work.^32 None of these pressures obviously applies to play texts as works
of dramatic literature–so one can see why reading a play text might be
thought to offer a purer experience.
This conflict, implicitly or otherwise, plays its part in discussions by
philosophers and others about the relationship between play texts and
performances. Such discussions are often presented as though they might
settle the aesthetic dispute alluded to above, or at least contribute in some
way. They tend to compare the text–performance relation with some other
kind of relation in order, supposedly, to clarify it. The text–performance
relation has thus been compared with the relation between a mould and
sculpture, a musical score and performance, a recipe and meal, an ingre-
dient and a completed meal, an original text and its translation into
another language, an artwork and its interpretation.^33 The relationship
between a play text and a performance is, of course, identical with none of
these relationships; but they may be helpful in drawing out what appeals
to one side of the conflict or the other. The idea that the play text is like
a mould clearly places too little weight on the artistry of performance;
more than that, it misunderstands what a play text is: no matter how
carefully two independent companies tried to performHamletaccording
to the text of the play (of which in any case there are a number of
versions), they would be forced to make choices–about, say, casting or
costume–that aren’t specified in the text and that would inevitably alter
the resulting performances. Conversely, one might think that viewing the
text merely as a recipe for the performance undermines something central
or significant about the artistry of many play texts: often, reading a
tragedy does have many of the same effects as watching a performance–
for Aristotle, reading a tragedy has all of the significant emotional effects;
but nobody gets full or gets nourished from reading recipe books –
indeed, they tend to make us hungrier.^34
Such discussions and comparisons are doubtless helpful in thinking about
the ways that play texts and performances interact; we cannot give each
position the attention that it deserves. The debate is understandable, as I
have suggested, in the light of the deeper aesthetic concern about the artistry
of theatre. Sometimes, indeed, a clear attempt is made to link philosophical
arguments to the aesthetic debate: both Saltz and Hamilton suggest, for
example, that their analyses are intended to combat what they call the
‘hegemony of the text’^35 – the prominent role that the text plays in the
minds of theorists, critics and spectators when thinking about theatrical
performance. One of Saltz’s claims, then, is that‘only in performance do we
actually encounter an instance of the play proper’^36 – the text alone can
never offer full access to what Saltz calls‘the play’.
I would like to sound one note of caution. The aesthetic debate is, it
seems to me, just that–a debate about aesthetics. Nobody denies that
What is theatre? 15