György Spiró:
Shakespeare szerepösszevonásai
(Doubling in Shakespeare’s Plays).
Európa, 1997, 278 pp.

My essay certainly meets the criteria of what is called ‘conjecture’ in the English-speaking world, one of the worst invectives there,” György Spiró says in his book, the most intriguing work on the theatre in Hungarian in recent years.
Before turning to the work, which has created a stir, a few words about the author are in order. While provocative statements of this kind are typical of him, his work is too broad in scope and too serious for him to be dismissed as an enfant terrible of literature or scholarship.
György Spiró, born in 1946, studied Hungarian, Russian and Serbo–Croat at the Faculty of Humanities of Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. He started working at Hungarian Radio, later became a theatre critic, an editor, a research fellow of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, a dramaturge for both the National Theatre in Budapest and for the Kaposvár company, one of the best in the country. For three years he was director of the Szigligeti Theatre at Szolnok. He teaches at Eötvös University and the Academy of Theatre and Cinematography. He has published three novels, two volumes of short stories and two volumes of plays. He is probably the most performed current Hungarian playwright, with his plays frequently staged abroad too—yet he has announced recently that he has stopped writing plays. His books include one on Miroslav KrlezŠa and one on East Central European drama from the Enlightenment to the First World War. His translations include plays by Wyspianski, Gombrowicz, KrlezŠa, Chekhov and G. B. Shaw.
Despite the provocative sentence quoted above, Spiró’s book on Shakespeare is a well-documented work which reveals a thorough knowledge of the literature of the subject. (The most important quotations are given in footnotes in the original language, most of them are English.) His introduction sums up the work of other scholars as regards doubling, such as Thomas Whitfield Baldwin, Howard Skiles, Gamini Salgado, M. C. Bradbrook, William J. Lawrence, Andrew Gurr, Alan C. Dessen, David M. Bevington, Thomas James King, Alexandr Abramovich Anyikst, John C. Meagher, and refers to a thesis by Richard G. Mansfield, which he came across in the library of the University of Iowa. All these works take as their point of departure the historically authenticated fact that, at its peak, Shakespeare’s company had a maximum of twelve permanent members—who shared in the income— as well as boy actors and actors they hired. Consequently, doubling was inevitable in any production involving more roles than the company’s total number of actors. By examining the structure of Shakespeare’s plays, scholars have drawn various conclusions as to the possible doublings. The difference between these works and Spiró’s is that he goes much further. Here a working playwright and dramatic scholar sets down some thoughts on Shakespeare, whom he regards as “one of the greatest sensationalists”. He avers that there is a conscious design in the doublings; they are based on careful considerations “aimed at achieving a higher artistic quality—and effectiveness—for the play.”
Spiró certainly does not deny that in working out his thesis he was primarily influenced by theatrical practice. “From the 1970s onwards, doubling of some kind was employed in several productions, one of the most famous being Peter Brook’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He could have been fa-
miliar with theoretical considerations prevailing at the time on the question of Titania–Hippolyta and Theseus–Oberon. I am not aware if his production may have directed me towards the subject of my essay, all the more so since I raised this question in an article on theatre as early as the autumn of 1969, before Brook’s production was staged, unaware that the problem had already created a literature. However, some other doublings offered me food for thought, e.g., in the Kaposvár production of Hamlet, director Tamás Ascher contracted the roles of the Ghost, the First Player and the First Grave-digger […] I understand that in the early 90s there were attempts in several places, e.g., in France, to produce Shakespeare’s plays with no more than ten actors. Doubling is in the air.”
In Shakespeare’s time, scholars tell us, in essence, two kinds of doubling were practised. Suppression occurred in the case of a figure who ended his role on the stage and appeared no more. The actor who had played this role would re-appear as another figure. Alternation took place when an actor played two or more roles alternately; that is, he kept changing the figures performed, without these ever disappearing from the scene for an extended time. And there was also a third form, substitution, when two actors played a single figure, alternating in one role within the same production. This version extended to one or two short scenes and is the opposite of, yet closely interconnected with, doubling.

