For Page or for Stage? The Myth of Shakespeare in Estonia
For Page or for Stage? The Myth of Shakespeare in Estonia

Summary/Abstract: The current article’s title refers to the pair “page and stage” as the idea was theoretically proposed by Ortrun Zuber Skerritt who has argued: For drama does not only exist as a literary work of art expressed in written language and to be appreciated through reading, thinking and discussing; but drama lives in its theatre performance, the total experience expressed in oral and non-verbal language and appreciated by all physical senses as well as the intellect and emotions. (Zuber-Skerritt 1984: 5) However, the approach might just as well have been proposed as follows: from stage to page to stage. Most plays are by default written for stage performances, but for the playwrights that are usually categorized as the classics – their texts are very often analyzed without considering the aspect of how these texts function when performed on stage. Shakespeare has been one of those classics whose works have been scrutinized over centuries, very often focusing only on their purely literary qualities. In his book called Shakespeare the Player, John Southworth, himself an actor as well as a Shakespeare scholar, provides ample evidence that when writing his plays, Shakespeare had concrete stage and actor-orientated goals – while creating his characters, he had the members of his troupe in his mind’s eye, building this or that stage persona as a tailor designs a suite for a specific client; when considering the scene locations he thought of the play house the troupe was currently giving performances in, etc.

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