Outface and Interface

To face: shifting attention from the noun to the verb changes the dynamics of the interface. To face a person, an object, or a situation is an act of volition. The actor’s own face becomes several things at once: an exteriorization of the actor’s will, an optical device to be looked through, a text to be read by other people. In this introductory essay Bruce R. Smith explores Shakespeare’s distinctive ways with to face as a verb. In plays written throughout his career, in comedies, histories, and tragedies alike, Shakespeare uses the verb to face in multiple senses: to defy, to challenge, to feign, to disguise, to transform. Particularly does Shakespeare seem drawn to the verb to outface. The “out” in that idiom catches the force and the directionality of to face as well as its reciprocity with the person or thing being faced. Those reciprocal dynamics are teased out in Richard II’s address to his face in the mirror: “Was this the face that faced so many follies,/ And was at last out-faced by Bolingbroke?” (R2 4.1.275-76). The “out” in to outface ultimately rebounds and returns the actor to the inter-face.