University of Virginia Library

III

Theatrical annotation was needed to convert the original manuscript for use by the King's Men, and some of it was probably added by Shakespeare himself. As an experienced man of the theatre he certainly knew the kind of specific directions needed for stage production, and on his second run through the manuscript, he might well have contributed at least some of the play's many sound cues: the numerous instances of Flourish; Musicke playes (4.5.0) and Sound still with the Shouts (5.4.57/3631); drum or alarum a farre off (1.4.15,19/503,509) and Alarum continues (1.4.47/546 and a similar SD at 1.5.3/572). Most of his `literary' SDs could have served adequately in a playbook and remain untouched. Both They fight, and all enter the City (1.4.62/568) and Beats him away (at 4.5.49/2703, to indicate that the Third Servingman is beaten off the stage by Coriolanus) could have been considered sufficent as exit cues.[86] Shakespeare's many indefinite entry directions, too, remain open; they range from the slightly permissive seven or eight Citizens in 2.3 or the 3 or 4 Conspirators of Auffidius Faction of 5.6, to the wholly unspecified numbers signaled by a Company of Mutinous Citizens in 1.1 through Captains and Soldiers (2.1), all the Gentry...and other Senators (3.1), to the Commoners (5.6). Study of the surviving manuscript playbooks indicates that this kind of indefiniteness was not something the book-keeper paid much attention to.[87] There was almost certainly an understood number

of bodies required for with Attendants or with others (probably three), and the size of an army or rabble was probably also conventional, though it might further depend on how the doubling of parts had been worked out for this very populous play.[88] If recorded at all, changes or specification of permissive authorial SDs might have appeared only in the actor's part and the `plot', the important documents for a specific production. Indeed, SDs indefinite as to the number of players required may have offered a positive advantage, since they did not tie the playbook to a particular stage, or number of available actors, and so insured `the general adaptability of the plays for production in different playing areas'.[89]

Apparently contradictory or insufficient SDs may be in part due to scribal error or compositorial oversight (in the latter case, even intentional omission, such as the situation in 1.4 and 1.8 discussed below), but some of what looks inadequate to modern eyes might not have seemed so to an early seventeenth-century book-keeper. For instance, in the elaborate entry direction for the senatorial confirmation of Coriolanus as consul in 2.2, the final words are Corio- | lanus stands (2.2.36.5/1242-43). Although he has not in the interval been directed to sit, 34 lines later we find Coriolanus rises, and offers to go away (2.2.66/1275). It is possible that a SD has been dropped by the compositor: since some of the intervening lines are verse set as prose, he may have been preoccupied with saving space and refused to give up a line (though he could have tucked it into the margin at 2.2.48/1255, where modern editors usually add it). But the direction to sit may never have been added to the playbook: simple stage action evident from dialogue — an embrace, a handclasp, the delivery of a letter or report — usually happens, in printed and

manuscript plays, without accompanying SDs. There is a Kneeles for Coriolanus at 2.1.171/1075, but at Volumnia's subsequent line commanding him to rise there is nothing. Again, space could have been a problem (Compositor A had just set three lines of verse as two lines of prose), but a He rises could have been tucked in to the right on her verse line. More probably, no such direction existed in the manuscript copy, and taking the appropriate action was felt to be something a professional actor could manage on his own. Similarly, in 5.3 during the women's embassy to convince Coriolanus to spare Rome, where the dialogue indicates a kiss, a curtsy, a bow, and a good deal of kneeling and rising, the only SD is a single Kneeles. Had there been none, it would not have been surprising. Sporadic marking for such actions is consistent with the evidence that book-keepers were most concerned with entrances, unusual properties, and music and sound cues, not with minor or obvious stage business.

