f the work. Elam specifies th a t plot time is ‘the structure of dram atic inform ation within the perform ance time p ro p er’. However, with the introduction of perform ance time tem poral levels diversify even further. As we shall observe, the perform ance factor, and accordingly playing o r perform ance time, cannot be ignored in a study of time in dram a. Elam, however, includes this aspect in level one, no m atter how infelicitous the term ‘discourse tim e’ m ight be. Still, th at staging or reading actualises the dram atic w ork is one thing; that reception imposes tem poral lim itations on the length (A ristotle’s ‘m ag nitu de’) of a play is another. Both aspects have to be taken into account in considering the process-like constitution o f theatrical perception.

As regards the fo u rth level, E lam ’s distinction between plot tim e on the one hand and chronological time on the other resembles the classic one between plot tim e and story time: ‘T he plot cuts a p attern in time. The story to which the play refers m ay have a different p a tte rn .’35 This consideration largely underm ines the im portance of historical time in the sense proposed by Elam.

Em rys Jones, whose analysis o f the first scenes o f Julius Caesar can convince even a staunch opponent, supports this suggestion with the assertion th at historical tim e is im m aterial to an investigation o f dram atic time. This is not to say th at com parisons between history and its dram atic rendition (‘chronological tim e’) are illegitimate. H istory in the form in which it was available to Shakespeare, such as P lu tarch’s Lives for instance, cannot be regarded as a level or layer in a dram atic work. ‘The historical events are rearranged into a highly stylized form in the interest of dram a; there is not the slightest pretence th at w hat we are watching is anything other than an evocation o f historical realities.’36 The very fact th at one can single out chronology as a relatively separate level m akes the addition o f historical time superfluous. T o put it ano ther way, chronology is as close as dram atic time ever gets to history.

In this way one arrives at the following typology of tim e aspects: 1) the sequential constitution of the literary work as com posed of parts or com po

34 Elam , The S e m io tic s ..., p. 117.

35 T. H odgson, The Batsford Dictionary o f Drama (London: B. T. B atsford, 1988), p. 399.

36 Em rys Jones, Scenic Form in Shakespeare (Oxford: A t the C larendon Press, 1971), p. 45.

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nents on any level o f m agnitude (act, scene, sentence, word) following one ano th er in linear succession; 2) the tem poral constitution o f the represented world and all its com ponents, which themselves m ay differ widely as to their m ode of existence in time (from the evanescent reality of a single event — say, a greeting — to the m uch m ore stable reality of this or th at character);

3) perform ance and its perception as coextensive and coactive processes in which the sequential linearity o f a work is actualised. In accord with these, we can distinguish at least the following two ‘tim es’ or clocks: playing or perform ance time and represented o r fictional time. There is no clock to relate to the aspect listed as 1) in the above typology. The sequence o f a play’s com posite parts in itself, like th at o f pages in a calendar, am ounts to no actual succession as long as there are no wheels o f live perform ance to set it in m otion.

As to the two basic clocks, the unique relation between playing (‘running’) time and represented time brings to mind the fam ous tho ug ht experiment with twins, one o f whom stays on E arth while the other travels through space at the speed of light. Yet this crude analogy fails: the audience in the Shakespeare theatre lives by these two clocks sim ultaneously. T he time th at is represented on stage undergoes various kinds of w arping so that, first, it fits the tim e span o f a single perform ance, and, second, it produces the required impressions in the mind o f the recipient. Thus an analysis of d ra m atic time has to take into account two seemingly extraneous sets of factors:

physical and psychological. Hence, Shakespeare criticism approaching the time problem should take into account the continuity of perform ance and the recipient’s im agination respectively. These two aspects will be discussed later on.

Initially, interest in dram atic time m eant th a t scholars were preoccupied with how Shakespeare handles time dram atically. T o use E lam ’s term inology, the focus o f critical attention was on the relation between plot and ch ro nology, or aspect 2 distinguished above. This approach is found in a num ber of early studies, such as B uland’s investigation of the so-called double time in his thesis The Presentation o f Time in the Elizabethan Drama (1912). F o r Buland time is a dram atic tool and not a philosophical enigma. A playwright, he believes, m akes tim e a m eans to his artistic ends instead o f opening a philosophic debate over its nature and attributes (see also below, pp. 45 ff.).

