also about cats and birds, perhaps predators and prey. For these sorts
of reasons, the idea that we learn from theatrical performances in that
sense isn’t particularly controversial. What’s more, when I watchHamlet,
I certainly learn plenty aboutHamlet(the work of art)–about the char-
acters, the plot and so on. It is also true that plays draw our attention
to certain things or stimulate our reflection. I’ll be thinking about dif-
ferent things, having seenHamlet, than I would have done otherwise.
Sometimes we are guided by the performance to think in a particular
direction–about a certain historical event or theme or problem. If these
kinds of thinking and reflecting –and the conclusions we sometimes
draw from them–could be understood as a kind of‘learning from thea-
tre’, then that too seems uncontroversial. But those who claim that the
theatre can teach us seem to be offering something more than these three
kinds of cases can offer. Theatre (perhaps as art or literature more gen-
erally) is meant to offer us something special: more–or perhaps: more
concentrated–than what we get in everyday watching; going beyond
merely knowing about the artwork and beyond simply stimulating our
thoughts. The point is not that these kinds of learning aren’t important;
it’s that I don’t think that anybody would deny that they are available to
us at the theatre–and those who claim that theatre can be a vehicle for
knowledge seem to think it can offer something more. To be clear: I’m
not suggesting that we learn one thing, or one kind of thing, from thea-
trical performances: the thought is, rather, that there are lots of different
ways that we might think we can learn. The question is: in what way or
ways does that occur?
One obvious place to look is at what gets said. Writing aboutHamlet,
Bertrand Russell claims that‘the propositions in the play are false because
there was no such man’.^9 There is something that seems right about
Russell’s remark. The play is a work offiction–it is made up. And in
Hamlet, as in most other works offiction, there are propositions–claims
about how the world is–that are false. Hence, for example, Bernardo
tells Francisco that the clock has just struck twelve, which is very unli-
kely to be true in any modern production.^10 That is the sense in which
what Russell says seems to be right. But there is also a sense in which
Russell’s remark seems to miss the point, at least as far as we’re con-
cerned. We do often feel as though we have learned something from a
play–and it’s not clear that what we have learned corresponds to any-
thing that any particular character says. If plays are just strings of false
propositions, then what or how do we learn from them? Conversely, if we
leave the theatre having learned something about the world, then surely
there must be a kind of truth presented to us on stage, at least some of the
time? To answer these questions, it will help to think about what gets said
explicitly at the performance as well as what may be implied.
Truth and illusion 49