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(1)CHAPTER ONE English Renaissance Drama and Metatheater: An Introduction. This is a study of theatrical self-reflexivity or metatheatricality through close textual analyses of five English Renaissance plays: Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Othello and Hamlet, and The Revenger’s Tragedy,1 with references to some contemporary plays. The metatheatrical perspective will highlight the theatrical self-reflexivity common on the Early Modern stage. Why these five plays? I include the most popular plays for the discussion of metatheater: A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Hamlet. Risking myself in the danger and disgrace of repeating the excellent precursors, I wish to dig further into the depth of the metatheatrical mine from where they left. I wish I had accomplished this goal with this dissertation, though I know it might be only a fantasy or dream. I also include plays that are seldom associated with metatheater: Doctor Faustus, Othello, and The Revenger’s Tragedy. With these plays, I want to broaden the field of metatheatrical criticism. If this effort is valid, I could prove that metatheatricality is not as narrow as it appears. It is also present in plays that are not overtly metatheatrical. Before launching 1. The play was first published anonymously in 1607. After fifty years, Edward Archer ascribed it to Cyril Tourneur in a play list published in 1656. But this attribution has been challenged in recent studies, which strongly argue that the play should be ascribed to Thomas Middleton based on internal evidence. However, not enough external evidence is available to settle the issue beyond doubt. The internal evidence critics propose also raises skepticism because of its incompatibility to fit into Middleton’s much more detached moralistic stance (McAlindon 135; Foakes 1996: 1-3). Since the authorship controversy of this play is not settled yet, I choose not to assign it to either Cyril Tourneur or Thomas Middleton.. 1.

(2) a textual study on these plays, a survey of the Renaissance view toward dramatic art is in order.. I. From Mimesis to Anti-mimesis Play metaphors, in a diversified spectrum from ubiquitous theatrical imageries, manipulative playwright-characters, cunning and deliberate role-playing, to full-length plays-within-the-plays, are dominant and conspicuous in the Shakespearean canon in particular, and Renaissance drama in general, calling attention to the self-reflexive impulse of the genre in this period. Anne Righter makes emphatic three-fold functions of the use of play metaphors: They [play metaphors] express the depth of the play world. Secondly, they define the relationship of that world with the reality represented by the audience. Used within the “reality” of the play itself, they also serve to remind the audience that elements of illusion are present in ordinary life, and that between the world and the stage there exists a complicated interplay of resemblance that is part of the perfection and nobility of the drama itself as a form. (86) With its representational and mimetic potential, dramatic texts become ideal playgrounds for playwrights to experiment on the complex interaction between reality and illusion, truth and appearance, or substance and shadow. Renaissance drama, or to put it more specifically, Renaissance metadrama (plays that demonstrate a self-conscious and self-reflexive impulse) often. 2.

(3) attends to the exploration of the nature of the theater, thereby drawing our attention to the dialectics between drama and life. In this chapter, an overview of the notions circulating in Shakespeare’s time about the purpose of plays, the effect of dramatic texts, the function of actors, the audience’s response, and the relation of actors and audience to dramatic characters will be given. Before giving a survey of the metatheatrical critical theories that this study adopts, I would like to begin with a quick review of some related Renaissance literary theories, which are rooted in classical philosophy. A poet, that is a writer of poetic drama (or drama in poetry), in Plato’s Republic, is regarded as a mere imitator of appearances, who is twice removed from the truth in his imitation of the shadow. As Hazard Adams puts it, Plato locates reality in what he calls “ideas,” or “forms,” rather than in the world of “appearances” that we experience through the senses. He regards objects we perceive through the senses as merely copies of the ideas. Our rational powers acquaint us with the ideas and with truth. The poet, restricted to imitating the realm of appearances, makes only copies of copies, and his creation is thus twice removed from reality. (11) In brief Plato regards the world as already a copy of the world of “forms” and “ideas.” The poet, in representing the phenomenal world, is only making an imitation of an imitation. Aristotle disagrees with Plato in many respects. As Adams puts it. 3.

(4) succinctly, he does not believe that the world of appearances is merely an ephemeral copy of the changeless ideas; he believes that change is a fundamental process of nature, which he regards as a creative force with a direction. Reality, for Aristotle, is the process by which a form manifests itself through the concrete and by which the concrete takes on meaning working in accordance with ordered principles. The poet’s imitation is an analogue of this process; he takes a form from nature and reshapes it in a different matter or medium. This medium, which the form does not inhabit in nature, is the source of each work’s inward principle of order and consequently of its independence from slavish copying. The poet is thus an imitator and a creator. It is through his peculiar sort of imitation that the poet discovers the ultimate form of actions. (47) Thus, in modifying Plato’s theory of imitation into “mimesis,” Aristotle tries to save artists from banishment. He infuses a sense of originality and creativity into an artistic work based on imitation. Aristotelian “mimesis” becomes one of the most fundamental principles for various artistic representations. Madeleine Doran elucidates the significance of Aristotelian “mimesis” within a theatrical context: Aristotle borrows the idea of “mimesis” as the defining characteristic of art . . . . Aristotle seems to mean by. 4.

