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For an excellent overview, with ample bibliography, see Bass En paz te queda. There is nothing at all unusual in beginning a play with a protagonist emerging from a world of warring elements. But here the convention will acquire a specific resonance for a play in which what we see and hear are in constant movement and constantly interrupted by events elsewhere. The initial setting, the shoreline, becomes a symbolic threshold. The stranger begins his tale: Explaining that a young nobleman is in mortal combat with three bandoleros, she points offstage: These two men pause to identify themselves.
But before he can answer, Timoclea interrupts: For what we have witnessed up to this point, and what we shall continue to witness in a variety of modes and formats, is a sequence of words and movements on and off stage that constitutes a structure for the entire play: Visual and verbal comedy combine, as Gelanor gives a mock heroic account of his inept and cowardly conduct in the recent offstage struggle Appearances, secrets, manliness the phallic pistol stuffed down his pants , and, above all else, chasing after the action are crucial themes in a play in which the protagonists can never keep up with what happens around them.
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As we read the script, the brief scene appears to be static, a comic pause in the action. But when Poliarco and Arcombroto resume their conver- sation, we realize that at least part of it must have taken place while the three men were walking across the stage through the imagined forest.
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For as soon as Gelanor has finished speaking Arcombroto observes: For reasons that will become clearer I think he has grasped only one part of the dialectic of structured chaos. And yet, like a grotesque figure drawn in the margins of an illuminated manuscript, Gelanor also provides a comic gloss on the untimeliness of the two companions striding through the forest.
As they walk, Poliarco tells his tale: Gelanor is sent to discover the facts, and Poliarco resumes his story That Poliarco has been overtaken by events is clear from the news brought back by Gelanor And how does Gelanor know all this? In response to these rumours held as public truths, Timoclea devises a counter rumour that Poliarco has drowned while trying to escape. At this point, an incredulous Gelanor asks why not just reveal the truth and tell everyone you are the French Dauphin ?
Poliarco cuts him short, curses his stupidity, and stalks off. The first scene closes with Gelanor putting the two plans into action. Arsi- das arrives in company with Timonides. Gelanor tells the lie in culterano verse to Timonides, who leaves the stage to inform the court, and in plain speech the truth to Arsidas, who runs to intercept Timonides before he can reach Ar- genis. Once again, physical movement and poetry combine for thematic effect. Eristenes and Lidoro realize that their orginal plot to assassinate the king with a poisoned sash has gone astray, since he do- nated it to Argenis, and she in turn has asked Arsides to take it to Poliarco see below.
They wonder what will happen if Poliarco does not take the poisoned Lidoro should follow him and watch; if Poliarco takes the sash and puts it on, return to Sicily; if not, then hand Poliarco a letter, revealing part of the truth, that the sash is poisoned, but concealing within this truth a lie, that the king wants to assassinate him.
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Thus, if one plot fails then they will succeed in another, to turn Poliarco into a traitor. The first scene possesses an obvious symbolic setting, as the charac- ters move into and through a forest that is both literal and figurative. This exchange transcends its obvious narrative function; what we see performed on stage is part of a chain reaction: For my pur- poses, what matters is how he resorts to the same theatrical techniques deployed in scene one: With one fiction, she recalls, she would achieve two things: The transmission of the sash from the ambassadorial casket, to the king and then to his daughter needs to be theatrical, an ostentatious gesture.
Structurally, the act of handing over becomes a visual motif that will be repea- ted throughout the play. For in this work not only do people and words go on erratic journeys, but objects too: We witness all of them being passed from hand to hand. Timonides brings word that Poliarco is dead the word itself having followed a tor- tuous path, from peasants to Gelanor, to him, to the court; ; exeunt the king, Eristides and Timonides ; Argenis laments; Arsidas enters with the truth ; joy is interrupted by offstage shouting: This is indeed, as Arcombroto declares, the palace of Circe Staging highlights the diverse per- spectives and the conflict between private and public lives, the masked and the unmasked.
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For all the while, Argenis, in a series of emotional asides uttered on the edge of the main action, expresses her doubts about intervening openly and revealing her secret life. Meleandro and his entourage depart, leaving Arcombroto, Argenis, and Selenisa behind, exchanging courte- ous words and admiring glances. In a final aside, Arcombroto declares a sudden passion for the princess. Poliarco, whose alleged betrayal drove the action, is The first act began with a threat to the state, motivated by a desire for power, and channelled symbolically onto the bodies of two women the attempted kidnapping first of Argenis and then of Timoclea ; it ends with a threat to love and friendship posed by the erotic yearning of Arcombroto.
Sexual and political appetites are bound together, and, like a poisoned sash, they encircle the body of Argenis. The opening act demonstrates how, for all its surprises, narrative strands and offstage interruptions, Argenis y Poliarco is remarkably fluent, held together and set in motion by motifs and ideas that weave their way through the play like variations on a theme.
Rather than work my way sequentially through each scene, in the remainder of this essay I will select episodes that illustrate how the patterns established in act I evolve and to what thematic effect.
As we shall see in the discussion of the following four examples, the choreography of movement on and off stage turns love and politics into highly compatible dancing partners. The analogy with choreography helps underscore the capacity of movement and space to convey themes, character, and social relations. After all, early modern dance treatises emphasized that dance was an expression of social and cosmic order.
The following four examples illustrate how, in the theatre, space and movement work in tandem with language; speech extends the physical space of the stage by describing movements and actions that take place elsewhere, in the past, present or future. The first act of Argenis y Poliarco has a pronounced kinetic quality, as char- acters flow on and off stage, the physical embodiment of meanings that are This dynamic movement of people and perspectives is especially effective in the opening scene of act II This scene be- gins with love and ends with politics, linked in a seamless flow of action that begins slowly, speeds up, then slows down once more.
By this point, therefore, the play has moved from politics to love act I and back again to politics. The thematic parallels are underscored by the setting. Moreover, like act I, act II also begins with a parting of the ways, as Argenis sends Selenisa off so she can talk in secret to Timoclea about her beloved. In contrast to the varied rhythms of act II, scene 1, a later episode of this act possesses the more stately pace of a pavana.
But even so, he was confused by her disdain The next time we meet him, he re-enters an empty stage, pondering his fate: He takes on this role wilfully and begins to perform it as Selenisa enters the stage. The separation symbolizes too the gap between appearance and reality, as Selenisa complains of an apprent snub: Just as she complains of having been misinterpreted so she misreads Argenis, and the two become mutually misread signs. So, as she moves towards Arcombroto, we see her in an ambivalent light, both inside and outside a circle of trust.
The pace of the staging gives us time to dwell on her duality. Arcombroto hails her and gives her the jewel gifted to him by Argenis.
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When the nobleman returns, the two exchange hints and doubts about their relationship with Argenis. The African nobleman left on a pretence, announcing the imminent arrival of the king: Following their ex- change, Selenisa departs with the words: What sets the characters in motion and heightens the mood of insecurity is the fearful anticipation of real or imagined interruptions by people arriving from elsewhere.
My third example of symbolic choreography is taken from act III, scene 1