Time

Time in drama can be considered from a variety of angles. One can, for example, look at time as part of the play: How are references to time made in the characters’ speech, the setting, stage directions, etc? What is the overall time span of the story? On the other hand, time is also a crucial factor in the performance of a play. How long does the performance actually take? Needless to say that the audiences’ preception of time can also vary. Another question one can ask in this context is: Which general concepts of time are expressed in and a play?

SUCCESSION AND SIMULTANETY’One of the first distinctions one can make is the one between succesion and simultaneity. Event and actions can take place in one of two ways, either one after another (succesively) or all at the same time (simultaneously) When these event are performed on stage, their presentation on scenes will inevitably be succesive while they may while they may well be simultaneous according to the internal time frame of the play.

Consider for example, the plot of Shakespare’s The Tempest Given the fact that the plot is supposed to last only three hours, one must persume that the various subplots presenting the different groups of people dispersed over the island must take place roughly at the same time: e.g, Caliban’s encounter with Trinculo and Stephano in Act II, scene 1 and continued in III, 2 is likely to take place at the same time as Miranda’s and Ferdinand’s conversation in III, 1 etc. A sense of simultaneity is created here exactly because different plot-lines alternate in strings of immediately succesive scenes. On the other hand, if no other indication of divergent time frame is given in the text, viewers normally automatically assume that the evens and actions presented in subsequent scenes are also succesive in their temporal order.

PRESENTATION OF TEMPORAL FRAMES

There are a number of possibilities to create a temporal frame in drama. Allusions to time can be made in the character’ converstions; the exact time of scene can be provided in the stage directions; or certain stage props like clocks and calendars or auditory device such as chruch bells ringing in the background can give the audience a clue about what time it is. At the beginning of Hamlet, for example, when the guard’s account of the same apparition during the previous night:

Last night of all, When yond same star that’s westward from the pole, Had made his course t’illume that part of heaven, Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself, The bell then beating one (Shakespare, Hamlet, I, 1:38-42)

While in this instance, the exact time is expressed verbally by one of the characters, the crowing of a cock offstage indicates the approaching daylight later in that scene and causes the apparition to disappear. In scene 4 of the same act, Hamlet himself is on guard in order to meet the gost, and the scene begins with the following short exchange between Hamlet and Horatio :

HAM: The air bites shrewdly, it is very cold. HOR: It is a nipping and an eager air. HAM:What hour now ? HOR:I think it lacks of twelve. (Hamlet, I, 4: 1-4)

This short dialogue not only conveys to the audience the time of night but it also uses word painting to discribe the weather conditions and the overall atmosphere (“air bites”, “very cold”, “nipping”) Word painting means that actors describes the scenery vividly and this create or ‘paint’ a picture in the viewers’ minds

The third possibility of presenting time in the stage directions is used in John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger; for example. The intoductory author commentary to each of the three acts in the secondary text gives very short instructions concerning the time of the subsequent scenes: “Early evening. April” (I, 1), “Two weeks later. A Sunday evening” (III, 1), “It is a few minutes later” (III, 2). While a reading audience is thus fully informed about the timing of the scenes, theatre goers have to infer it from the context through the characters’ interactions. The temporal gap between acts two and three, for example, has to be inferred from the fact that things have changed in Jimmy’s and Alison’s flat after Alison left, most noticeably that Helena has taken up Alison’s place and is now the woman in the house.

STORY TIME AND DISCOURSE TIME

A. DURATION

Another important distinction one needs to be made when analysing time drama, namely between fictive story time or played time and real playing time (see also story time and discourse time for narrative ch 2 8 2). While the played time or the time of the story in Osborne’s Look Back in Anger encompass several months, the play’s actual playing time (time it takes to stage the play) is approximately two hours. The playing time of a piece of drama of course always depends on the speed at which actors perform individual scenes and thus vary significantly from one performance to another.

