Philosophy of the Performing Arts

performance i: improvisation and rehearsal 169
contribute to the resulting work to a large extent in ignorance of how what
they are doing fits into the performance as a whole, and the audience, like a
focus group, gets to have its say on things.
If sixteenth- to eighteenth-century English theatrical practice does indeed
operate with the conception of a performable theatrical work as a collection of
parts, this yields a further account of what is required if a performance is to be
true to a work. Truth to a work so conceived is in some respects stricter than
truth to a work defined in relation to a text, since the latter allows for different
interpretations of characters. It also in some ways resembles truth to a work
defined in relation to an emplotted point. For we might expect this point to be
partly conveyed through the interpretation of the characters, and thus through
the parts. But, as noted in Chapter 6, our intuitive notion of what it is for a per-
formance to be true to a work seems to require that the work itself determine the
sense in which a correct performance must be true to that work. In that case, if
the Shakespearean conception of King Lear is of something constituted not just
of a text (or perhaps a set of closely related texts) but also of a collection of parts
which interpret that text in a specific way, then performances that aim merely to
be faithful to the text, or to the emplotted point of the play, are in an important
sense not performances of the play. For the kind of fidelity at which they aim
fails to reflect the nature of the work itself. When, as in Chapter 6, we seek to
reconcile contemporary performances purporting to be of Shakespearean plays
with the classical paradigm by appealing to a notion of being true to the emplot-
ted point of a play, we project our present sense of dramatic art onto a very
different tradition. Our willingness to countenance a plurality of interpreta-
tions of Shakespearean and Restoration dramas whose legitimacy depends upon
their intended fidelity to the emplotted point of the play would surely bemuse
our period counterparts. Such interpretations are, however, best understood in
terms of the classical paradigm that they strive, but fail, to emulate, rather than
in terms of the ingredients model. For they aspire to be true to an independent
work, even if they misconstrue what truth to that work requires.
Our brief examination of what may strike us as a largely alien form of
theatrical practice should further caution us against trying to impose a single
model on theatrical performance. The ingredients model fits very well the
kinds of increasingly radical and experimental performances we encounter
as we move further away from Hedda-to-Hedda. But it is difficult to see how
it applies to sixteenth- to eighteenth-century English theatrical practice, or
indeed to traditional theatrical performances that understand themselves in
terms of the text-based model. Much theatrical practice is best modeled on
the classical paradigm, since the goal of being true to an independent work
explains much of what is going on in performances. But these perform-
ances often fail to conform to the classical paradigm as ordinarily conceived
because the company operates with a conception of truth to a work that does