Single action-directions and exits were as a rule added in the right margin (and reproduced there by the compositors); other marginal additions (often on the left for the annotator's) were meant to be incorporated into entry or exit directions, and these could present the compositors with more of a problem. A theatrically specific Exeunt appears on the dialogue-line at 3.1.228/1948, just above the two-line SD In this Mutinie, the Tribunes, the Ædiles, and the | People are beat in; the intended position in the text for Exeunt was apparently not clear, and it was inaccurately set before instead of after the narrative version. In the descriptive entry direction at 1.9.0 a marginal Flourish seems to have lacked a clear indication for placement, and it was mistakenly set as the first word rather than after Alarum. A Retreat is sounded, where it should signal the victorious Romans' return to their camp after their enemies' retreat. Indeed, Alarum. A Retreat is sounded may have been meant as part of the missing exit direction for 1.8 (at the bottom of the second column on aa3v), omitted because Compositor B had run out of space on his page; or, if the sound cues were all marginal additions, their order might not have been clear, and Compositor B, or the printing- house editor who cast-off the copy, picked out Flourish to set as the catch- word.[90] The SD at 1.9.0 is at the top of Compositor A's first page, aa4, and he repeated the error. He seems to have soon found a kindred confusion in his portion of the manuscript: the first words of the entry direction for 1.10, A flourish. Cornets, should probably appear above, in the exit direction for 1.9, where the flourish would more appropriately accompany the departure of the victorious Romans than the subsequent entry of the wounded Aufidius and two or three Souldiors somewhere on the battlefield.[91] At 2.2.154/1377-78 it looks as though the

first three words were a later marginal addition: Flourish Cornets. | Then Exeunt. Manet Sicinius and Brutus. The Exeunt which should follow Cornets is instead on the subsequent line and Then included in the SD. (It is possible that Then was meant to be part of the SD, like Here at 1.8.13/740, but since both kinds of temporally-oriented SDs tend to be eliminated in F plays set from earlier quartos, presumably as part of the printing house's modernisation of old-fashioned forms, the retention here suggests a compositor concentrating on the problem of incorporating a marginal annotation and so dutifully reproducing all his copy's words.) Some of these apparently misplaced sound directions give pause only to a reader, however; they would not have mattered for continuous playing within acts.

While it is quite likely that Shakespeare himself would be concerned with the sound cues that would help create an effective atmosphere for this most martial of plays, some SDs point to the likelihood that a practical stage-manager has also gone over the manuscript, clarifying and specifying.[92] Although some Flourish directions stand alone, the SD A flourish. Cornets at 1.10.0 mentioned above suggests two marginal annotations, perhaps in different hands, where the initial cue for A flourish has been made more specific by indicating the appropriate instruments to produce it, perhaps with the Blackfriars Theatre in mind as a venue.[93] The same may be true of the earlier

directions in the same column of aa4, at 1.9.66/822, Flourish. Trumpets sound, and Drums, and of the exit direction for Flourish. Cornets at 2.1.204/1120. (At 5.5.7/3648 specificity is worked more smoothly into the direction: A Flourish with Drummes & Trumpets.) At 2.1.166/1069, the initial imperative in Sound. Flourish might have been added later to make this SD stand out from the surrounding text and as a result confused Compositor A into setting it off with an unusual number of spaces, as though Flourish were a separate direction.

The single word Cornets at the head of the opening SD of Act 3 may well be another instance of a doubly specified marginal annotation (e.g. `Flourish' `Cornets' in the manuscript), here truncated by Compositor A's pressing need for space. There is no white space around the SDs on bb1v, and the rules setting off Actus Tertius are only 8 mm. apart instead of the usual 16 mm. The entry direction is lengthy, and in order to preserve the favoured inverted-pyramid form for multi-line SDs, Compositor A may have omitted what he judged the less significant word in the sound cue. Other indications of a practically-minded annotator appear in directions which give redundant information in order to insure that significant speakers are named on entry. Both in the dialogue and in SHs such as Both, Both Tri., and Tri., Shakespeare sometimes appears to think of the tribunes collectively, important as tribunes of the people and as Coriolanus' civic antagonists but not otherwise distinguishable. It is quite likely that in entry directions Shakespeare went no further than listing the two Tribunes and that the `doubling' produced by adding both individual names at 2.1.0, 4.2.0, 4.6.0, and 5.1.0 is the playhouse annotator's contribution.[94]

