“Finding something new, true, and useful to say about Shakespeare is a task so formidable that one can only wonder why so many keen and eager spirits compete for the privilege of attempting it.”

“Then I began to think that this was perhaps the best reason for going to see this part of the world, that it was so over-visited it was haunted”

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Finding something new, true, and useful to say about Shakespeare is a task so formidable that one can only wonder why so many keen and eager spirits compete for the privilege of attempting it.
Frank Kermode

Then I began to think that this was perhaps the best reason for going to see this part of the world, that it was so over-visited it was haunted
Paul Theroux

The particularity of inter-arts doctoral programs (such as UQAM’s Études & pratiques des arts) is not only to better understand and articulate the junction between artistic theory & practice, it is also to encourage the open and free exchange of tools, approaches and techniques between various artistic fields and disciplines. The purpose of such doubling practice is perhaps to shed some light on those elements that are shared between all the arts: namely the creative process itself, or the aesthetic spirit of an age.

As its title (and presentation) suggests, William’s Window is most decidedly a prospect, in the sense of being (quite literally) a “perspective” or “point of view”. It is a prospect on a particular author, William Shakespeare (1564–1616), the bulk of whose writings was meant to be staged (i.e. seen and heard as opposed to being simply read). Shakespeare’s scripts were, at least partially, scores in the musical sense, since they map-out textually events involving character’s and voices occurring in time. That our work represent — graphically or visually — this essential and yet invisible condition of time in Shakespeare’s texts was perhaps the key underlying methodological question we sought to resolve. For William’s Window, itself, is nothing more than an attempt at a quantitative study of Shakespeare’s metatheatre through the thirty-six plays of the First Folio of 1623. As its subtitle suggests, we sought to do this simply by verifying the degree to which Shakespeare’s theatre was transparent, which is to say the degree to which the very means of dramatic representation were foregrounded and made manifest in performance.

An art historian, such as Louis Marin, would speak of opacity as opposed to transparency. Because when a painting’s materials & technique are somehow emphasized over what the painting depicts, then the viewer’s awareness is rather on how skillfully the pigment was applied to its surface. Hence, the surface itself is rendered opaque. But when this same aesthetic effect occurs in the course of a theatrical performance, then its spectator is made aware of an event developing in real time and in a real space. The Theatre — with its players and playgoers, its stage and auditorium — does not, then, become opaque (though some aspect of it, such as its language, certainly might), rather the whole process becomes transparent.

Materially, our thesis is a compendium of verifiable instances of theatrical or, rather, metatheatrical transparency. It therefore provides the exact location and number of plays-within-the-plays and disguised characters, as well as the location and number of textual (i.e. spoken) references to theatre, art, imitation, and painting. All of the data was drawn from Charlton Hinman’s Norton Facsimile of Shakespeare’s First Folio (2nd ed. 1996) whose Through-Line-Numbering system (TLN) made its gathering and subsequent graphic analysis possible.

The data itself is delivered twice: the first time, in the present codex where it is arranged in the exact order and according to the three play categories (Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies) of the First Folio itself; and a second time, in the three rolls (Roll #1 Performative Stucture, Roll #2 In Terms of Theatre, Roll #3 In Terms of Art) which provide the visual summary, or graphic conclusion of our thesis (as well as a compelling answer to its question).

Hence this codex is almost a counterfeit reference work, since it is designed to allow for cross-referencing of the play-by-play data in a more amenable manner than the rolls. For the rolls arrangement of the plays is not that of the Folio, rather, it is chronological (and therefore speculative). In short, the Rolls mimic an imaginary Shakespearean time-line, whereas this codex mimics the Codex (i.e. the First Folio).

S/Z