The fact that story time elapses from one scene to the next and from act to act is indicated by the fall of the curtain pauses occur between acts. Significantly, the length of curtain time is correlated with the length of time span while normal breaks cover longer time spans of the played time.

A gaps in the played time of a piece of drama is calld ellipsis, i.e, one leaves out bits of the story and thus speeds up the plot. Considering that scenes usually present action directly, one can assume that played time and playing time usually coincide in drama. In other word: If characters are presented talking to one other for, say, twenty minutes, then it will normally take about twenty minutes for actors to perform this ‘conversation’. Discrepancies between the duration of played time and playing time mostly concur with scenic breaks because it is difficult to present them convincingly in the middle of an interaction. However, and example of a speed-up or summary, i.e, a situation where the actual playing time is shorter than the time span presented in the played interaction, can be found for instance in Thomas Middleton’s and Wiliam Rowley’s The Changeling. Beatrice, who fears that her lack od sexual innocence could be discovered by her husband during their wedding bad and anxiously awaits the maid’s retrun

BEATRICE: One struck, and yet she lies by’t – oh my fears. This strumplet serves her own ends, tis apparen now,. Devorus the pleasure with a greedy appetite. And neber minds my honour or my peace. Makes havoc of my right but she pays dearly for’t. No trusting of her life with such a secret. That cannot rule her blood to keep her promise. Beside, I have some suspicion of her faith to me. Because I was suspected of my lord. And it must come from her – Hark by my horrors. Another clock strikes two. (Strikes two) (The Changeling, V, 1:1-12)

A few lines further down, after a brief dialogue with De Flores, Beatrice mentions the clock again: “List, oh my terrors / three struck by Saint Sebastian’s (ibid, 66f). Although the same it takes for Beatrice to appear on stage and to wait for her maid can hardly be longer than ten minutes in actual performance, the time that elapses in the story is two hours. The lapse of time is indicated in Beatrice’s speech as well as by the sound of a clock offstage but this seem very artifical because Beatrice appears before the audience for a much shorter time. The discrepancy between played time and playing time is particulary conspicuous at the very begining of this scene, where Beatrice announces the striking of the next hour after only a couple of minutes on stage. This scene clearly does not put an emphasis on a realisticrendition of time but the focus is Beatrice’s reaction to the maid’s late arrival and her anxiousness lest her trick should be discovered.

Since drama employs other media than narrative text and is performed in real time, not all usages of time in narrative are possible in plays (compare ch 28). Nevertheless, postmodernist plays in particular sometimes experiment with different presentations of time. Techniques which can only be adopted in modified form in drama are slow-down or stretch, where the playing time is longer than the played time, and pause, where the play continues while the story stops. One might argue that soliloques where characters discuss and reveal their inner psychological state or emotions are similar to pauses since no real ‘action’ is observable and the development of the story is put to hold, so to speak. However, if one considers that the character’s talking to the audience or perhaps to himself is in a way also a form of action that can be relevant for further actions, this argument does not really hold. Consider the following example from Peter Shaffer’s Equus. The psychologist Dysart in a way steps out of the story-world of the play and address the audience:

Now he’s gone off to rest, leaving me alone with Equus. I can hear the creature’s voice. It’s calling me out of the back cave of the Psyche. I shove in my dim little torch, and there he stands – waiting for me. He raises his matted head. He opens his great square teeth, and says –[Mocking] ‘Why? Why Me? Why – ultimately – Me ? Do you really imagine you can account for Me? Floor Doctor Dysart [He enter the square]

Of course i have stared at such images before. Or been stared at by them, whichever why you look at it. 

And weirdly often now with me the feeling is that they are staring at us – that in some quite palpable way they precede us. Meaningless but unsettling ... In either case, this one is alarming yet. It asks questions I’ve avoided all my professional life. [Pause] A child is born into a world of phenomena all equal in their power to ensalve. It sniffs – it sucks – it strokes its eyes over the whole uncomfortable range. Suddenly one strikes. 