Annotation for performance was not as thorough as in a modern promptbook, but no entries are omitted. Twice Enter means `Come forward' (2.1.204/1122; 4.5.147/2808), but in the first instance Brutus and Sicinius have been directed to stand Aside earlier (2.1.96/992), and the second can be worked out from the dialogue.[95] Except for Titus Lartius in 1.4 and 3.1, omitted exits are clear from the context; they would have presented no problems to a professional

company and might never have been added to the playbook.[96] At the end of 1.10 there is plenty of room for an Exeunt, but this is also the end of an act, and the scene shifts from Aufidius and two Volscians somewhere outside Corioles to, in 2.1, Rome. The last line of 2.2 also has room for Exeunt, but the tribunes' dialogue makes clear their departure. In 2.3, three different groups of citizens appear to judge Coriolanus' fitness for the consulship, but only one group is given an exit direction. Page aa6v is very crowded, however (the one Exeunt at 2.3.84/1475 has to share a line with the entry direction for the next group of citizens), and Compositor B may have felt he could not at 2.3.111/1502 fit in an Exeunt that existed in his manuscript copy. The same may be true for the departure of the third group of citizens on the next page, bb1, for there is no room for Exeunt on the citizens' last speech-line. (Compositor A could have tucked in a numerically inaccurate Exit, had he been as bold as Compositor B, or dropped the citizens' exit down to Coriolanus' line `Worthy Voices', although then he would have had to have expanded to Exeunt Citizens.)

A few more serious problems remain, ambiguities that might have required consultation by the players with the author. As mentioned above in the discussion of SHs, in 3.1 it is unclear when Titus Lartius, a fairly major character in the first act of the play, exits. Perhaps the theatrical annotator either did not catch the oversight or considered that Titus' accompanying the exiting Coriolanus and Cominius would be assumed; perhaps Titus' exit here (and in 1.4) were evident in this actor's own part but did not get recorded in the playbook of the whole text. Alternatively, Titus' name might have been accidentally omitted by the scribe. The page, bb2v, is crowded and contains both mislineation to save space and the cramming of short speeches by two separate characters onto one line, but Compositor A has had to allow two lines for the marginal exit direction for Coriolanus and Cominius (both spelled out in full), and he could have squeezed in Titus had he noticed it in his copy.

Another muddle over exits appears on page cc3, between two scenes set in the streets of Rome which since Dyce have been differentiated as 5.4 and 5.5; before his subdivision, they were considered one continuous scene. There is only one Exeunt here, at 5.4.62/3638; the subsequent entry direction is for two Senators, with Ladies, passing over | the Stage, with other Lords (5.5.0.1-2). Since it is clear that seven lines later a new scene must begin, when Aufidius and his attendants enter and the action shifts to Antium/Corioles (5.6), an exit direction is needed for the Roman procession. Although Dyce's division into two separate scenes (5.4 and 5.5) has been generally accepted, it

may not reflect the original staging. It is quite possible that neither 5.4 nor 5.5 had exit directions in the original authorial manuscript and that the book-keeper, reading through fairly quickly to catch specific places that needed annotation, misplaced his Exeunt up (or, alternatively, that the author himself did the same thing). Possibly, the scribe added an exit direction he felt was needed, misled by the subsequent Enter direction and the fact that neither of the two following speeches (in present 5.5) is by, or obviously addressed to, the characters who were on stage for 5.4. It is thus possible that originally the characters on stage in 5.4 were not intended to exit but rather move to stage-side to meet the incoming procession of victorious ladies and help swell the crowd for the All shouts of welcome; editors before Dyce usually substituted Going for Exeunt at 5.4.62/3638. In such a continuous staging the undesignated Sena. speech `Behold our Patronnesse...' would be addressed to Menenius, Sicinius and the messengers, as well as to the theatre audience, `other Lords', and senator who entered with the ladies (rather than just to the latter); and it makes a good deal of sense for this public procession. In this reading, the Exeunt should come at the end of what is now marked 5.5, after its SD A Flourish with Drummes & Trumpets. Still, the action is certainly playable as it stands in F, as two scenes the second of which (5.5) lacks a final Exeunt but where the need for a cleared stage is obvious from context.

