2 février 2018
https://www.openedition.org/12554 , info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Marie-Madeleine Mervant-Roux, « Les témoins de la scène et les témoins de la salle. Retour sur une étude d'Hamlet avec le public », Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, ID : 10670/1.hycfd6
As a starting point, two minor findings I have made during a research project on audience activity within a theatrical event. In 1988-89, when observing about twenty performances of Patrice Chéreau's Hamlet, I noticed that 1) the staging could be received very close or at distance, all the locations were profitable; 2) the character of Horatio was surprisingly important. In this paper, I intend to offer the two hypotheses I have further developed to the close scrutiny of Renaissance Theatre scholars.1) The three main perceptual colorings of the theatrical performance—i.e. near: psychological; farther: historical; very far: philosophical — are implied in the very text of Hamlet. Besides, by means of “portraits,” “full length portraits,” “landscapes,” Shakespeare gives each spectator the distances he lacks. Mixing the three points of view within the same play and for all the members of the audience alike is what we can call a “novelty of the Renaissance.”2) Horatio appears in Hamlet as the “second witness” of the “cross examination.” The conclusions of this experimental study suggest a comparison between Horatio (witness/chronicler) and the actors (witnesses/story-tellers). The doubt-raising structuration of the spectator's experience can be considered as another “novelty of the Renaissance.”