Why? Moments snap together like magnets, forging a chain of shackles. Why? I can trace them. I can even, with time, pull them apart again. But way at the start they were ever magnetized at all – just those particular moments of experience and no other – I don’t know. And nor does anyone else. Yet if I don’t know – If I can never know that—than what I am doing here? I don’t mean clinically doing or socially doing – I mean fundamentally. These questions, these Whys, are fundamental – yet they have no place in a consulting room. So then, di I ? ... This is the feeling more and more with me – No place. Displacement .. ‘Account for me,’ says starting Equus. ‘First account for Me ...’ I fancy this is more than menopause. (Equus, II, 22)

One could agure that, while Dysart reflects on his feelings about his work, the story as such stops. However, if one considers Dysart’s inner development as a psychiatrist, another vital part of the plot, and treats this address to the audience as an integrall vital part of the plot, and treats this address to the audience as an integral element of the play’s communication system, the the playing time of Dysert’s speech still coincides with its played time. In other words: even where narrative elements are used in plays and thus potentially facilitate narrative techniques of time presentation, the overall scenic structure almost always counter that.

A stretch or slow-down could be realised if characters were to act in slow-motion, e.g, in a pantomime or dumb show, similar slow-motion techniques in films. This, however, it is not feasible for an entrie play Manfred Pfister mentions in his book Das Drama (1997:363) J.B Priestley’s play Time and the Conways, where the entire second act is used to present Kay’s daydream, which, according to time references in the play, only lasts for a few minutes. This slow-down is of course only recognisable through overt hints in the surrounding plot, whereas the time of the actions presented within the dydream perfectly corresponds with the time it takes to perform them on stage. So, again, a real slow motion) but it can be suggested by means of linguistic cues or stage props indicating time (Clocks, etc)

B. ORDER

Another aspect to look at when analysing time in drama (as well as narrative) is the concept of order (see also Prose ch 2 8 2 2) how are events ordered temporally? Does the temporal sequences od scenes correspond with the temporal order of events and actions in the presented story? Like narrative, drama can make use of flashback (analepsis) and flashforward (prolepsis). In flasback, event from the past are migled with the presentation of curren events, while in flashfowards, future events are anticipated. While flashfoward as common since they potentially treaten the built-up of the audience supense (if we already know what is going to happend, we can best this wonder how this ending is brough about), flashbacks are frequently used in order to illustrate a character’s memories or to explain the outcome of certain actions.

An example for a flashfoward is the prologue in Shakespare’s Romeo and Juliet, where the audience is already told the gist of the subsequent play. Examples of flashbacks can be found in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, where the unemployed and desolate salesman Willy Loman remebers his happy family life in the past. Flashbacks also occur frequently in Peter Shaffer’s Equus, Where they represent Alan’s recollections of the events that led up to his blinding of the horses. Equus is interesting in that a linear presentation of Alan’s therapy is juxtaposed with a non-lenier presentation of the story of his outrageous deed. Thus, the play’s play with order and cronology invites the audience to view more critically conventional notions of cause and effect, which is one of the crucial themes of the play, e.g, when Dysart doubts his ability ever to get to the heart of a strange obsession like Alan’s.

Three terms which are often used in the context of discussions of chronology and order are the three basic types of beginnings: ab ovo, in media res and in ultimas res. These terms refer to the point of time of a story at which a play sets in and they are thus closely related to the amount of information viewers are offered at the beginning of a play:

Ab ovo: The play strats at the beginning of the story and provides all the necessary background information concerning the characters, their circumstances, conflicts, etc. (exposition). in medias res: the story starts womewhere in the middle and leaves the viewer puzzled at first. In ultimas res: the story begins with its actual outcome or ending and than relates events in reverse order, thus drawing the audience’s attention on the ‘how’ rather than the ‘what’ of the story. Plays which use this method are called analytic plays.

