Analytic Philosophy and the World of the Play

Michael Y. Bennett

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN:
  9781315294711
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre

Theatrical characters' dual existence on stage and in text presents a unique, challenging case for the analytical philosopher.

Analytic Philosophy and the World of the Play re-examines the ontological status of theatre and its fictional objects through the "possible worlds" thesis, arguing that theatre is not a mirror of our world, but a re-creation of it. Taking a fresh look at theatre's key elements, including the hotly contested relationships between character and actor; onstage and offstage "worlds"; and the play-text and performance, Michael Y. Bennett presents a radical new way of understanding the world of the play.

Part I

Exposing the problem and proposing a solution

Chapter 1

Theatrical names and reference

Dialectical-synecdochic objects and “re-creation”

The relationship between a “character” and an “actor” appears to be quite straightforward: an actor acts as/plays character [x]. But let us be more specific and reword this formulation: actor [y] acts as/plays Hamlet. Or – for the time of the play – actor [y] is Hamlet. And it is this last statement that is paradoxically utterly true and utterly false. It is in the name of a theatrical character that the tension between actor and character arises. Asking, for example, who is Hamlet? yields an answer where both actor and character have legitimate exclusive rights to being “Hamlet.” In short, to whom/what does the name of a theatrical character refer? Exploring this question in relation to theatre exposes some problems with previous theories of reference in terms of fictional entities.

To repeat the idea from the beginning of the book, in Bertrand Russell’s 1905 essay “On Denoting,” which was largely a response to A. Meinong, Russell investigates the difference in denotation between the two phrases “a man” and “the man,” and famously uses the statement “The present king of France is bald” (because there was no [present] king of France, let alone one who was bald, at the time Russell wrote his essay) to argue that the sentence is false, contrary to Meinong’s earlier assertion that statements, even when the statements are false, can still subsist in the human mind.¹ Theatre provides Meinong’s subsistence of fiction with an embodied reality to theorize: therefore, if the present bald king of France is put on stage, can we say that the present bald king of France exists? If so, how does he exist? Or maybe more importantly, to what or to whom do the names of theatrical characters refer?²

* * *

Following his 1972 book Naming and Necessity – which explores what names refer to in relation to conversations in modal logic and the study of reference – Saul Kripke discusses fictional characters by way of pretense in his 2011 essay “Vacuous Names and Fictional Entities.” Kripke asserts that fiction “is a pretense that what is happening in the story is really going on.”³ Given this, Kripke argues that, while a fictional character does not have an actual referent (and, thus, his or her name is vacuous), “it is pretended to have a referent.”⁴ Furthermore, “The propositions that occur in the story, then, are not genuine propositions saying something about some particular person; they are instead merely pretended propositions.”⁵ Kripke says that fictional characters are not possible characters, but real people in a pretend world.

Arguing against Saul Kripke, Jim Stone writes about existence and fictional characters in relation to the imprecision of descriptions (using Harry Potter as an example):

Descriptions can be imprecise because they are vague, but sometimes they are imprecise because they are incomplete. (The criminal I saw had one head, two arms and two legs, I tell the police.) Those who believe Harry Potter is a possible person are faced with two related difficulties that flow from the story’s imprecision. First, the singular term ‘Harry Potter’ fails to refer to a possible person in our statements about Rowling’s hero, since many possible boys have an equal claim to be its referent. Second, as no possible boy is the referent of ‘Harry Potter’, no possible boy, if he had existed, would have been Harry Potter… . The referent of a fictional proper name, under any suitable precisification, is a possible object. ‘Harry Potter might have existed’ is true on this account, and the two difficulties can be met. ‘Harry Potter’ denotes just one possible boy who, if he had existed, would have been Harry Potter.⁶

Stone’s argument about the imprecision of description of possible worlds is about literary fiction (i.e., in this case, a series of seven novels). While incompleteness leads to the imprecision of descriptions in a novel, or series of novels, most of that is due to the necessary limitations of space (i.e., number of words) and (related to that) reader attention spans. However, in theatre, the dramatic text is intentionally and inherently incomplete, as a playtext is filled out with details when embodied in performance. Furthermore, in theatre, as I argue, the names of characters refer to (at least) “two” individuals in “two” (different) “possible worlds” (i.e., the one in the text and the one [or, rather, many, almost infinite] on stage).