In this way, the theoretical exuberance unleashed by the problem of time is forestalled by focusing attention on the playw right’s deploym ent o f tem poral mimesis or the ways in which time is represented, such as the distribution of time references. However, with the problem o f time references we enter into another issue, th at o f the dram atic representation of time.

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1.2.2. Modes of representing time: Showing and telling, or mimesis and reference

There are two basic m odes of representation in dram a: perceptual and verbal. As this crude distinction presupposes, one cannot interpret dram a w ithout referring to the perform ance coun terp art o f the text. T o put it another way, the dram atic text is by definition perform able.

Things perceptively or deictically presented on the stage perform the im itation (mimetic) function by virtue o f their very presence. Speech p e r

forms the function o f verbal representation or reference. This distinction between mimesis and reference allows us to differentiate m odes of repre

senting time. Let us begin by stating w hat seems basic: First, time can be represented by physical objects, which perform the im itation function, and especially by their m ovem ents, and the changes and m odifications they undergo. Even here representation can be either direct or indirect. The simplest way o f ascribing physical signifiers to time is o f course by using clocks as well as oth er conventional tim e-m easuring devices as stage props. Indirectly, simple facts such as th at a ring or a handkerchief disappear and reappear, to give a com m on example, are enough to signal the passing of time. This is also true of the entrances and exits o f characters and o f changes o f set

ting. Y et all this is neither the m ost conspicuous nor the m ost characte

ristic feature o f the dram atic m im esis o f time: time in dram a is essentially related to hum an goal-seeking actions. D ram atic time is fundam entally h u m an tim e, and whatever is represented relates to hum an agency. A nd vice versa, hum an actions are in their tu rn essentially related to time; hence certain features of hum an actions, such as goal-orientedness, characterise dram atic time. A nd the other way around, universal characteristics o f time, such as irreversibility, directly affect dram atic action and even tend to become leading themes. In dram atic action, tim e — to paraphrase B akhtin — takes on hum an flesh thanks to the totality o f all the representational tools involved.37

T he m ore indirect m ode of representation is by verbal o r linguistic refe

rence, yet aside from this language can represent time in o ther ways, too.

We have already m entioned the basic uses o f verbal reference to time. A n extended representation reaches far beyond the perceptibly given or the m ore

37 Cf. Vice, ‘The C h ro n o to p e .. p. 215. In her presentation, Vice applies B akhtin’s notion o f the chronotope to contem porary film w ith total circum vention o f dram a, characteristic also of B akhtin’s own approach. Since I cannot discuss wholesale the applicability o f the B akhtinian categories to d ram a here, I w ould like to state th a t there is n o reason why Vice’s assertion o f the intrinsically chronotopic n ature of film (‘film is chronotopicity’, p. 214) should n o t in equal m easure be true o f the theatre.

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or less directly intuited, and encompasses the so-called prehistory o f the dram atised events and their possible extensions into the future, however only to the extent allowed by the contents o f the play. R epresentation in any broader sense is thus delimited by dram atic mimesis in the strict sense o f the word: by w hat is directly presented on stage. The verbal m eans o f represen

tatio n include tem poral deixis, references to clock and calendar tim e, figurative expressions (visualisations) and conceptualisation.

Strictly speaking, verbal reference ought to be distinguished from the direct m im etic relation between units o f speech and duration. Speaking is a tem poral occurrence, and thus speech in dram a always has a definite tem poral value, both physical and psychic. First, there is a m easurable m inim um duration for any delivery o f the tex t.38 Second, the reception o f any dram atic text creates a m ore o r less vivid im pression in the audience. The playw right can m anipulate both aspects to generate specific effects, such as, for instance, the em otional colourings o f ‘brisk ’, ‘tedious’, etc. It is enough to com pare a soliloquy, a dialogue, and a song to see how differently tim e can pass on stage although the m edium , language, is the same. Various units o f action can have different tem poral values depending on the ways in which they affect dram atic duration.

