Conclusion

This chapter examines the implications the turn-taking approach for our understanding of early modern performance practices. On the one hand, Shakespearean dialogue is full of subtle effects of timing and sequence that would seem to call for careful rehearsal and a detailed knowledge of the script. On the other hand, everything we know about early modern theatre suggests it was performed with minimal rehearsal by actors who did not necessarily know when, or from where, their next cue would arrive. This apparent mismatch I call ‘the performability gap’. The question is how it can be bridged. The explanation provided by Simon Palfrey and Tiffany Stern—that Shakespeare’s plays are designed to make artistic capital from their own under-rehearsal—does not entirely solve the problem. The second half of the chapter speculates about how else we might account for the gap.

Introduction

The first half of this chapter provides a clear and non-technical explanation of what turn-taking is and why it matters. According to William Empson, the most important step in the solution of any literary critical problem is to identify ‘the right handle to take hold of the bundle’. The claim made here is simple: when the bundle is Shakespearean dialogue, the right handle is the turn at talk. This claim is then illustrated with a pair of examples—Isabella’s petitioning of Duke Vincentio in 5.1 of Measure for Measure and the final meeting between Hal and his father in 4.3 of 2 Henry IV—each of which yields fresh insights when analysed as an exchange of turns rather than speeches. The second half of the chapter situates the turn-taking approach in relation to previous work on Shakespearean dialogue, literary linguistics, and dramatic discourse.

Have I Finished?

This chapter introduces the set of questions which frame the second half of the book—how one person can know when another person has finished, or will finish, speaking, and what happens if they fail to reply at the appropriate moment. It reviews what interactional linguistics and cognitive science have to say about the timing of transitions between turns and asks what this might mean for the study of Shakespearean dialogue. There are no easy answers to such questions. The dramatic text is profoundly ambiguous with regard to timing. It tells us what happens next but not when or how quickly it happens, even if Shakespeare is characteristically inventive when it comes to escaping such limitations. The chapter ends with a detailed examination of these issues in Volumnia’s great speech to Coriolanus outside the walls of Rome (Coriolanus, 5.3).

The Terminal Comma

This chapter investigates the relationship between turn-taking and punctuation. On the one hand, punctuation seems to offer a way of resolving precisely those ambiguities over timing with which the second half of this book is concerned. On the other hand, the punctuation of Shakespeare’s texts is notoriously unreliable. No firm set of typographical conventions had yet evolved for the presentation of plays in print, and the punctuation they contain is more likely to be compositorial than authorial. In spite of these problems, the chapter argues for greater attention to punctuation at the ends of speeches and, in particular, to what it calls the ‘terminal comma’ in the early quartos of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and King Lear. Although largely ignored by editors and critics, these commas are often employed with a purpose and subtlety that is hard—but not impossible—to attribute to a compositor.

Aposiopesis and the Comforts of Rhetoric

This chapter explores the relationship between turn-taking and syntax by studying Shakespeare’s use of aposiopesis in 1 Henry IV. More specifically, it questions how adequately this term describes what happens when Hotspur dies part way through a sentence at the Battle of Shrewsbury (5.4). The chapter reviews what a sixteenth-century schoolboy is likely to have understood by ‘aposiopesis’ and argues that, although the term is inadequate, its inadequacy is instructive. We can use it to develop a more precise vocabulary with which to talk about the relationship between syntax and turn-taking. Three new terms are proposed for this purpose (suspension, completion, and addition) and the chapter ends by showing how they can be used to arrive at a more nuanced reading of Hotspur’s final moments.

Taking Asides

This chapter explores the curious dialogical status of the Shakespearean aside. The first step is to recognize that when a play-text ascribes words to a character, it does not necessarily follow that those words are a fully-fledged contribution to the conversation. There is a distinction, that is, between the typographical turn and the conversational turn. An ‘aside’ is what happens when these two things are at variance. The chapter works through a series of examples—from Hamlet, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Richard III, Othello, and 2 Henry VI—to explore the many ways in which this can occur. Identifying and interpreting asides, it argues, is primarily a matter of conversational structure—of understanding how different utterances are related to one another, plotting their trajectories, and charting how these relationships develop over time. It is a matter, that is, of turn-taking.

Speaking When You’re Spoken To

This chapter is concerned with what Harvey Sacks has called ‘the speaker sequencing problem’—how a group of people (or fictional characters) is able to decide which of them should speak next. It examines the model of speaker-sequencing now standard in conversation analysis and asks what this model has to offer for the student of dialogue. For literary critical purposes, it concludes, we will need a radically simplified approach. Happily, this is not difficult to achieve. We need only make a single, very reasonable, assumption—that the basic rule which underpins all conversational sequencing is ‘speak when you’re spoken to’. The implications of this assumption for the analysis dramatic dialogue are explored in Chapter 2.

The Play of Line and Turn

This chapter explores how the timing of a transition between two turns at talk can be metrically loaded—can be made to sound early or late depending on its position in the line. Its central claim is that there is a ‘play of line and turn’ at work in Shakespeare’s dialogue every bit as important as the ‘play of phrase and line’ described by George T. Wright. The chapter examines how this works in two short exchanges: Antony attempting to tell Cleopatra that he is leaving for Rome (Antony and Cleopatra, 1.3), and Iago attempting to reason with an enraged Othello (Othello, 3.3). What the two exchanges have in common is that they each depict a conversation in which one character can barely get a word in edgeways. Metrically, however, they are handled quite differently, and these differences have profound implications for the ways in which we read them.

Apostrophizing the King

This chapter offers an extended close reading of a single passage from Richard II—the ugly altercation between Bolingbroke and Mowbray in 1.1—and, in particular, of the moment at which Bolingbroke turns away from (or ‘apostrophizes’) the king in order to castigate his rival directly. It seeks to establish the social meaning of this action by placing it in the context of early modern expectations about royal etiquette and trial proceedings. The central claim is that Bolingbroke’s apostrophe is his first act of rebellion. By apostrophizing Richard he assumes the right to decide who speaks when—usurping the king’s interactional role in the same way that he will later usurp his throne.

Figures of Dialogue

The first half of this chapter uses the simplified model of turn sequencing outlined in Chapter 1 to develop a more precise vocabulary with which to talk about dialogical form. It proposes three new terms to describe how sequences of turns are built: intervention, blanking, and apostrophe. The second half of the chapter tests this approach on a series examples culled from the work of other critics: Mick Short on Buckingham’s attempt to claim his reward from the newly crowned Richard (Richard III, 4.2); Lynne Magnusson on Desdemona’s insistence that she follow her husband to Cyprus (Othello, 1.3); and Stephen Orgel on the reassignment of the ‘Abhorred slave’ speech from Miranda to Prospero (Tempest, 1.2). In each case, the turn-taking approach yields fresh insights, enabling us to make distinctions at a greater level of detail than had previously been possible.