The reality and fictionality of time and space in drama

Together with the figure and its verbal and/or non-verbal behaviour the concepts of time and space represent the basic concrete categories within the dramatic text. It is this that distinguishes the latter from narrative texts, in which the only concrete aspects are narrative discourse and figural speech, whereas space, and the non-verbal behaviour of a figure are presented in a verbally encoded and abstract form only. As far as the category of time is concerned, however, this contrast has to be qualified in some way: in both narrative and dramatic texts the presentation of time is specific and concrete – in the former as narrated time and in the latter as the actual playing time. However, only in drama can presented time always be clearly defined; in narrative texts it can only appear as a clearly defined category in the context of ‘scenic narration’. These differences are a direct consequence of the multimediality of dramatic texts, in contrast to the purely verbal form of presentation employed in narrative texts (see above, 1.3.).

The superimposition of an external communication system over an internal system also occurs within the structures of time and space.