The Shakespearean Stage Space usefully explores what stage directions, in particular, indicate about how plays were performed on early modern stages. Beginning with a chapter summarizing what theater historians have discovered about the material playhouses of London, Ichikawa then probes five aspects of stage performance: what the stage direction within could mean; whether music above and music within were indications of distinct playing spaces; how stage doors were used; how the stage indicated location, particularly gardens or orchards; and how dead bodies were removed from the stage. She argues that while stage directions were often vague and the line between onstage and offstage porous, the evidence from extant plays indicates that there were well-established practices for moving bodies, living and dead, on and off early modern stages; for suggesting location; and for utilizing stage doors, the discovery space, the upper playing gallery, the music room, and the area below the trap door to give meaning to the represented action and a differentiated sense of fictional space.

This is a book for those who like thinking in detail about staging questions. Ichikawa follows closely in the footsteps of established scholars like Leslie Thompson, Alan Dessen, and Andrew Gurr who have done pioneering work on what public and private playhouses were like as physical structures and on what stage directions can tell us about theatrical practice. Ichikawa’s first chapter, in particular, largely rehearses other people’s work on the characteristics of early modern London theaters. Her other chapters are more original, though their conclusions are often of necessity quite tentative. For example, in an interesting chapter on stage doors, Ichikawa uses evidence from a wide range of plays to think about when stage doors were open, when shut, when a door is important to the action of the play (as a barrier or something behind which to hide), and when it is simply an aperture to allow actors access to the playing space. And yet, of course, no one really knows whether actual doors were present on the various stages, whether they opened in or out, and what part of the stage façade had them. The DeWitt drawing of the Swan indicates that there were two stage doors on the main level opening out, but the accuracy of that drawing has long been questioned. Ichikawa is inclined to think that doors were present for the two main entrances to the lower stage, but that they were as likely to open in as to open out; and that the discovery space may have had double doors that almost always remained open against the tiring house facade, since a curtain was typically said to cover that space. But no one knows for sure. Even stage directions or lines from a play indicating that someone is to knock on a door do not necessarily mean that what a character knocked on was an actual wooden door. The knocking could have been done on the wood around the stage opening or could have been mimed, with the sound supplied backstage.

Ichikawa’s most convincing chapters are the ones that show in some detail the variability in the meaning of stage directions such as “within” and “above,” which, she decisively shows, could sometimes be used interchangeably. She also convincingly demonstrates that properties like stage trees were not necessary for localizing scenes set in orchards or gardens. Pacing the walks of an imaginary garden, carrying flowers, or simply naming the place in dialogue could be effective ways of establishing such a location.

Ichikawa has read an impressive number of plays from the period, and she writes with a keen sense of the limits of our knowledge of early modern stage practice. Her book is a real if modest contribution to theater studies and helps its readers think again about where on the stage Malvolio is imprisoned, how the Player King’s body in Hamlet was gotten off the stage, and whether the upper stage was used for playing music before the introduction of formal music rooms. Ichikawa’s investigations only occasionally produce fresh interpretations of the plays, but they do help us better understand how plays were materially realized in the unique spaces of early modern playhouses.