Interpretive Multiplicity: Audiences and Mediators on the Shakespearean Stage

The question of audience (dis)unity has been a central, if not always ex­plicit, element of the theory and practice of drama since its inception. In this essay, I consider the staging of rhetorical expression and interpreta­tion in Shakespearean drama, whereby the playwright intervenes in the relationship between audience and performance in order to problematize and retheorize the interpretive dynamics of the theater. There are many such moments of staged interpretation in the Shakespeare canon, but I will focus here on two plays which deploy subtle and complex strategies of in­terpretive disunification. In the first part, I offer a brief outline of theoreti­cal debates about audience unity, and an overview of the intersections of oratory and dramatic performance. In the second part, I turn to characters who serve as "internal audiences" or "mediators" on the Shakespearean stage. I first consider the unifying nationalist rhetoric of the titular monarch in Henry V, analyzing the staging of resistance to that rhetorical unification by the always already alienated low characters in the play. Fi­nally, shifting from spoken to silent rhetorical performance, I examine the complex dynamic between internal mediator and gestural performance in Titus Andronicus, whereby interpretive ambiguity operates in and destabi­lizes the drive toward both linguistic and socio-political unity