Lighting the Shakespearean Stage, 1567 - 1642

10. Illuminating the Scene: The Duchess of Malfi at the Globe and Blackfriars

10 ILLUMINATING THE SCENE The Duchess of Malfi at the Globe and Blackfriars Recent scholarship, in particular the Records of Early English Drama project, and the discoveries of the foundations of the Rose and Globe playhouses have provided us with a more complex view of early modern English theaters and staging than was true only some fifty years ago, when it was common to speak of “the Elizabethan theater.” Following the lead of G. F. Reynolds in the 1940s, scholars have taken care not to create a generalized reconstruction of a “typical” playhouse and have instead sought to recognize differences among the early playhouses that Shakespeare and his contemporaries knew. All the same, we do well to recall that even at one playhouse, very different kinds of scenes were performed under its light and that some of these scenes may be said to have taken advantage of the prevailing illumination , some to disregard it, and others to call attention to a disparity between the pretended light of the scene and the real light in the theater. In short, there is a sense in which various actions onstage may have invited the audience to construe the prevailing illumination differently. Una EllisFermor makes the charming observation that the decadent tone of many Jacobean dramas must have been well served by a sunset reflected in the sky above the outdoor amphitheaters, but in midsummer, those Jacobean tragedies would have been accompanied more often by glaring sunshine.1 As often as not, therefore, the natural light contributed little or nothing to any sense of illusion, even if it could occasionally help to clarify the staging of certain moments in the play. During nighttime scenes, for example, the 218 daylight in the playhouse meant that the audience could clearly see actions that were supposed to be obscure to the characters onstage. As has been noted, the imaginary darkness of such plays as A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Othello confuses the characters onstage, while we know precisely what is happening to them. Macbeth is one of the darkest plays of the period; scene after scene takes place at night or in the darkest corners of the palace. Despite its original production at the sunlit Globe, it is only at the very end of the play, when the sun breaks over Birnam Forest, colors are unfurled, and Macbeth takes up arms, that the nightmare come to an end. Far from attempting illusion, Shakespeare fashions the drama so that the stage light contrasts ironically with the action. J. L. Styan notes that when Ross comments on the gloomy omens in the sky after Duncan’s murder— Thou seest the Heauens, as troubled with mans Act, Threatens his bloody Stage: byth’ Clock ’tis Day, And yet darke Night strangles the trauailing Lampe: Is’t Nights predominance, or the Dayes shame, That Darknesse does the face of Earth intombe, When liuing Light should kisse it? (F 930–35) —Shakespeare goes out of his way to point out the daylight convention that permitted nighttime scenes on a sunlit stage.2 Still, Shakespeare goes further than simply calling attention to a discrepancy between the real light in the playhouse and the pretended light in the scene. Even at the beginning of the play, Macbeth is aware of what his villainy must look like in the light. While plotting the murder of Duncan, he vainly prays, “Let not Light see my black and deepe desires” (F 339). To an amphitheater audience, the “seeling night” that Macbeth hopes will veil murder and “Cancel” his duty did not exist. Macbeth would “Skarfe vp the tender Eye of pittifull Day” (F 1206), but as Ross reminds us, living light did indeed kiss the stage. As members of the audience, we see Macbeth’s desires played out in broad daylight. Simon Forman saw Macbeth at the Globe in April 1611, but when the play was performed at court (probably at Hampton Court in August 1606), one doubts Ross’s moving lines were cut because of different lighting arrangements. Shakespeare did not depend on the sun for the effect any more than he depended on nature to provide real thunder and lightning for the witches. Illuminating the Scene 219 Compared to modern practice, early stage lighting enjoyed a more casual relationship with the drama. It was free to enhance aesthetic attitudes or not. There was no insistence that the light fit the mood of...