Dr. Kirk Melnikoff
 

“That will I see, lead and ile follow thee”: Robert Greene and the Authority of Performance in Alphonsus, King of Aragon and The Scottish Historie of James the Fourth

Introduction
Summary
Our Conclusions

 
 
 
 




Introduction
 

Dr. Kirk Melnikoff is currently an assistant English professor at the University of North Carolina at

Charlotte. At the University, Dr. Melnikoff teaches a range of literature classes from Medieval Literature to Renaissance Drama. Dr. Melnikoff attended Boston University where he received both his masters and doctorate degrees in English. Dr. Melnikoff has written several articles and papers about Renaissance playwrights such as Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Robert Greene. In addition to teaching and writing, Dr. Melnikoff has a great deal of stage experience, particularly in directing. In fact, in 1997, Dr. Melnikoff co-directed a production of Robert Greene’s play James IV at Boston University. Dr. Melnikoff’s interest in Robert Greene began when he received, as a gift, the 16 volume set of books about the life and works of Robert Greene. This gift, along with his co-direction of James IV, inspired him to include Greene’s relationship with the stage in his dissertation and motivated him to present this as a paper topic at the Renaissance Stagings Conference at the University of Georgia.

 

Summary
 

Dr. Melnikoff’s particular interest in the plays of Robert Greene is evident in his paper “‘That will I see, lead, and ile follow thee’: Robert Greene and the Authority of Performance in Alphonsus, King of Aragon and The Scottish Historie of James the Fourth.  The essay compares stage direction in Greene’s first play, Alphonsus, King of Aragon, and his last play, The Scottish Historie of James the Fourth and argues that contrary to the claims of Robert Weimann, Greene did not fulfill the role of a characteristic university-educated playwright who underestimated the intelligence of his performers. Melnikoff claims that the overly aggressive stage directions that reveal this characteristic appear only in Greene’s early work, indicating that Greene did not harbor contempt for the players, but rather because he began his career as a pamphlet writer rather than a playwright, he therefore wrote his earliest plays with a limited understanding of the proper use of stage direction. Melnikoff contends that only later in his career did Greene begin to understand and use textual stage directions properly.
 

An example of Greene’s inexperience that Dr. Melnikoff presents is the obvious misuse of speech tags in Alphonsus, King of Aragon, in which the unnecessary direction “[character] say” precedes the conventional speech tags and causes redundancy in the stage directions. His experience “with the everyday working of the professional stage” is clear, says Melnikoff, in The Scottish History of James the Fourth, in which Greene is much more liberal with direction. Melnikoff claims that this newfound experience is “best illustrated” in the induction of The Scottish History of James the Fourth when no stage directions are included to indicate Bohan’s actions when he discovers that Oberon has prevented him from drawing his sword, a situation that is made clear by the text. Melnikoff’s paper concludes with the assertion that Greene’s vision in James IV and the relationship between writer and player can be “usefully described as cooperative.” The position that Melnikoff takes in his paper is quite contrary to earlier theories about the relationship of Robert Greene to actors, which many critics have suggested was confrontational.
 

Our Conclusions
 

Before a play can be performed, it is very important that the actors understand what themes and ideas they are trying to portray to the audience. Generally, actors are guided by the director of the play, who may or may not have the same ideas about the intent of the play as the author of the text.
 

Dr. Melnikoff’s essay only takes a look at Robert Greene and his relationship with performers, but his essay encouraged us to take a look at plays we are familiar with, and examine how well the authors of these plays convey their ideas to the director of the play, and whether or not these authors are capable of including appropriate stage directions in their text.
 

In many of the plays we have read in Renaissance Drama, stage directions have been added after the play was published, suggesting either that the authors’ directions were not adequate enough, or the director decided additions needed to be made. These additions are indicated in our text by the use of brackets. In The Spanish Tragedy, Thomas Kyd includes suitable stage directions that communicate exactly what the performer should do at that moment, and few directions are added. However, in The Knight of the Burning Pestle, Francis Beaumont does not provide sufficient stage directions, for he includes little other than “Enter” or “Exit.” As a result, many of the stage directions within the play have been added after the text was first published.
 

Whether decided by the author or the director, stage directions are important, for they serve as a guide for performers. Since directors are free to have their own interpretations of the play they choose to produce, it becomes clear why different directors would have different stage directions. Some authors provide more adequate stage directions than others, making it easier for directors as opposed to authors who provide nothing further than directions as to when characters should enter or exit.
 
 


 
 
 
 
 

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