Social Minds in Drama. Golnaz Shams
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are now no more obstacles standing in the way of a narratology of drama and that the field was levelled for the analysis of playscripts. However, the corpus of theoretical and analytical work done on drama in general and on playscripts, in particular, is surprisingly sparse. Most of the existing bibliography deals with theatre studies or performance studies; that is to say, with the performative aspects of the genre. By predominantly focusing on the intermedial and transmedial aspect of drama as performance, the playscript is seen only as one of the subsidiary aspects belonging to the production of the play on stage. As I have already noted ←59 | 60→in section 2.1, the playscript has been ignored in classical narratology as well as in postclassical studies.
Fludernik, for example, in her “Narrative and Drama” makes a compelling argument for drama as narrative and criticises the “blind eye” narratology has turned to the similarities between novels and plays (355). She argues that “the absence of a narrator persona or an act of narration does not inevitably disqualify drama from the narrative genre” (358). Later she adds “a definition of narrativity that does not focus on plot, but on fictional worlds and/or experientiality, can likewise absorb drama” (359). But then, every explanation and every elaboration she makes is automatically about the performative aspect of drama. It seems as if the only way she visualises drama when talking about the genre is on stage:
All drama, in fact, need, to have character on stage, and from this minimal requirement narrativity is immediately assured, if one defines narrativity as I do in Towards ‘Natural’ Narratology. A character on stage guarantees consciousness and usually speech; by dramatic convention, he or she is additionally located in a space-time frame that resembles human experience of space and time: the clock is ticking, time moves forward as the dramatic figure stands on stage, and this staging of the space-time continuum provides the concreteness of dramatic space which narratologists have traditionally found a necessary condition for narrativity. (360) [my emphasis]
Fludenik does not dismiss the concept of the playscript. The playscript is on a different narrative level; the discourse level. It is there that she states that reading playscripts and reading novels are different because when reading playscripts, the dramatic conventions call for, albeit metaphorical, a staging of the play in the reader’s mind (363). In this regard, the performative aspect of drama becomes more important.
The same preference for performance holds true in Richardson’s case. He too disagrees with narrative theorists’ lack of interest in drama (1991), and in numerous seminal essays he tackles with different narrative concepts in the genre of drama (1987, 1988, 1991, and 2001). However, all the example he uses too are taken from performances and it seems he too sees the realisation of drama on stage. I would like to argue that the newer concepts postmodern narrative studies initiate and especially the analytical toolkit cognitive narrative theory furnishes can provide a new perspective of the playscripts and a better understanding and appreciating of them; something that has been neglected so far.
The common lack of interest in playscripts does not mean that there have not been attempts to propose a theatre narratology within the broader poststructuralist narrative studies. There have been a few of this kind, but not many deal extensively with playscripts; those critics who do actually propose a few rules and theories about drama as text fail to provide examples. Most of the ←60 | 61→practical and analytical work is done on the performance aspect of plays rather than the playscripts. Let me illustrate this point. A very good example of the described tendency is Eike Muny’s Erzählperspektive im Drama (2008). Muny has written one of the more elaborate books arguing for a narratology of drama. He concentrates on two main concepts: focalisation and the narrator. Ironically, the narrator seems to be a concept many critics are reluctant to let go of, even though moving within the paradigms of postclassical narrative theory. What Muny justly criticises, nevertheless, is the preference most of the works on drama have for plays with an overt narrator figure. According to Muny, a search for analytical work done on plays would show a tendency towards epic drama, memory plays or plays with a “generative narrator”.48 Muny believes that a comprehensive theory should encompass all types of plays; since most plays are considered to have narrators that are latent, covert and impersonal.
He also criticises those who believe that the ultimate realisation of a play is its performance and that its textual form is of secondary importance.49 Muny is clearly against the marginalisation of the stage directions and introductory passages and believes that they should be taken seriously and be regarded as part of the (diegetic) narrative world of the play. He makes references to Jahn’s categorisation of drama in Jahn’s “Voice and Agency in Drama”.50 Muny’s contribution to the study of drama and narrative is important and provides much detail. Anyone who wants to focus on the narrative instance and on the concept of focalisation is provided with ample examples and a theoretical framework. However, Muny does not concern himself much with characters, their consciousness and the social setting of the storyworlds in drama.
Vanhaesebrouck in his “Towards a Theatrical Narratology”51 applies a quite different tone in his approach towards a theatrical narratology. He is one of those critics who believe that a theatrical narratology should exclusively deal with theatre as performance and disregards the playscript entirely. Ironically he talks both about watching and reading plays in his arguments: “…narratologists gradually started paying attention to the reception, to the actual reader and spectator. How does he or she derive signification from the narrative network to which they are exposed while reading or watching?” He predominantly argues against a ←61 | 62→tradition of “logo-centric” close-reading of playscripts and advocates a focus on the dynamics between narrative studies and specifically visual semiotics, which he believes can only be gained by studying performance. Though his approach is a thoroughly cognitivist approach, it deals only with the performance aspect of drama and leaves the ignored playscript undiscussed.
Fludernik’s ideas on drama52 come closest to what I would like to achieve through a synthesis of a drama narratology and Palmer’s approach. Coming from within a cognitive tradition, as already mentioned earlier, and basing her approach on her concept of experientiality, Fludernik regards the cognitive experience that the anthropomorphic inhabitants of the storyworld undergo as the most important feature of narrative, in this case, drama. Thus she argues that the absence of the narrator persona does not pose a problem and does not inevitably disqualify drama from being considered as narrative (358). She underlines her assertions and the importance of the existence of characters and their consciousness.
Later in the essay, she suggests, like Jahn, that the playscript has an intermediary position between the “plot” level and the “performance” level, and that the playscript already incorporates the performative potential of the play (362). In her model Fludernik is dealing with both playscript and performance. She also elaborates on the reading procedure of a playscript and states: “In reading a play, we imaginatively ‘stage’ it in our minds…. owing to the explicit staging information in the stage directions – it involves more visualization than does novel reading” (363). This is quite interesting since not only does she make an immediate comparison between reading a playscript and a novel but she also touches upon an important criterion of the playscript and the stage directions: their narrative function. Though I am not sure if we can so readily argue that every playscript involves more visualisation than every novel, I would say it depends very much on the (quantity and narrative quality of) stage directions and the descriptive quality of the narrative in the novel. The statement