Building the Stages of Drama

In this article we apply the cognitive theory of discourse known as Text World Theory to the study of one play – Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildernstern are Dead . The result of this application is twofold. First, it extends the capabilities of Text World Theory by introducing two new world types to the framework which are necessary to enable the theory to account better for dramatic texts. Following Richard Hosley’s separation of stage directions into theatrical and fictional signals, we suggest ways in which these signals may prompt readers to toggle between “staged worlds” and “fictional worlds”. Second, our paper enlarges the stylistic toolkit for the analysis of dramatic play-texts, offering a cognitively-oriented alternative to the more traditional discourseanalytical approaches to the genre.