Nicholas Wright's Masterclass: The Art of Theatre: 20 Subtext

BEATRICE-JOANNA: (aside) Why, put case I loath'd him

As much as youth and beauty hates a sepulchre,

Must I needs show it? Cannot I keep that secret,

And serve my turn upon him? - See, he's here.

(to him) De Flores.

DE FLORES: (aside) Ha, I shall run mad with joy;

She call'd me fairly by my name De Flores,

And neither rogue nor rascal]

BEATRICE-JOANNA: What h' you done

To your face a'late? Y'have met with some good physician;

Y'have prun'd yourself, methinks, you were not won't

To look so amorously.

DE FLORES: (aside) Not I;

'Tis the same physnomy, to a hair and pimple,

Which she call'd scurvy scarce an hour ago.

How is this?

BEATRICE-JOANNA: Come hither; nearer, man]

DE FLORES: (aside) I'm up to the chin in heaven.

BEATRICE-JOANNA: Turn, let me see;

Faugh, 'tis but the heat of the liver, I perceiv't.

I thought it had been worse.

DE FLORES: (aside) Her fingers touch'd me]

She smells all amber.

THE CHANGELING by Thomas Middleton

Act 2 Scene 2

VERSHININ: . . . This is the life that man must have, and if it eludes him in the mean-time then he must have a premonition of it, he must wait and dream and make himself ready for it, and this means he must understand more and know more than his father and grandfather did. (Laughs) And you're complaining that you know much more than you need to.

MASHA: (takes off her hat) I'll stay to lunch.

THREE SISTERS by Anton Chekhov

trs Michael Frayn, Act One

IF SUBTEXT isn't in the text, where is it? And if you can't locate it, does it exist? This is where you have to pinch yourself and remember that plays are all pretend anyway. Subtext is just one more illusion: the placing of seeming clues to a hidden world behind the manifest one. It's like life itself, both known and mysterious, complete and scrappy.

Asides are a primitive form of subtext. Much used in the Jacobethan and Restoration theatres, they disgraced themselves in the moustachio-twirling 19th century ('Now I have her at my mercy]') and are now taboo. A rare modern equivalent is Woody Allen chatting up Diane Keaton in Annie Hall: 'ALVY: Photography's interesting, 'cause, you know, it's - it's a new art form, and a, uh, a set of aesthetic criteria have not emerged yet. (SUBTITLE: I wonder what she looks like naked?)'

In the Changeling excerpt, Beatrice-Joanna is softening up De Flores before asking him to murder her fiance. The asides tell much. Behind his dour exterior, he's incandescent. Beatrice-Joanne's kindness is a fake: really she loathes him. But when De Flores has done the deed, he names his price: to become her lover. She's appalled. 'Was my creation in the womb so curs'd / I must engender with a viper first?' Moments later she's trembling in his arms.

It's around now that you realise - if you hadn't already twigged - how deft and unconventional Middleton's asides in the earlier scene really are. What Beatrice-Joanna tells herself is no more true than what she says to anyone else. She's obsessed with De Flores. But as her analyst - if she had one - would have told her: she's in deep denial.

The two soon become both lovers and partners in crime, bumping off an awkward witness by burning down part of the house. 'That fellow's good on all occasions,' remarks her father, spotting De Flores on his way to put the fire out. 'A wondrous necessary man, my lord,' she answers sweetly. There's no aside, and none is needed: we know the background, so we can fill in the subtext ourselves.

Subtext without background doesn't exist. No space for background in the Three Sisters excerpt, so the moment when Masha takes her hat off looks meaningless. In performance it's electric, purely because Chekhov took such care, a few pages earlier, to show her putting it on.

Donning a large hat is a conspicuous gesture at the best of times. Masha does it 'humming'. 'Where are you off to?' one of her sisters asks. Home, says Masha. 'What a funny way to behave]' exclaims the other sister. Masha explains: she's depressed, the house seems dull and empty.

Vershinin arrives: he's an officer from a regiment newly barracked nearby. The sisters know him slightly from their Moscow days: at first he seems - to Masha - to be yet one more reminder of loss and decay. 'How you've aged]' But she lingers. When he talks philosophy, she listens. And when he grinds to a halt, she performs the single graphic reversal which transforms - perhaps even destroys - her life.

That's to follow. For now, all the audience knows is that she's attracted to him. But does Masha know this herself? Is she actively planning to get to know Vershinin better? Or is she acting on impulse? On the page, it's ambiguous. On stage, we'll see. Subtext is a sort of present which the playwright gives the actor, saying: 'You decide.'

Next week: How to read a play upside-down.