“Unpath'd waters, undream'd shores”: Herbert Blau, Performing Doubles, and the Makeup of Memory in The Winter's Tale

Performance and memory share a practice of disguise best described by the word surrogation. Surrogation occurs when more or less plausible substitutes appear in place of the dead, the fugitive, or the banished. Properly disguised, persons can even stand in as surrogates for themselves. Shakespeare's Winter's Tale and Herbert Blau's most Shakespearean essay, “The Makeup of Memory in the Winter of Our Discontent” from The Eye of Prey, elucidate the form and function of surrogation by their reliance on doubles. A venerable tactic of dramatists and producers throughout theatrical history, doubling can mean either standing in for another actor (as in the case of a stunt double) or taking more than one part in the same performance: the first conjoins (two actors on one mask); the second bifurcates (two masks on one actor). Both kinds of doubling figure in the production history of The Winter's Tale and in the makeup of memory as illuminated by Blau. They activate the process of surrogation, which can be seen working in myth and ritual at the supposed origins of theater and in the particular experience of a life devoted to the making of theater and the explication its meanings.