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Are Shakespeare's plays always metatheatrical?
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Purcell, Stephen (2018) Are Shakespeare's plays always metatheatrical? Shakespeare Bulletin , 36 (1). pp. 19-35. doi:10.1353/shb.2018.0002
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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1353/shb.2018.0002
Abstract
The ambiguity of the term "metatheatre" derives in part from its text of origin, Lionel Abel's 1963 book of the same name. By his own admission, Abel's use of the term was "loose and sometimes erratic" (v). If we use the term in its broadest sense—to describe any theater that in some way draws attention to its own artifice—it becomes evident that early modern drama is always "metatheatrical" to some extent: these plays are designed never entirely to lose sight of the material realities of their performance, or of the physical co-presence of their audiences. If this is the case, how useful is the term "metatheatre"? Indeed, are Shakespeare's plays always metatheatrical? This article unpicks some of the conflicting notions of metatheatre suggested in Abel's book, and suggests a modified conceptual model based on the work of Arthur Koestler. Arguing against the tendency to see early modern theatrical self-consciousness as a form of proto-Brechtian alienation, it uses Koestler's concept of bisociation to think about the delight produced by "universes of discourse colliding, frames getting entangled, or contexts getting confused" (40). It considers several examples from performance, especially moments from productions at the reconstructed Shakespeare's Globe, to argue that metatheatre functions as a kind of imaginative game. This game may be prompted by cues in the written text, but it is one that can be played only in performance. While Harry Newman's essay for this special issue argues that metatheatricality was available to early modern readers "on the paper stage of printed playbooks" (104), my essay posits a decidedly more theatrical definition of the term, contending that the agency of the actors plays a central role in determining the metatheatricality of particular moments on stage.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||
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| Subjects: | P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN2000 Dramatic representation. The Theater P Language and Literature > PR English literature |
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| Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > English and Comparative Literary Studies | ||||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616, Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Stage history, Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Dramatic production | ||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Shakespeare Bulletin | ||||||
| Publisher: | The Johns Hopkins University Press | ||||||
| ISSN: | 0748-2558 | ||||||
| Official Date: | 21 March 2018 | ||||||
| Dates: |
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| Date of first compliant deposit: | 7 January 2018 | ||||||
| Volume: | 36 | ||||||
| Number: | 1 | ||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 19-35 | ||||||
| DOI: | 10.1353/shb.2018.0002 | ||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access |
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