Two more significant confusions about exits, entrances, and general stage movement occur in 1.4 (on aa3) and 1.8 (aa3v).[97] Page aa3 is replete with indications that Compositor B, on only his second page of work on the play, was having trouble with his copy. Some of the problems may have been created by Shakespeare, the scribe, or the annotator; others were mechanical, imposed by having too much copy allotted for this page. White space around SDs in the first column begins to disappear and Titus' entry direction is crammed into the right margin; in the second column the one bit of white space (after 1.4.61/563) is misplaced in that it comes within a scene (perhaps mistaken for a new scene, since it is above an entry direction for Martius), while there is none before 1.5 or 1.6, each clearly a new scene. Turnovers and mislineation to gain space indicate that in the second column Compositor B was desperate to crowd in his allotted amount of copy. The ambiguities we are concerned with first, however, appear in the first column and may not be Compositor B's fault. Descriptive, `literary' SDs in Coriolanus, while apparently sometimes annotated, have not here been sufficiently clarified for a twentieth-century reading audience, although they are unlikely to have proved insuperably challenging to Shakespeare's own company. At 1.4.29/523-24, a two-line SD demands

Alarum, the Romans are beat back to their Trenches | Enter Martius Cursing. The first line is sufficiently like narrative directions at 1.4.62/568 and 4.5.49/2703 signaling exits (see above discussion) that, taken in conjunction with the second line's entry direction and a new SH Mar., even though he was the last speaker before the fighting, the editors of the Oxford Complete Works were led to assume a cleared stage and a new scene beginning with Martius' (re-)entry. J. W. Saunders, however, suggests a staging in which 'the extreme edge of the platform, that is to say, the stage-rails and yard alleys', represents the trenches, and Martius remains visible while driving off the Volscians; Enter Martius Cursing would then mean `Come forward' (as it does elsewhere in the play) in order to berate the soldiers who fled the battle.[98] Titus' exit and the general stage movement might have been worked out by the King's Men on their own, as it has been for modern productions, or in consultation with the author. The next SD, at 1.4.42/538-39, is an omnibus description that details the action here and for the next four lines: Another Alarum, and Martius followes them to | gates, and is shut in. It is partially repeated at 1.4.45/543 (where Enter the Gati is presumably a compositorial mis-setting for Gates), either by Shakespeare adding details to his own manuscript to specify the point at which action is to be taken, or by a theatrical annotator.[99] Whether the marginal Enter Titus Lartius at 1.4.47/547 is the author's late correction of a missed re-entry, the annotator's, or Compositor B's, it seems an afterthought, since even when pressed for space, both compositors try to place entries on a separate line. If compositorial, B may have realized, after the fact, that he had omitted a perfectly clear entry direction and so crammed it into the right margin of his column under Alarum continues or, already feeling this page's space constraints, purposefully chose to save a line by demoting Titus' entry to its marginal placement in F, where it shares a line with a few words of dialogue by All. If this were the case, the original entry direction for Titus might have contained more information, words clarifying Titus' movements in the preceding moments, that Compositor B had no room to include.

Space-saving imperatives may have influenced SDs in other ways that can affect our view of the degree to which the manuscript copy for Coriolanus was in its final form. The most obvious instances occur in two short scenes,

1.7 and 1.8. Both appear in the second column of aa3v, Compositor B's first page, and seem to be the result of ambiguously placed marginal annotation combined with compositorial desperation about fitting copy to page. Both compositors' preference for the inverted-pyramid form for long entry directions is violated in the setting of the SD at 1.7.0.1-4, a multi-line `authorial' direction that, pyramidally centred, might have taken up an additional line: Titus Lartius, having set a guard upon Carioles, going with | Drum and Trumpet toward Cominius, and Caius Mar- | tius, Enters with a Lieutenant, other Souldiours, and a | Scout. Instead, it starts flush left and continues flush right with a minor left-indentation for lines 2-4.[100] The last part of the SD (Enters . . . Scout) suggests that he was having some trouble adjusting a marginal note specifying those accompanying Titus. Compositor B seems to be patching the added specified characters into a direction he now realizes lacks an initial Enter. Given the capital E, possibly there were two marginal annotations, an Enter meant to head the direction and a list of characters that got amalgamated with it.[101] The subsequent Exit instead of the longer, but correct, Exeunt at 1.7.7/721 is governed by the necessity to fit it onto the same line as the scenes's last line of dialogue.

