ABSTRACT
Our aim throughout this book has been to provide the reader with an overview of the semiotics of the dramatic text and of theatrical performance. In the chapters relating to text, we have sought to indicate those elements of the dramatic which are receptive to a semiotic way of ‘seeing’: shape, character, dialogue and directions. In Part II, where performance per se is the principal object of enquiry, we have taken care neither to lose sight of textual study nor to establish a clear divide between text and performance. We have attempted to highlight a sense of intertextuality between the signifying systems of the written and the performed by including a second chapter on stage directions and a chapter on stage picture and visual metaphor, in order to investigate the implications for realisation within a performance context of the dramatist’s ‘instructions’. The comparative analysis of the two performances of Krapp’s Last Tape was a means of integrating all of these concerns, and of constituting an appropriate methodological and theoretical paradigm. This way of working is, in part, a response to the comments with which Elam concluded his 1980 survey, where he looked forward to the challenging possibilities of work that might arise from a more unified field of dramatic and theatrical semiotic study.
