This article examines the ramifications of the hypothesis that encoded in the dialogue of Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre texts are precise indications for the actors as to then-entrance and exit points, and that such indications constitute a stage management system, a dramaturgical system and a system of spatial semiotics which might invest these movement patterns with thematic or semiotic significance. Such a suggestion, that we may be able to access a range of ‘spatial’ meanings from an understanding of original performance conditions, is likely to be viewed with some scepticism by Shakespearian scholars of a literary orientation, so strong is the word-based tradition of analysis and interpretation. Yet this is the suggestion that underlies this work: that, complementing the verbal signification of the texts there may also be a verbally inscribed spatial semiotic which provides an additional range of meanings—and that such possible semiotic functions ride upon pragmatic stage management patterns which governed entrances and exits and the rhythms of the original performance context. It is argued that when the texts are interrogated in this light they reveal precise, consistent and coherent traces of such systematic indications in regard to the onstage-offstage spatial relationships operating in performance.