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‘Understand Me by My Signs’: on Shakespeare's Semiotics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 January 2009
Abstract
Keir Elam's study The Semiotics of Drama and Theatre, published in 1980. was the firstfull– length account of its subject in English. Here, he argues not only that semiotics canvaluably be employed in the study of Shakespeare, but that the playwright himself displays a sophisticated sense of the significance of signs– indeed, that Elizabethan culture was highly self-conscious, sometimes to the point of obsession, with the nature and practice of signification, both verbal and visual. Keir Elam illustrates his argument with examples from a wide range of Shakespeare's plays, also suggesting some tentative distinctions between the way in which signsare utilized in the various genres. Keir Elam. who teaches English in the University of Florence, delivered an earlier version of this paper at the Conference on Theatre Analysis held at Warwick University in May 1984
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- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985
References
Notes and References
1. Bailey, John, Shakespeare and Tragedy. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981Google Scholar.
2. On cultural models within literary and dramatic semiotics, see the theoretical essay by Pagnini, Marcello, Pragmatica della letteratura. Palermo: Sellerio, 1980Google Scholar.
3. Morris, Charles, Foundations of the Theory of Signs. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1938, p. 6Google Scholar.
4. See for example, the collective volume Come comunica il teatro: Dal testo alla scena. Milan: Il Formichiere, 1978.
5. See Elam, Keir, Shakespeare's Universe of Discourse: Language-Games in the Comedies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984Google Scholar, chapter four: ‘Acts’.
6. On the semiotic reflexivity of Measure for Measure, see Dodd, William, Misura per misura: la trasparenza della commedia. Milan: II Formichiere, 1979Google Scholar.
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16. Alessandro Serpieri, op. cit.