Spiró describes his methods of investigation: “Though laborious, it is not too difficult to count up the potential doublings in a play; you divide it into scenes and then count up who encounters whom, who misses whom in all these scenes. Figures who never meet may be considered for doubling. […] Figures who never meet may indeed, in principle, be played by the same actor; without any dramaturgical or aesthetic meaning, however, doubling of this kind remains irrelevant. Dramaturgical or aesthetic significance is attained in a case when doubling contributes towards the interpretation of the play, enriching it or making it more complex. Shakespeare may have employed doubling extensively out of necessity, in his histories, for instance. If, however, the particular roles are insignificant in themselves and have a mere decorative function, it is largely irrelevant how they are doubled. Genuine, meaningful doubling must be suspected in cases when significant roles are contracted or the potential for doubling is revealed after this counting up.”
Spiró applies this approach to all of Shakespeare’s plays, aiming to map out as exstensive as possible a system of doubles. The laborious effort produces results of a kind that will certainly enrich Shake-
spearean studies. For the general reader, those conjectures offer the most intriguing details in which the author attributes philosophical–ideological depth to the doubling of roles. Spiró avers that in Shakespeare’s time the Porter in Macbeth was played by the actor who also played Duncan, for the text provides verification that the Porter is a diabolic reincarnation of Duncan who is murdered in the previous scene. (The murderous act itself does not take place on stage precisely because the actor has to change costumes in the meantime.) Spiró goes even farther, saying that Hecate is also a diabolic reincarnation of Duncan’s, for unlike the Witches she also makes her first appearance after the murder. This is, then, the second doubling for the actor. What is more, he also played the Doctor who “treated” Lady Macbeth (as is well documented in the text version of a contemporary performance, the instigator or murderer on such occasions confessed to the victim, now a ghost, as though in a horror film), as well as Seyton, whose very name is suspected by many to be a slightly distorted version of Satan. The Witches, for that matter, do not reappear at the end of the play, as would be fitting for a frame story, Spiró says, because they are in fact present in other, similarly meaningfully, i.e., effectively doubled roles.

Macbeth is only one pregnant example of Spiró’s hypothesis that Shakespeare based his system of doubling on certain pairs of opposites—the living and the dead; good and evil; gentlemen and commonfolk; Englishmen and Frenchmen; Montagues and Capulets. Such pairs of opposites represent extremes in human qualities, treating Man as a collective idea rather than as an individual. The doubling of roles taken as a basic principle of the Shakespearean method leads to exciting conclusions in his essay. On occasion, however, one play or another escapes the net of the doubling theory and will not lend itself for such an interpretation. Of the best-known plays, King Lear is a case in point, even if traditionally the roles of Cordelia and the Fool are frequently put forward as an obvious doubling. As we know, the Fool vanishes from the plot without a trace, while Lear speaks about the dead Cordelia as “my poor fool”. Spiró, however, does not consider this particular doubling probable. “We may, of course, substantiate it, in a very twisted way; however, the Fool who is wise and Cordelia whose heart is wise but is a fool in real life, do not belong together—more precisely, they do not make a pair of opposites. […] This type of doubling is untypical of the mature Shakespeare.” According to Spiró, several roles may be contracted in Lear, and the whole play may be performed by a company of twelve actors and a couple of apprentice actors, but “no doubling in it offers anything of artistic significance”.
Then he arrives at a strange conclusion: “Though doubts as to Shakespeare’s authorship have never been raised, it may nevertheless be more than just coincidence that, as regards doubling possibilities and dramatic significance, Lear is out of line, and the most talented detractors of Shakespeare, such as Leo Tolstoy and the Hungarian novelist Zsigmond Móricz, singled out for criticism the forced solutions in Lear and projected this onto other plays as well. The secondary plots, when examined, show that the Edmund and Edgar line as set against the Lear line is conspicuously dilettantish. The former is psychologically flat, a poorer version of the Richard III story, hinting of re-echoing, while Lear’s outbursts—his soliloquies—appear as though floating in loneliness over the whole play. The motifs of the secondary plot were much admired and imitated in the Romantic Age, not entirely by accident, perhaps, in view of the fact that the Romantics’ insight into character was inferior to that of the Elizabethan Age. Shakespeare either kept nodding off when writing Lear or else contributed only the great soliloquies, and left the makeshift structure the way it had been supplied.”