In his handling of 1.8, it would seem that Compositor B took up the challenge of bending his copy to his own immediate practical needs. Hard-pressed for space at the very end of the second column of his page, he combines two short verse lines (1.8.6-7/731) and then amalgamates the medial action direction and the concluding exit direction, not bothering to excise the now old-fashioned here (though to have done so would have saved space): Heere they fight, and certaine Volces come in ayde | of Auffi.Martius fights til they be driven in breathles. The pressure under which B operated is suggested by the uncharacteristic name abbreviation, lack of spacing between names, and the uncharacteristic spelling breathles (instead of breathlesse). If there was an Exeunt in his copy, Compositor B had room for it on the same line as the last words of dialogue, but there may well not have been such an imperative, if we assume that driven in breathles was deemed sufficient by both Shakespeare

and the theatrical annotator. Here Compositor B's solution has turned a scene that made perfectly good dramatic sense into one in which Aufidius is left awkwardly alone on stage to berate the would-be rescuers who have already exited fighting with Martius.[102]

In smaller matters, too, the effects of incorrectly cast-off copy have forced abandonment of typographical convention, and compositorial compensation here supports the case for more important omissions or misplacements. Exeunt with a lower-case e at 1.5.3/572 (on aa3) and 4.7.57/3148 (on cc1) both manage to cram in the necessary directorial information at the cost of relinquishing the conventional capital, which takes up more space. Folio plays set from printed quarto copy suggest that Jaggard's house style preferred the full form of proper names in SDs, yet on crowded pages SDs with abbreviated names appear, not just at 1.8.13/741 but at 2.3.150/1547 (bb1) and 3.1.222/1939 (bb2v). At 4.6.148/3076 (bb6v), Exeunt both may be a Shakespearean direction left unexpanded by the annotator, or it may be Compositor B's solution to the impossibility, on a page with no room for a separate-line exit direction, of setting Exeunt Cominius and Menenius. Elsewhere exit and entry directions on the same line at TLN 1475 (aa6v), or entry directions tucked into the same line as dialogue (such as Enter Titus Latius, on aa3, mentioned above; Enter Cominius at TLN 2195 on bb3v; Enter second Servant at TLN 2665 on bb5), as well as short speeches by different speakers set on the same line, all bear witness to economising on pages with little or no white space and showing other signs of crowding.[103]

While these space-saving stratagems do not affect more than F's attempts at standardised presentation of the copy text, there are other instances where the need for economy enforced by inaccurate casting-off may have affected the transmission more substantively. At 2.3.60/1451 (aa6v) Menenius exits, but a number of editors have felt that Coriolanus' next one and one- half lines are still addressed to Menenius and have moved the exit down accordingly. While I do not think the F SD is certainly misplaced, the case can be made that the page is crowded, space-saving measures have been taken elsewhere in the second column, and there was no room to set Exit Menenius at 2.3.61/1454, where these editors think it belongs; it was possible, however, to add a simple Exit at the end of Menenius' final speech at 2.3.60/1451. At 1.5.3/572 (on aa3) the space-saving exeunt for the looting Roman soldiers, which even with its lower-case e fills the space remaining in the third soldier's last line, may be a compositorial compression of a longer SD (such as Souldiers steele away, similar to the SD at 1.1.251/279 for the citizens). The subsequent

dialogue appears to require that their departure with their spoils be visible to the entering Martius and Titus, since Martius immediately comments on the soldiers' greed and precipitate desertion of duty. This suspicion is strengthened by the fact that six lines later (in a speech of long verse lines and no appreciable free space in the right margin) a music cue seems to have been omitted.[104] It is true that Martius and Titus Lartius had entered to the sound of Alarum continues still a-farre off, yet Coriolanus has been thoroughly annotated for off-stage noises, and nowhere else does a `harke' (1.5.9/580) fail to have its immediately corresponding Alarum or Showts either in the right margin or on a line of its own. It has been established that in F plays set from printed quarto copy Compositor B was not above altering or leaving out what he felt he had no room to set, and one suspects another Alarum stood in the manuscript copy here.[105] Not having to do with SDs but pertinent here is the dropped line after 2.3.243/1645 (on bb1v), which may be the result of normal scribal or compositorial eye- skip; if compositorial, Compositor A's inattentiveness here may have been influenced by the pressing necessity to conserve space, since a few lines later he sets very narrow rules around Actus Tertius.[106]

