Using Words on the Stage: Shaw and Granville-Barker

Abstract

This observation in his ABC of Reading was no doubt set down by Ezra Pound as not only elementary but incontrovertible. But that was five decades ago - decades that have generated in the West a spate of challenges to spoken language in the theatre. A mistrust of language most likely dates back to the time of its very invention, yet for 2500 years dramatists and actors have prevailingly employed words in a way that has made their predominance in drama traditional. But today, as we look about us in this or that city street or park or theatre, we are apt to find all manner of bristling experiments in nonverbal techniques. The spigot of dialogue is all but shut tight in many quarters, where the antitraditional and the random improvisational move in their mysterious ways their wonders to perform