As the above shows, Spiró does not need much nudging to produce provocative views on his subject. We may well suspect that the academic engaged in the examination of doublings is a match for the philosopher and established playwright concerned with the Shakespearean work. This is particularly seen whenever his examination produces new insights on the major plays.
Of Romeo and Juliet, for instance, he writes: “The doubles play opposite figures, and this ambiguity endures in the play to the end. The ambivalence of human nature is thematic: good and evil both form part of each particular role. What Friar Lawrence has to say about the poison is relevant for both the individual and the doubling actors. Similarly, Queen Mab’s charms affect everyone, whether they appear in one or more roles: at one movement of hers, sexuality, murderous intent, uncontrolled impulses burst forth and become suicidal. (Romeo and Juliet are in this world, not opposed to it.) Language is capable merely of making jokes about whatever is to become fatal. The wealth of puns is functional. It is the figures embodying the good (the Nurse, Friar Lawrence) who precipitate doom and cause disaster, and what is evil or weak may also dwell in them. When “risen”, a friend may turn foe or rival. A slain foe may arise and take revenge in his guise of the good. Patricidal impulses may erupt in the gentlest (Juliet), and the most loving of fathers may put a curse upon his child (Capulet). Thus blinded, Romeo rushes into danger and, eventually, ruin … From whichever doubling we view it, the play is hardly the apotheosis of Renaissance love; it is dreadful, fit for a horror film.”
Spiró thinks that the dramatis personae in Romeo and Juliet are guided by “the forces of frenzied temper, of which the animosity between the two houses is but one”. Consequently, the two title figures do not double, because “for those who have no doubles—those who are guided by a single passion, love—the world is a world dominated by one ghost fading into another, where you can never know who is good or up to no good, and in reality people may hide in themselves.” Doubling, or we might say double vision, therefore, penetrates the entire play: “More than a mere alternation of tragic and comic scenes, what may happen at any time is the changing of a tragic scene into a comic one. Lamenting the seemingly dead Juliet is comic—and no less comic is lamenting the individual who is really dead. Such scenes cannot but be written by design. The source of comedy admittedly—or unadmittedly, to be perceived only by the audience—is fright. Fright, and this is what the play is about, is justified. It is not the dramaturgy of coincidences, appportioned to greater or lesser degrees of cleverness, that leads to tragedy, as even Georg Lukács surmised, but human existence itself. Ever since Greek tragedy, this is the first truly tragic moment.”
Discussing Julius Caesar, Spiró supposes that the title role can be contracted with the role of Octavius, the Emperor Augustus to be. This implies that Caesar is murdered in vain, for he is replaced—the office survives. On Antony and Cleopatra he says:
“If aiming to upset his audiences, then Shakespeare could easily have sent the actor playing Antony onto the stage again as the Clown, thus the lover from beyond the grave helps Cleopatra die through the bite of the asp. And why would he have refrained from upsetting his audience? This was his profession.” Bolder still is his conjecture on Henry IV. He thinks it is conspicuous that the King and Falstaff meet only four times throughout the play, and even then Falstaff utters no more than one sentence. “Lesser dramatists than Shakespeare would not pass up confronting the two characters, and at least once would engage them in a major polemic. Yet Shakespeare did pass up such a tempting opportunity. And I think this author is one of the greatest sensationalists, who would never willingly or unwillingly give up an effect, except for an even greater one. The question that arises is: Was it not the same actor that played King Henry and Falstaff? When they do encounter one another, any actor could have substituted for Falstaff, in his costume, and he had only to produce a single sentence in Falstaff’s voice. Even a hired actor could have done that.” And the aim could have been nothing other than to mock the King as performed by Falstaff—more complex than a simple parody: the actor playing Falstaff parodies himself, the way he plays King Henry’s role.
