“Palimpsest” (according to the American Heritage dictionary I received for Christmas when I was 12 years old) means the following:

“A written document, typically on vellum or parchment, that has been written upon several times, often with remnants of earlier, imperfectly erased writing still visible, remnants of this kind being a major source for the recovery of lost literary works of classical antiquity.”

The same dictionary has no definition for “pentimento”, so I went to the internet, which told me it is defined as “the presence or emergence of earlier images, forms, or strokes that have been changed and painted over.”

Both words sort of mean the intrusion of an earlier work into the current one. Sort of. But is there a similar word for theater?

I have reflected on this recently as I have watched two performances of Shakespeare – the Ralph Fiennes/Indira Varma production of MACBETH in Washington, D.C. last month, and a performance of TWELFTH NIGHT by the Axis Theater Company earlier this weekend. I’ve wondered if there was a word for the theatrical déjà vu one experiences during a new production of a play you have seen numerous times before. I went to TWELFTH NIGHT knowing I had seen the play several times, most notably the “star-studded” production at Shakespeare in the Park (Michelle Pfeiffer, Jeff Goldblum, Gregory Hines, John Amos) decades ago, but, as often happens now, during the performance, glimpses of other productions emerged from my memory.

There was a production where all the characters were dressed in swinging 60’s attire, and the “hey nonny nonny” had a British Invasion feel; another one at one of those mildewy Village theaters – maybe the Pearl Rep? — which long ago lost its lease but which featured a particularly fine “make me a willow cabin at your gate” speech by an actress I’ve otherwise entirely forgotten.

So is there a word for this?

And never mind MACBETH. Save one prominent Lincoln Center production which I did not complete, most of the productions of MACBETH I’ve seen have been cobbled-together second-floor or church basement productions, all overshadowed by the first MACBETH I ever saw. I saw it six times because I was working at my first job in the outside world, as an usher in the local repertory theater when I was fifteen years old.  We were also reading MACBETH in my Shakespeare: Tragedy class (yes, there was also Shakespeare: Comedy) and MacBeth himself was kind enough to visit our class and tell us that the curse of the Scottish Play was real, that there had been a fire at the theater that had destroyed all the costumes.

MACBETH is a good play for high school; it has themes and witches and birds, a tragic flaw and an inevitability. And it is short – too short, some say. Earlier this spring, I saw MACBETH: AN UNDOING at Theater for a New Audience, which presents (sort of) MACBETH from Lady M’s point of view, gender-flips the madness and produces so much blood (and I was sitting so close) that I could at one point hear it dripping from a slain character onto the stage floor.

At the talkback afterwards, the playwright and the Lady M floated out the concept that the MACBETH we know is a heavily edited one. So much occurs offstage. Lady M scolds MacBeth “had I so sworn as you have” when we have never seen him swear to anything.

In the production I saw in D.C., Ralph Fiennes was excellent, as excellent as Kenneth Branagh when I saw him in HAMLET in Stratford-upon-Avon. I am floating out MY theory that these two, roughly contemporaries, were raised on Monty Python and FAWLTY TOWERS and found a weird, cruel humor in their dark stories that made their characters seem strangely familiar.

HAMLET, now. It is for that play that I need the word – the word like palimpsest or pentimento. I have seen so many productions of it that I can only reproach myself for not keeping better records. My obsession with HAMLET is a subject for another time. But in the meantime, I would like a word.