While in narrative analysis, the terms ab ovo and in medias res are also used to distinguish between beginning where the reader is introduced to the plot by means of preliminary information mostly conveyed by the narrator (ab ovo) and beginnings where the reader is simply thrust into the action of the narrative (in medias res, see also Prose ch 2 8 2 3), plays by definition always already present the viewer with some action unless there is a narrative-like mediator (chorus, commentator, etc). Since in that sense plays are usually always in medias res because they present viewers directly with an interaction among characters, it might be more appropriate to use the more narrow definition given above for drama, which is limited to the timing of beginnings and does not focus so much on the mode of presentation.

C. FREQUENCY

Another faced of time worth analysing is the concept of frequency, i.e, how often an event is presented. Although the categories proposed by Genette for narrative texts are not directly applicable to drama, one can nevertheless identify similar structures. According to Genete, there are three possible types of reference to an event (see Genette 1980)

Singulative : an event takes place once and is referred to once. repetitive: an event takes place once but referred to or presented repeatedly. Iterative: an event takes place several times but is referred to in the text only once.

The singulative representation of events can be found whenever scenes in a play contain single actions and these actions are represented once. This mode is mostly found in linear plots where the main aim is to delineate the development of a conflict. Traditional plays usually adopt this mode. Thus, Cyril Tourneur’s The revenger’s Tragedy, for example, presents its plot in fast-moving action where no scene replicates previous scenes.

Iterative telling occurs when characters refer to the same or similar events that have already happend. The guards in Shakespare’s Hamlet, for example, discuss during their night shift what had happened during the previous night and thus the apparition of the ghost is presented as repetitive action

An repetitive representation of events is more difficult to imagine in drama since, strictly speaking, it would involve the same scene to be played several times in exactly the same way. While a complete overlap of scenes is not feasible as it would probably cause boredom, especially modern plays frequently make use of the repetition of similar events/interactions or parts of dialogues. A good example is Breckett’s Waiting for the Godot where pladimir and Estragon repeat actions and verbal exchanges throughout the play and where, most significantly, the two acts are structured in parallel, culminating in the announcement of the imminent appearance of Godot (who never show up) and Vladimir’s and Estragon’s inaction. John Osborne’s Look back in Anger employs a similar strategy by presenting the first and the third act in a similar fashion, the only difference being that Alison has been replaced by Helena. This repetition of events (Helena standing there in Jim’s shirt, ironing clothes, and Jim and Cliff sitting in their arm-chairs) is obviously used to suggest that there is no real change or development in Jim’s own life despite the fact that he constantly rages against the establishment and against other people’s passivity.

SO WHAT?

As with the presentation of space, aspects of time are rarely presented for their own sake but often imply further levels of meaning that might help one interpret a text. Thus, time can also be symbolic and stand for larger concepts. For example, Waiting for Godot’s modified version of iterative action create a sense of stagnation and lack of movement, which corresponds with the more philosophical notion of people’s helplessness and the purposelessness of life in general Look Back in Anger, in a similar vein, illustrates a cyclical notion of time and history whereby events recur again and again. This ultimately also generates a sense of sagnation and, in this particular case, underlines the protagonist’s lack of action. By contrast, plays where the overall order is chronological and where the pot moves through singulative representation of actions to a final conclusion suggest progress and development and thus perhaps also a more positive and optimistic image of mankind and history.

Different user of time are course also important for the creation of certain effects on the audience. While non-chronological plots, for example, can be confusing, they may also create suspense or challenge the viewer’s ability to make connections between events. Furthermore, plays which present a story in its chronological order draw attention to the final outcome and thus are based on the question: ‘What happens next?”, whereas plays with a non-chronological order, which might even anticipate the ending, focus on the question: ‘How does everything happen?’

Detailed time presentations or, by contrast, a lack of detail may point towards the importance or insignificance of time for a specific storyline. In Shakespare’s A midsummer Night’s Dream, for example, the timing of the scenes that take place in the forest during the night remains rather fuzzy, thus underlining the character’ changed sense of time and also the timelessness of the fairy-world presented there.