In theatre we expect words, they are the tools with which plot and psychological states are expressed. Malcolm asks Macduff to ‘Give sorrow words’. But there are points when the high poetry of tragic theatre can’t suffice, when we seek something beyond poetry. ‘Words, words, words’, what use are they.
It is a dilemma which theatre has sought numerous solutions for, aware of the need to sometimes use silence as a crucial device. Silence on stage is very different to silence in a painting. Silence is inherent in painting, where as sound in the form of spoken words is inherent in theatre. As such they both use sound as a value to hold in opposition to our expectations. For theatre the silence is a surprise, for painting the suggestion of a sound which cannot come plays the same role, both are setting up noise values which contradict their inherent qualities. Think the silent scream in painting.
In theatre the role of silence is often to appear where we expect words to provide elaborate descriptions of mental states or plot development.
In tragedy silence is often what follows the onslaught of staged words over a duration of a few hours. As with many things in theatre the value of silence is due to its relation to what has come before, it is an art which relates to us through the constant shift between poles, in sound, space and time in particular. In painting it is the constant and unchanging qualities of sound, space and time from which we draw value.
Hamlet is the most loquacious character in all of Shakespeare’s plays. Fittingly his last words as he passes away are ‘The rest is silence’.
And Cordelia’s silence bookends the tragedy of King Lear. When asked by Lear what she cam say to declare her love, like her sisters, in return for a stake of the kingdom she replies ‘nothing’. It is her refusal to articulate her love and enter the game played by her father and sisters, that opens the door to all that follows.
A few hours later Lear returns on stage with all his daughters, as he started. They are all dead, leaving Lear to follow after them. Before his death, with Cordelia in his arms he laments:
‘Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life?, and thou no breath at all?
Her silence is the silence of death, and Lear’s silence follows. The characters that are left are marked by their inability to either articulate the scale of the tragedy that has preceded them or to express an effective way forward.
George Elliot talks of the pain in life which cannot be expressed in words. “there is much pain that is quite noiseless, and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying existence.”
Seneca idea of stoicism, bequeathed to early Christian Martyrs sees silence become a method of denying pain. The heroism of a figure refusing to despair in the face of ultimate pain or grief is held up as the ultimate form of nobility and honour. In David’s Brutus, Brutus is the silent dignified silence in opposition to the extreme outpouring of grief in the mother and daughters. But a psychological complexity exists within the picture. It is clear that Brutus is hiding an inner turmoil, look at the mechanics of his body and his twisted toes. He has sentenced his sons to death and now sits whilst their bodies are returned. His sacrifice for the greater good of the republican state does not appear like a price worth paying. The Christian Martyrs who are capable of remaining calm and serene whilst holding their own heads was an ultimate proof of belief to Christian viewers. To us now such blind and excessive belief seems ludicrous and comic.
Silence is often used as a device to suggest that sorrow or grief goes beyond words. In Sophocles a messenger gives a lengthy speech passing on detailed information of a loved ones death. When they exist we expect an articulate and elaborate display of suffering. Instead the listener just exists the stage.
Theatre presents us with sensitive, intelligent and multiple methods of expressing grief. Silence is one device, and often one that we wish we could use in our personal lives, we desire the kind of nobility and control of a Shakespearian character. If we do articulate our feelings we try and find eloquent and sensitive methods, the equivalents of those from tragic plays. In reality we normally enter into excessive and inarticulate expressions of our feelings, broken, fragmented and nonsensical. Words tend to fail us.
