From Social Roles to Dramatic Roles

Role is a term commonly used in both daily life and theatrical contexts, wonderfully coalescing the social and dramatic dimensions of a person’s identity. In the popular Renaissance concept of theatrum mundi, men are conceived to be players improvising their multifarious social roles in their daily performances and appearances on the stage that is the world. Michel de

Montaigne, in “How One Ought to Governe His Will,” emphasizes “All the world doth practise stage-playing” (III, 98), a popular analogy that elaborates on the theatrical dimension with men and women adopting roles in life just like

players assuming roles in a playhouse. In a study of character-types in city comedy, Theodore B. Leinwand writes of the overwhelming discussion of social roles in the early modern England:

The drama, pamphlets, letters and proclamations of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries constitute an

unceasing discussion of social roles: the role of the sovereign and that of the gentry as gentlemen or as gallants, the role (and so the status) of the newly wealthy merchant and that of the usurer, and every other conceivable role, from city wife to courtier. (10)

Leinwand’s major interest is on the interaction of a social role and a dramatic representation of that role, mutually shaping and reshaping each other. His concern of the relation between role and self is especially relevant to the present study:

This discourse of social roles both on and off the stage suggests a variety of relations between an often unspecifiable self and the enacted role of a given moment. At times, we want to ask whether a role or a repertory of roles has altogether replaced the self: when identity reifies, “a total identification of the individual with his socially assigned typifications” may result. (11)

A substantial and sometimes permanent metamorphosis of the self may be brought about by the assumption of a role, as illustrated in changes in a character’s psychology. We recall Ben Jonson’s warning:

I have considered our whole life is like a Play wherein every man forgetfull of himself, is in travaile with expression of another. Nay, we so insist in imitating others, as we cannot (when it is necessary) returne to our selves: like Children, that imitate the vices of Stammerers so long, till at last they become such; and make the habit to another nature, as it is never forgotten. (1925-52: VIII, 597)

This passage indicates that a role may sometimes corrupt, contaminate, change, or replace the self— as illustrated in some dramatic characters we will examine in this chapter. In Joan Lord Hall’s words,

Frequently the plays focus on the protagonist as actor, suggesting how histrionic awareness, or a conscious dramatisation of self, can enhance or undermine identity.

But they also portray in some depth characters who assume personae and are subsequently changed by them. (1)

For certain dramatic characters, fundamental transformations in their selves take place when they engage in role-playing. At times, they become “others”

and can no longer return to their original self. For example, Vindice in The Revenger’s Tragedy tells his brother they “are made strange fellows”

(1.3.170)¹² and he is “hired” to kill himself (4.2.207).

In many cases, role-playing comes with changes of clothes. The costume metaphor is essential in the sense that it gives an airy nothing a form or shape.

12 All references to this play are to The Revenger’s Tragedy, Ed. R. A. Foakes, who, though admitting to much uncertainty about the author, assigned the play to Cyril Tourneur in his 1966 edition. But, taking in the recent criticism of the play, he added Thomas Middleton as a candidate of the author in

Jacobean tragedies in particular, Hall argues,

by visually correlating moral or spiritual change with physical disguise, show the converse movement: how appearance can turn into reality. (19)

When Vindice changes his clothes in his disguise as Piato, he “quickly turn[s]

into another” (1.1.134), a “base-coined pander” (1.1.81). His brother Hippolito guarantees that he is completely another man: “As if another man had been sent whole / Into the world, and none wist how he came” (1.3.2-3).

He is indeed “far enough from [him]self” (1.3.1). The development of the play suggests that change of costume denotes a subtle moral and psychological metamorphosis, which is manifested in Vindice’s deterioration into a corrupt revenger, taking pride in his ingenious intrigues that destroy his enemies.

Actors are often associated with chameleons or Proteus, capable of changing shapes and playing different roles. Richard of York is one of such arch-players, who is very proud of his acting expertise:

Why, I can smile, and murther whiles I smile, And cry “Content” to that which grieves my heart, And wet my cheeks with artificial tears,

And frame my face to all occasions.

I’ll drown more sailors than the mermaid shall, I’ll slay more gazers than the basilisk,

I’ll play the orator as well as Nestor, Deceive more slily than Ulysses could,

And like a Sinon, take another Troy.

I can add colors to the chameleon,

Change shapes with Proteus for advantages, And set the murtherous Machevil to school.

(3 Henry VI, 3.2.182-93)

In The Taming of the Shrew, to trick Sly into believing himself a Lord, the

“real” Lord assigns his page to playact Sly’s wife:

Lord Sirrah, go you to Barthol’mew my page And see him dressed in all suits like a lady.

That done, conduct him to the drunkard’s chamber, And call him “madam,” do him obeisance . . . . I know the boy will well usurp the grace, Voice, gait and action of a gentlewoman.

(Induction I, 101-04, 127-28)

To be exact, this is an example of a “role-playing within the role” (Hornby 67).

Similar to the transvestite practice in the theater of the period, the Lord assigns his young page Batholomew a female role, bringing our attention to how a boy actor impersonates a female character with acting skills incorporating voice, gait, costume, and movement.

Coriolanus supplies another view toward actors and role-playing.

Volumnia, along with Roman patricians, instructs her son, as an actor, to play a role in order to save himself from the revolting plebeians masterminded by the wily and hostile tribunes, Brutus and Sicinius. Like a director, she gives very detailed acting instructions, including the precise prop, gesture, lines, and facial

expression Coriolanus should put on.

I prithee now, my son,

Go to them, with this bonnet in thy hand,

And thus far having stretched it— here be with them—

Thy knee bussing the stones— for in such business Action is eloquence, and the eyes of th’ignorant More learned than the ears— waving thy head, Which often thus correcting thy stout heart, Now humble as the ripest mulberry

That will not hold the handling. Or say to them Thou art their soldier, and being bred in broils Has not the soft way which, thou dost confess, Were fit for thee to use as they to claim, In asking their good loves; but thou wilt frame Thyself, forsooth, hereafter theirs, so far As thou hast power and person. (3.2.74-88)

Despite his unwillingness to playact a role, Coriolanus nevertheless persuades himself to take up the assigned role. His struggle mainly stems from a negative view of playacting which conflicts with his own disposition, with honesty and integrity on which he prides himself. Yet, he has an extensive, if primarily negative, understanding of acting:

Well, I must do ’t.

Away, my disposition, and possess me

Some harlot’s spirit! My throat of war be turned,

Which choired with my drum, into a pipe Small as an eunuch or the virgin voice

That babies lulls asleep! The smiles of knaves Tent in my cheeks, and schoolboys’ tears take up The glasses of my sight! A beggar’s tongue

Make motion through my lips, and my armed knees, Who bowed but in my stirrup, bend like his

That hath received an alms! (3.2.112-22)

The theatrical ingredients Coriolanus uses to envision his histrionic mission include changes of spirit and voice, facial expressions (smiles, tears), ways of speaking, and gestures. But since his playacting aims at deceiving his

audience, the plebeians, these theatrical reminders carry negative implications, including insincerity, deceit, falseness, and hypocrisy. His self-image as a hero is replaced by that of a harlot, a eunuch, a knave, a schoolboy, and a beggar, all of whom he surely despises.