Dependent Stages: Knowing in Shakespeare (NeMLA 2020)
A playwright has to build their story within their allotted two hours of stage traffic. We are taken on a guided ride from which we glimpse what the playwright chooses, forming our layers of knowledge through which we are manipulated. Often we are privy to the internal thoughts of a character which contrast with their public utterances: e.g., Rosalind/Ganymede, Angelo, or Richard III. Our prescient view makes Macduff's seemingly banal inquiry about his wife and children emotive fire. Our own knowing is challenged just by taking in a play as we know it is not real, yet we embrace the illusion.