On not trusting Shakespeare’s stage-directions

Abstract

How authoritative are the stage-directions printed in modern editions of Shakespeare? That they are important will be readily granted, for a very large number goes beyond basic information, as contained in entries and exits, and reflects on character. ‘Alas, poor Yorick!’ says Hamlet, ‘I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy; he hath borne me on his back a thousand times.’ A moment later Hamlet ‘Throws down the skull’ — or so we are sometimes told in editions of the play. How insensitive of him! Are skulls not brittle things, easily smashed? In this instance, however, it is the editors who are insensitive: Capell, in the eighteenth century, inserted the direction that Hamlet throws down the skull, and later editors simply copied from their predecessors, a time-honoured procedure. Apart from such ‘editorial’ stage-directions, printed in square backets in some modern editions to indicate that they have been interpolated, which have no more authority than the editor’s say-so, there are others that first appeared in the original Quarto (Q) or Folio (F) texts — surely all of these can be accepted as authoritative? Unfortunately, not so. As is well known, some of Shakespeare’s earliest printed texts contain few directions; he himself took little interest in them, his copyists and printers could be careless and/or high-handed, so we need to be on our guard.