More problematic than the moved direction for a battle-exit in 1.8, though of significant production impact, is the possibility that inaccurately cast-off copy for cc2v may have forced Compositor B to push up one of Shakespeare's most theatrically powerful advisory directions. At the point of greatest tension in Act 5, the conclusion of Volumnia's peroration on behalf of Rome at 5.3.183/3539, F calls for a brief tableau: Holds her by the hand silent. E. A. J. Honigmann has argued for the SD's correct placement one line below its F occurrence (that is, after `O Mother, Mother!'). He urges that in pragmatic theatrical terms it would make easier the actor's `difficult task of conveying an overwhelming emotion without the help of words' if he could begin to express his feelings and then break off. He further points

out that the SD's form violates the convention observed elsewhere in Coriolanus, and normally in other texts, that at the end of a speech `a direction lacking a subject refers to the previous speaker, not the next one'.[107] Since the SD in F occupies its own line, there is plenty of room for it to be headed Coriolanus; Honigmann suggests that the manuscript's marginal direction was not properly aligned with the text, and this may indeed have been the case. An ambiguously placed SD might have encouraged Compositor B to place it here rather than breaking up Coriolanus' speech after only one half-line of verse, especially since he seems not to have liked intrusive SDs in mid-speech.[108] The kind of argument I have been pursuing here would at least support the contention that the SD was a marginal annotation, one whose length posed the challenge of creating enough space to set it on a separate line. There is no white space around SDs on this page, though Menenius' and Sicinius' entry for the new scene at 5.4 would under normal circumstances have been set off with blank lines (at the very least, one above it); Compositor B may have feared that even so he would run out of room for the half-column of prose coming up. At any rate, from the top of the second column through the first line of 5.4 (a turn-over), B tries to conserve space any way he can. Even with an ampersand and short spellings, TLN 3538 runs all the way to the margin; by also omitting the final mark of punctuation, Compositor B manages to cram one and one-half lines of verse into this one line of type.[109] If Honigmann is correct about the SD having been a marginal annotation, B has now created a whole free line on which to set the direction Honigmann thinks was meant to accompany TLN 3540 but for which there was no room.

Yet this line of reasoning is not wholly persuasive, for it assumes a Compositor B concerned with very immediate problems but unable to look even one line ahead to the true solution: having managed to provide a spare line for the SD, Coriolanus' completion of Volumnia's half-line could have been set immediately after TLN 3538 and the direction set beneath it. Elsewhere in Coriolanus Compositor B was willing to interrupt a speech for a necessary cue that would not fit into the margin, if he could spare the extra line: in 1.4 (in the first column on aa3) the First Senator's speech to the Romans is disrupted by the Alarum farre off to which he refers.[110] Alternatively, if B

(mis-) believed that the placement within the text should be where he put it, then, according to Honigmann, B's knowledge of house style ought to have led him to head the SD He or Coriolanus. Yet elsewhere in F Compositor B set a SD for one character within the `speech boundaries' of another: in F Hamlet the Sleepes SD for the Player King appears in the right margin of the Player Queen's first line (TLN 2095), even though there was room on the Player King's last line to set it there. Perhaps the marginal SD for Coriolanus was clearly cued to its F position but was also thought by author and annotator to be unmistakably marked as his action-direction by the very nature of its wording. Nor do modern actors seem to have a problem with the F placement; the long silence before revealing any articulate response to Volumnia builds a fine dramatic tension. Despite Compositor B's preference (itself apparently rather weak) and the lack of He or Coriolanus heading the SD, the case for repositioning it remains inconclusive. As with the imputed problem of `I. Cit.' or `2. Cit.' in 1.1, this seems to be a case in which F is not certainly wrong and so should not be emended.

Some errors of mistaken content rather than placement may also be compositorial. We have already noted Compositor B's misunderstanding on bb4 of the scribe's or book-keeper's perhaps poorly-spaced Latin tag as a proper name and his appending it to Exeunt Coriolanus, Cominius, with Cumalijs. Another such misreading, appearing in the dialogue at 1.3.43/405, might be compositorial: what most modern editors print as `At Grecian sword contemning. Tell Valeria' is in F `At Grecian sword. Contenning, tell Valeria'. More likely, the misunderstanding of a partially illegible word and consequent re-punctuation — or, if Hand D is any indication, the lack of a full stop after `contemning', probable lack of all the minims for the word itself, and likelihood of a capital C — was the scribe's, merely reproduced by Compositor B. Trying to make sense of it, either could have misplaced the italic from Grecian to Contenning. Even had the error stood in the manuscript playbook, however, the result is an odd name for the Waiting Gentlewoman, but not unintelligible dialogue.