David

3/7/09

Setting and Stage Direction in Wycherley’s The Country Wife

Shakespeare once wrote “All the world's a stage, / And all the men and women merely players; / They have their exits and their entrances; / And one man in his time plays many parts…” This quote, from his play As You Like It, tells of the metaphor of a playwright’s stage to a man’s life; indeed, the speaker, Jaques, goes on the catalogue a man’s life into seven stages and relates them to seven acts of a play.  A human’s life can be seen as a play in many ways. It can be divided into acts and scenes, there is stage direction everywhere, and it has a definite, though large, cast list. The scenery is elaborate, and the setting in-depth.

The same could be said for books. Though not explicitly stated, it can be generally assumed that a whole, thriving, moving living world is outside the character’s living room. Playwrights rarely concentrate on the outside world in a play, since performance on the stage limits the scale of the work. This is one of the large differences between how a play is written versus how it is performed: on paper, a play is only limited by imagination of the reader or the writer, while on the stage the play is limited by the physical world. The differences between theatres also must be taken into account, since some theatres may not have a certain type of prop or clothing from a certain period. That is why many plays, especially those written by Shakespeare, use little stage direction, don’t dictate the exact dress of the characters, and allow many of the aspects of the play to be discussed and chosen by those acting the play out. This is markedly true in the case of William Wycherley’s The Country Wife.

Reading The Country Wife, the reader quickly realizes that stage directions are few and far between. There are the necessary exit and entrance direction, and the occasional aside, but there are very few lines that specify the target of a character’s conversation. Very rarely do the asides even have a target, such as in this line, in the last scene of the play: “Mrs. Pinch. [aside to Lucy and Horner]. Since you’ll have me tell more lies—[Aloud.] Yes, indeed, bud.” (5.4) Unlike the usual asides in the play, which are usually directed at the audience, this is directed at a character. The direction for “aloud”, however, doesn’t have a target. In this scene, most, if not all of the actors are on the stage at once. Even with textual clues as to whom an actor is talking about, it is often difficult to discern whom a character is talking to. In this example, it is clear that she is talking to her husband since the other characters are trying to convince him that she has not been cheating on him with Horner, and begging her to lie to her husband about it.

However, when a play is acted out on stage, the actors clearly talk to each other, and the audience can tell this by the way and direction the actor is facing, and the way that they are speaking. It is much easier to figure out the dialogue and keep track of things when the reader is able to see the way characters speak.

Another difference between an acted-out play and a play done on paper is the setting. As previously stated, a play on paper can assume that a whole world is alive outside of the characters room, and that the characters can react to it. It also assumes the set changes between scenes are absolute—that they occur in a completely different place than other scenes.  This is told simply by stating where the characters are at the start of the scene, such as “Scene I.—Horner’s Lodging” or “SCENE II.—The New Exchange.”

However, on the stage, a play must be performed in a set amount of space, and the actors and stage crew must then create the image of a specific setting. Most of this is done with props, and props are shifted around, removed or added, or even used differently when places are changed. It is possible to hold a play with very little scenery, as do many smaller theatres with limited access to props, or for artistic purposes. This lack of material to create physical scenes with requires the actors to not just work with the scenery, but to immerse themselves in the world they are trying to portray to the audience.

Stage directions in real life come against the idea of free will, that a divine influence is shaping our lives and telling us what to do.  However, stage directions become irrelevant in real life, and as such in an acted out play, since it’s easy to see what’s happening, and who is talking to whom. This allows stories to be told more clearly in cases where the play itself is lacking in stage direction. Written plays have an advantage to counter this: the have a completely imagined world surrounding the characters, and thus the characters can interact with the outside world. Being trapped on stage limits this, and thus, both ways of interpreting a play have their own unique benefits.