Theatre semioticians from the 1970s to the early 1990s spent a good deal of time (in most cases, indirectly) thinking about reference and how a theatrical name is a signifier that signifies some sign. In 1983, Marvin Carlson wrote specifically about characters’ names from the standpoint of semiotics, appropriately entitled, “The semiotics of character names in the drama.” Carlson’s essay is, more centrally, a theatre history of the naming process of theatrical characters (though clearly from the angle of theatre semiotics). Most noteworthy to this book, Carlson’s conclusions about realistic drama are that the dramatist of theatrical realism “must be closely aware of the naming codes operating in the society his drama seeks to mirror.”⁷If we think about theatre as a whole (including theatrical realism) as the re-creation of our world, as a “possible world,” a theatrical name becomes less of a code to mirror a society, and more of a real entity in-and-of-itself, the name referring to a dialectical-synecdochic object.

As falling under the purview of re-creation, classifying theatrical characters as dialectical-synecdochic objects takes into account, even explains, the inherent imprecision of description and reference in names of fictional entities. That is, a dialectical-synecdochic object contains an entire range of re-creations. For example, in theatre, the dramatic text specifies/limits the range of re-creations possible for a given theatrical character. That is, the dramatic text specifies/limits the range of who can possibly be (and who cannot possibly be) the said theatrical character in question. The performance, on the other hand, embodies a single re-creation of that theatrical character. Therefore, a dramatic text contains all of the possible re-creations of an individual (i.e., theatrical character); in every performance, a singular re-creation of an individual (i.e., theatrical character) is embodied.

I. The textual-Hamlet and the performed-Hamlet

In many ways, a proper name is the most basic type of word in language. That is, unlike the word “slab,” which Ludwig Wittgenstein famously demonstrates has many connotations and does not necessarily refer to a single specific item or idea, a proper name is supposed to refer to one and only one object. A proper noun/name is something of a lingual tag – marking and pointing to a specific object. Proper nouns and proper names have received the most attention in terms of reference, it seems, because proper names (like Russell’s definite descriptions) – in theory – do denote one, and only one, referent; thus, a theory of reference needs to incorporate, at base, the simplest and most direct form of reference (before even attempting to study more indirect forms of reference). As it rightly should, Kripke’s notion of proper nouns as “rigid designators” (and his notion of “non-rigid designators”) – developed in Naming and Necessity – remains the standard-bearer to cite, add on to, and/or, refute.

That is, if I say “Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States of America,” it is pretty clear who I am referring to, and, in fact, refers to only one person on this planet, and, thus, I am necessarily referring to only one referent. If I say “George Jetson,” it is pretty clear I am referring to the cartoon character on The Jetsons (though, this is not necessarily the case). If I say “George,” it is not clear who I am referring to; I can be referring (among many other possibilities) to George Jetson, George in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, George Washington, or my friend, George. However, if I say “Hamlet,” a fictional entity just like George Jetson, which one of the many-possible Hamlets am I referring to? That is, theatre presents a problem case given that theatrical fictional entities have two existences: am I referring to the Hamlet in William Shakespeare’s published play Hamlet, or to an embodied Hamlet on a stage? And how do you know if I am referring to Actor X’s Hamlet or Actor Y’s Hamlet?

Let us first think about the character that the actor is playing. We tend to talk about Hamlet, for example, in two ways: the Hamlet in Shakespeare’s text and, say, Actor X’s Hamlet or Actor Y’s Hamlet. Clearly, the text always refers to the same Hamlet, right? The question that begs investigation is what does the name “Hamlet” refer to? In other words, does the name of a theatrical character always (necessarily) directly refer to the same thing?⁸

“Hamlet” names the character that is described by what he says and does in the text. “Hamlet” is identical with the sum total of the lines and actions in the play: in other words, “Hamlet”=Hamlet’s acts (keeping with the idea that his utterances are also acts). In the text, the name “Hamlet” directly refers analytically, because, by definition (or, rather, as an a priori truth), Hamlet, necessarily, is the sum total of his acts in the play.