M ore o f this will be said after the idea o f dram atic tim e has been m ade sufficiently clear.

F rom w hat we have said it follows that utterances other th an those incorporating time-references also contribute to the im itation o f time. One can inquire, for instance, how the song-and-dance scene from The Winter’s Tale adds to the play’s representation o f time. Some critics regard such scenes as crucial in th at they visualise the n ature o f tim e as Shakespeare m ight have conceived it.39 Before m aking a m ore detailed investigation we can say th a t various m odes o f representing time are intertw ined and th at, ideally, they should w ork in concert. W hat Elam calls ‘the fictional now.

the tem poral deixis which actualises the dram atic w orld’ pays due respect to the prevalence o f the currentness that m akes u p the essence of the d ra m atic experience. T hus the very act of speaking acts as the basic and m ost powerful tem poral deixis. The currentness and the indelible actuality of dram atic speech m ake up the prim ary mimesis, superior to any imaginative or conceptual representation. In order to be able to conjure up or represent worlds, words have to come into being as living speech. In th at sense, verbal reference is based upon verbal mimesis. We shall return to this issue below when we discuss the idea of diegesis.

38 Cf. H ebeisen, Versuch einer ontologischen.. . , pp. 23-4.

39 S tanton B. G arner in an article on The W inter's Tale seeks to define the m ode o f tim e thus visualised; cf. ‘Tim e and Presence in The W inter's Tale’, Modern Language Quarterly, 46 (1985), pp. 347-67.

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The physical properties o f the spoken w ord, its du ratio n and tem poral value, the fundam ental role o f speaking — all these have m any consequences.

Live speech has at least three com ponents, all o f which have to be taken into consideration. First, speech is a real occurrence; as a word is spoken it enters the physical world and comes to share in the properties of other real pheno

m ena, o f which d u ratio n is perhaps the m ost im portant. Secondly, live speech is a carrier o f m eaning; from a particular viewpoint, the spoken word is an incarnation o f the ideal or non-tem poral and non-physical.40 Thirdly, the actualisation of the ideal content, the act of speaking, is w hat m akes reception possible. Now , while m eaning, as the ideal o r potential com ponent, is not directly related to duration, and rem ains essentially extra-tem poral, it has been the focus of critical attention a t the expense o f the two other aspects. This is objectionable. The tem poral constraints o f speech and indeed the tem poral constraints o f perform ance have an im pact on the extra-tem poral content in num erous ways.

Elam discusses an interesting example. In The Comedy o f Errors, special effects are created by the relation which verbal visualisations o f tim e bear to the m im etic visualisation enacted by the sheer vagaries o f the plot helped by the abundantly supplied verbal deixis. Says Elam, quoting the A rden edito r’s notes, ‘the repeated analysis and personification o f time “ [relate]

to the constant m istim ing” . . . The delays, missed appointm ents, untimely interventions and general out-of-phase non-co-ordination of the action result in the avowed a n x ie ty . . . to restore the lost tem poral decorum of the d ra m atic w orld.’41 One m ust not separate direct mimesis and verbal deixis from other m odes of representing time. Let us state as a corollary o f w hat we have ju st looked at th at no investigation into dram atic time can give short shrift to a play’s tem poral facticity; playing time, which is in direct rela

tion to the actuality o f speech, is essentially related to plot time. This rela

tion m akes them interdependent in the weaving o f the complex fabric of dram atic time.

Before we begin to tackle this complex issue, however, let us first give due credit to language and the consequences th at this basic constituent of dram a has for the problem o f dram atic tim e in Shakespeare.

40 This K antian-H egelian approach is developed in Hebeisen’s Versuch einer ontologi

schen I find this approach justified at least to the extent to which it em phasises the tem poral-physical value of the dram atic speech.

41 K eir Elam , Shakespeare’s Universe o f Discourse. Language-Games in the Comedies (Cam bridge U niversity Press, 1984), p. 107.