29 Lessing (1962: Section 80)
30 Loosely (i.e. anachronistically) speaking, this is certainly true of Sophocles, Shakespeare, Molière,
Brecht, Beckett, Pinter.
31 For a polemic against directorial freedom (and directors trying to make a splash), for example,
Ziolkowski (2009).
32 Lessing (1962: Section 25, p. 67).
33 See, for example, Saltz (1995); Saltz (2001a); Hamilton (2007); Woodruff (2008) Ch. 1; see also
Lennard and Luckhurst (2002: 9–21).
34 Nobody, I take it, would extend Aristotle’s claim to every play text.
35 Saltz (1995: 273)
36 Saltz (1995: 267). I simply note that this has odd consequences. Even ignoring the peculiarly
artificial ring of‘encountering the play proper’, it would be odd, upon asking someone if she had
‘encountered’Hamlet, to be told:‘No, I haven’t; I have only read it.’
37 In the broadly analogous field of‘musical ontology’–philosophical discussion of what musical per-
formances‘really’are–Ridley (2003) argues that philosophical arguments offer nothing at all to the
realm of aesthetic appreciation and understanding. My instinct is that much the same may turn out
to be true for philosophical discussions of what theatre‘really is’or what the text–performance
relationship‘really is’. Your aesthetic view of whether an experimental performance ofHamletis
refreshingly creative or a distasteful abomination has nothing to do with a deep view about theatrical
ontology. Of course, I do not take myself to have established this–I merely report an intuition. In
the absence of an equivalent piece on theatre, Ridley’s piece is highly recommended.18 What is theatre?