Spiró admits that the probability of certain doublings he suggests—Henry/ Falstaff is one—may be strongly debated. Yet he maintains that “possible doublings are at the same time probable as well: a dramatic structure that harbours so many occasions for doubling can only be built up by design.” And this leads to one es-sential conclusion of his work: “In Shakespeare’s dramatic oeuvre, the rich choice of possible and probable versions of doubling lead us to believe that, for him, writing each particular play involved a series of choices and decisions, and because he was free to do without doubling, he was also free to opt for doubled roles; he was also free to experiment with widely different versions of the doubling structures. Literary critics and historians are wont to treat certain literary works as though having been written by an automaton, a robot licensed to write plays, which was expected to ‘give voice to’ or ‘reflect the age’, the ‘spirit of the age’, or ‘class struggle or ‘the Renaissance vision’ and who knows what else, supporting, as it were, the views later analysts hold on the philosophy of art—as though a work can only exist in the very form it has been left to us and could not be any different, as though some divine or historical predestination was at work when the writer chose that particular form and nothing but that form; as though he could not have picked, had he wished, any other form or any other figure except that one he did. Those who have no personal experience of the creative process usually exclude from the work precisely what is most important—the element of creation.”
The author’s working hypothesis certainly leads to a series of other questions. For example, Spiró asks, whether the actor who plays in double roles within one performance did make it clear in one of
his roles that he, the actor, played another role as well; and if so, did the audience appreciate this or not; if not, did they appreciate that the actor played both roles with genuine and deep identification, not stepping out of either, and it is only the audience member who knows that these roles are akin through the person
of the actor. Was the aim perhaps that the identity of the actor in various roles must not be revealed? Did the “Brechtian” or rather the “Stanislavsky” method work in the Elizabethan Age? And later, did this “doubling principle” operate, if only in a changed form, in other centuries and in the work of other playwrights, such as Ben Jonson, Webster, Goethe, Kleist, Schiller, Pushkin, Büchner, Wyspianski, Shaw and Chekhov?
The answers attempted conclude that “doubling—and whatever lies behind it—did not altogether disappear at the end of the Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre, and survives in a latent form to this day, showing up at times in unimportant works thanks to one or two exceptionally sensitive artists. What is missing, though, is the knowledge guaranteed by the audience, which kept this strange, unique collective knowledge alive—a knowledge never before or after realized in any theatrical form in a crystallized state.” Against the naturalist flatness of the Hungarian, and the contemporary theatre in general, Spiró sets the Shakespearean golden age, in which theatre and audience both possessed a creative imagination enabling them to interpret theatrical stylization in a complex way. In his description, the Elizabethan theatregoer is someone who works till midday, has lunch, goes to the theatre in the afternoon and to the tavern in the evening or else home to his family, and who as part of a “human-faced crowd”, perfectly understands the works, “at times very deep, very complex”, churned out by Shakespeare one after the other, as played by actors far more popular than today’s stars. In contrast to audiences today, who are a “world mass”, “a mob of faceless clones who are flagrantly easy to manipulate”. This is why it is “so difficult, almost hopeless today to perform Shakespeare’s plays … with success.”
To me the message of this book, rich in astonishing statements, observations of detail and metaphysical conclusions, lies in the following lines: “If an actor shows up in a play in different roles, establishing contact between the different, at times akin, at times antagonistic figures by his physical presence—and this contact has been planned by the playwright—then we enter the intoxicating and pagan medium of eternal existence, and death is eliminated from the story. It may be a surprising statement, if we think of the blood that is spilt in Shakespeare’s plays and the deaths of most of the characters by the end of the play. Yet the actor who plays several roles in the play, who at various times die, still remains on the stage in one incarnation. In this structure, both thematic and technical resurrection is possible. The statue of the dead Hermione can come to life in The Winter’s Tale; Polonius, stabbed, and Ophelia, drowned, may return as grave-diggers; the actor playing Julius Caesar, slain in front of our eyes, may soon return to the stage as Octavius, and so on. What we see in these plays is not the weight of Man’s mortality—Hamlet is not deterred from committing suicide by death itself—but by the dreams that may come “in that sleep of death”. Hamlet is afraid of terrible dreams—of which Shakespeare makes us see quite a number on the stage. By which Shakespeare means that life is a dream, sometimes terrible, sometimes funny; nor is death something special—certainly not terrible. Those who pass away do not differ in any way from those who stay alive. If the boy who plays Ophelia does indeed reappear on the stage as Fortinbras at the end, when all the slaying is done, the great devastations and blood-lettings on the Shakespearean stage, owing to the physical presence of doubling actors, never mean that something radically ‘better’ is about to begin; the ‘old’ world is never gone and no ‘new’ world begins. Neither does life end though.”