Shakespeare Stage Directions

Stage Directions are instructions or guidelines that inform the director and the actors how to perform pieces of a play in order to give it meaning, action, and emotion. These directions include how a character feels throughout the play as well as necessary facial expressions like sticking the tongue out or sobbing in tears or just watery eyes and even picking the nose. An illustration would be, a character mother telling her son, “Take that finger out of your nose,” and if the child isn’t picking his nose then it wouldn’t make any sense for the character mother to say that line. Stage directions also include body movements such as walking away, running, slap in the face, pushing, fake fainting, fake fighting and various other movements. For example, an actor says the following line, “why are running,” and if the actor who he is directing the phrase to, is not running, then it would be peculiar for actor one to ask such question. Stage directions give a play its emotion such as giving it a sad, happy, or suspense tone or many other tones that would be appropriate to each part of the play. …show more content…
A situation would be, a witch trying to cast a spell, the appropriate tone of voice for the actor to use would be a wicked type of tone instead of a soft loving tone. Stage directions also direct the director how to appropriately handle the lighting and the design of the stage. Some plays consist of just descriptions and stage directions. In this case, a dialogue is not included, so the actors do not speak and the acting is arranged through body movements. Without stage directions, plays would be emotionless and absurd. There wouldn’t be any type of feelings triggered in the audience and instead it would be more like people just giving out speeches on