But what about the Hamlet on the stage? Can anyone say that Actor X’s Hamlet and Actor Y’s Hamlet are the same character? No. It generally takes watching five minutes to determine that these two Hamlets are different. However, and this is vitally important, it also could be true that they are the same character. (For example, the identical twins, Mary Kate Olsen and Ashley Olsen both played “Michelle” on Full House, and who could say that Michelle was two different characters in that show? And how many people, especially among the children [the primary audience] watching the show, even realized or knew that Michelle was played by two different actors?) Therefore, on stage, Hamlet exists as a contingent a posteriori truth. We come to this conclusion that we cannot say that on stage “Hamlet” = Hamlet: for when multiple actors have played Hamlet, the name “Hamlet” rarely directly refers to the same, identical object, but given that Hamlet could be acted the same way by two different actors (and therefore it can be true contingently), we can verify which case it is (i.e., the same or different Hamlet) only through a posteriori knowledge (i.e., watching the two performances). Importantly, then, the name “Hamlet” on stage refers synthetically (because the acts can be described only as an a posteriori contingency), which differs from (as already discussed) the “Hamlet” in the text, which refers analytically.

To negotiate the contradictions of the textual Hamlet and the staged Hamlet, and of Actor X’s Hamlet and Actor Y’s Hamlet, let us turn to Hegel. I argue that the name of a theatrical character refers dialectically (as opposed to directly referring or indirectly referring).⁹ While Hegel was not directly concerned with questions of reference, in a sense, Hegel’s dialectics can be very well applied to the study of reference in relation to meaning. In short, the abstract notion of an object or thing for Hegel is more or less the intension of an object or thing (i.e., more or less its dictionary definition), while the “determinate” is an extension of the object or thing (i.e., a real-world example or case).¹⁰ Applying the Hegelian dialectic to understanding what the name of a theatrical character refers to, the audience member has an abstract notion of Hamlet, let us say, and then after contrasting the “determinate” Hamlet, comes to understand Hamlet in the truest light. This, so importantly, highlights the individuating process of interpretation. This is how the name “Hamlet” refers to and means different things to different people and, of central concern to this book, also how Hamlet actually exists as different, if you will, individuals in re-created worlds. This individuation of interpretation is possible because the abstract notion of Hamlet is not the same for everyone, nor is, as pointed out about the theatre, the viewing experience the same for everyone (and that is assuming everyone has seen the same and only the same productions of Hamlet, which of course is not the case).

However, does the text or the performance contain the abstract notion of Hamlet? And which is the “determinate”? It is not so simple, and Hegel’s dialectics do not work exactly correctly in the case of a theatrical character. To try to help, we could change the language from abstract to universal and determinate to particular. Maybe the textual “Hamlet” is the universal-Hamlet, while the staged “Hamlet” is a particular-Hamlet. And thus the dialectical process combines the text with the performance to determine who is Hamlet to each person. But this language (i.e., universal and particular) turns the name and the reference of the theatrical character into something trite and equally simple. And this covers up the complexities we just uncovered. Going back to the question of which is the abstract and which the determinate, a case can be argued either way, for the textual “Hamlet” refers to something only in the mind, without a physical reality (suggesting the abstract), but yet it refers analytically, by definition (suggesting something “determinate”), and the staged “Hamlet” refers to a physical reality (suggesting something “determinate”), but yet this synthetic reference is for a fleeting moment in time and many “Hamlets” exist (suggesting the abstract).

II. On acts and acting

This gap, however, between the character in the text and in performance is furthered by the choices of the actor and his/her acting. In a novel, say, the incompleteness of character, and the reaso...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Theatre and the mirror of nature
• Part I Exposing the problem and proposing a solution
• Part II Applying the (proposed) solution to the problems
• Conclusions
• Afterword
• Bibliography
• Index