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Theatrical Pragmatics: The Actor-Audience Relationship from the Mystery Cycles to the Early Tudor Comedies Hans.Jurgen Diller For the purposes of my paper I offer the following definition of a dramatic performance: real people (the audience) perceive real utterances and real actions performed by other real people (the actors). The real utterances and the real actions represent fictitious or historical utterances and actions by fictitious or historical people (the dramatis personae). The utterances are of course special kinds of actions and receive special mention merely for the sake of clarity. The relationship described here is normal for drama,l although it is not the only one. Representation can be fruitfully discussed as a relationship between two worlds. And the question "How do we get from one world to the othe!?" that is so important in possible-world semantics is also of paramount importance in the study of drama. Here, however, it is not merely a theoretical but also an eminently practical question. In our modem theaters the lights go out, the curtain opens, etc. These conventions symbolically annihilate our own "ordinary world" (WO) and help us to concentrate on the fictitious "dramatic world" (W4).2 The symbolic annhilation of the "ordinary world" is a way of suggesting that the "dramatic world" leads an independent existence from our own. The people in that world behave as if we did not exist. The convention that makes such behavior possible is often referred to as "the fourth wall." This convention is often breached, but HANS-JORGBN DD..LBR, Professor of BnsIish at Rubr-UniV6l!iitilt Bochum. West Germany, is th6 author of Redelormen des englLrchm Misterlenspiels, on the English translation of which he is currently working. 156 Hans-lurgen Diller 157 even in the breach it asserts itself: the· breach would not be effective without the convention. It is a commonplace of theatrical .criticism that medieval and Renaissance drama did not know the "fourth wall," nor perhaps any other wall. This commonplace , however, gives us a purely negative definition of the play-audience relationship in pre-classical drama. It may even suggest that the invisible wall could be penetrated at will in those days. This was certainly not the case, and no dramatic art would be possible on such an assumption. In a theater with no switch-off lighting and no curtains, the only way of getting ·from Wo to W4 was via the word. But not only was getting into or establishing W4 more difficult than it is in the modem theater, since sustaining it was in fact also much more challenging. For a jostling crowd with no numbered seats whose members can see not only the play but also each other, can communicate with each other, and can perhaps take a stroll across the green-such a crowd must be far more intractable than a modem theater public whose members have been conveniently isolated in the darkness and comfort of their seats. Addressing the audience even from within the play may not have been a threat to the integrity of the W4 but rather a way of keeping the audience ''hooked.'' Believing, then, on a priori grounds that addressing the audience was an important strategy to establish and sustain the W4, I must try to discover when in fact the audience was addressed. Most of the time, the answer is easy: when there is no one on stage for whom the speech acts produced can be possibly relevant. If, for instance, Joseph exclaims "oa 6a all Olde men to me take tent,"3 and nothing in the preceding dialogue justifies the assumption that there are any other old men standing around, then we are forced to·conclude that Joseph is in fact addressing (the old men in) the audience. But when a shepherd in the Second Shepherds' Play complains about the inclemencies of the weather and vents his grief against social evils, we might still assume that.he is merely seeking relief in speaking to himself-until he explicitly states that he does in fact find such relief: It dos me good, as I walk thus by myn oone, Of this warld for to talk in maner of mone.4...
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