not. Hence, as it happens, one reviewer ofNurembergnoticed a black ste-
nographer arriving on stage just when Goering‘explained’the differences
between the races; it’s not clear to a spectator whether this is a deliberate
comment from the director by means of an obvious historical inaccuracy,
an accurate representation of those who were present or just a powerful
coincidence.^61
Even so, we have left Büchner’s principal claim untouched: namely,
that there is a certain (if highly restricted) area–character portrayal–in
which theatre can do historiography better than a historian. But our fur-
ther considerations have given us reason to doubt even this. What is it
that Büchner adds to Robespierre, which the (written) historian cannot
offer? It is the‘full-bodiedfigure’, living, breathing and speaking. The
Robespierre we see on stage does not merelysaythe words; he says them
in a particular manner, with particular emphasis. He is not merely dressed in
the kind of clothes Robespierre wore: he is wearing a shirt of aparticular
colour. To‘complete’ the full-bodied figure, in short, the playwright
(director, actor) must make decisions about how to present him.
The problem here is that some of these decisions must be made about
matters that simply cannot be known. We may know that Robespierre
wore red, but was itthisred? That his voice was high-pitched, but was it
this pitch? It is not known, and yet a decision must (consciously or
otherwise) be made. So it may be that precisely the necessity offilling in
the unknowns is what makes Robespierre on stage more‘full-bodied’; but
in that case, what we have is not better historiography at all. What we have is
an imagined reconstruction that gives a false sense of certainty about what
is and is not known. Of course, our theatregoing companion didn’t for a
moment think that the costume colours and vocal pitches atJulius Caesar
corresponded to those of Caesar’s Rome. She has more common sense than
that. But sometimes it’s not clear; and, more importantly, there’s no way
in principle of knowing (from the performance) what has been invented
and what hasn’t. Büchner was claiming, as a benefit, the effect of one of
the very features which makes his play worse, not better, as history.
Conclusion
By way of conclusion let us return, briefly, to the two senses of history
that we mentioned earlier: history as the events themselves and history as
the academic study of the past. History plays provide a highly effective
way of stimulating interest in both–they make us interested in what
happened and often in how we can know and think about what hap-
pened. But if we think that they offer us an eyewitness presentation of
events then, as I hope to have shown, we are very much mistaken. And if
we think that they function as successful replacements to written history,
History in the making 95