(5) imitation a representation of human habits, feelings, and actions in all their diverse modes of manifestation; yet he sees them in their particularity making manifest universal and general truth. (71) Overshadowed by the revival of Plato’s condemnation of poetry as an imitation of an imitation, many Elizabethans feel the urgency to justify or defend the purpose of literary works. The predominant view of the function of poetry in the Early Modern England is Horatian in nature, namely, to teach and to delight. For example, Philip Sidney defines poetry in terms of Aristotelian “mimesis” and Horatian teaching: Poesie therefore is an arte of imitation, for so Aristotle termeth it in his word Mimesis, that is to say, a representing, counterfetting, or figuring forth: to speake metaphorically, a speaking picture: with this end, to teach and delight. (Smith 1904: I, 158) Two main topics are especially highlighted in this definition. The first one is the mimetic nature of artistic creation; the second, the artistic purpose of teaching and delighting. Though Sidney refers to poetry in particular, he is talking about literature in general. For the Elizabethans, drama is primarily mimetic. Sidney uses “representing,” “counterfetting,” and “figuring forth . . . a speaking picture” in turn to gloss “Mimesis.” Hamlet provides a classic example of the Renaissance view of drama’s mimetic nature. To him, the end “of playing . . . both at the first and now, was and is to hold as ’twere the mirror up to nature”. 5.

(6) (3.2.20-22),2 regarding drama as a reflection of nature, a representation of reality. A faithful rendition is the objective of drama. George Puttenham, Shakespeare’s contemporary, follows the Aristotelian model, and defines the nature of a poet and his art in a similar vein. He proclaims in The Arte of English Poesie (1589): [A] Poet may in some sort be said a follower or imitator, because he can express the true and liuely of euery thing is set before him, and which he taketh in hand to describe: and so in that respect is both a maker and a counterfaitor: and Poesie an art not only of making, but also of imitation. (Smith 1904: II, 3) In this passage, Puttenham brings in not only the aspect of imitation in the art of poetry, but also the dimension of creation (“making”).3 Roger Ascham, in The Scholemaster (1570), distinguishes two kinds of imitation. The first one, Aristotelian imitation, is the literary representation: The whole doctrine of Comedies and Tragedies is a perfite imitation, or faire liuelie painted picture of the life of euerie degree of man. (Smith 1904: I, 7) The second kind is emulation, or the following of excellent models of the best authors in learning of tongues and sciences (7). In sum, most Elizabethan literati hold a mimetic view toward art, upholding a truthful representation of nature as the ultimate goal of an artwork.. 2 3. References to Hamlet are to the Arden edition, Ed. Harold Jenkins. For Robert Egan, Puttenham puts an enthusiastic stress on the Poet as a “maker,” and only secondarily on the Aristotelian definition of the Poet as an “imitator” (Egan 3-4).. 6.

(7) Mimetic illusion and verisimilitude are thus what dramatists attempt to achieve in their plays. Shakespeare’s conception of art and drama, however, is much more complicated and multivalent. It is mimetic at times, but dramatic at others; realistic, fantastical. Using Shakespeare’s works to summarize the bard’s view to art, James Calderwood briefly generalizes the poet’s attitude to the function and value of his art. It is enough to note that in the sonnets art has the power of conferring immortality upon its subject, that in Hamlet dramatic illusion becomes the instrument of truth after truth has become illusive, that in King Lear the artist-actor Edgar calls upon a lyric evocation of the heights at Dover to translate Gloucester into an actor in a brief drama of redemption, that in The Winter’s Tale art gives birth to reality as Hermione materializes out of the statue, and that in The Tempest Prospero’s art returns everyone to himself “when no man was his own.” (1965: 509) For Pauline Kiernan, a Shakespearean play is not an imitation of life or an illusion of reality, but a mere fiction, or a theatrical construction. Therefore, she denounces the mimetic illusion, and advocates the dramatic illusion instead, declaring that Shakespearean drama unashamedly affirm itself as a “liar” (12). In fact, both positive and negative views are associated with English Renaissance conception of artists, and by extension, of dramatists and actors. Negative views on artists, or dramatists and actors in particular, are abundant in. 7.

(8) Puritan polemic pamphlets written by Philip Stubbes, and the like.4 In contrast to the idea of a degraded status of an artist, that of an elevated version is also emerging. The positive view on artists is developed from the English Renaissance literary critical theory to regard an artist as a godlike maker, whose artistic creation is analogous to that of God. Philip Sidney, in An Apologie for Poetrie (1595), proposes that Neyther let it be deemed too sawcie a comparison to balance the highest poynt of mans wit with the efficacie of Nature: but rather giue right honor to the heauenly Maker of that maker, who, hauing made man to his owne likenes, set him beyond and ouer all the workes of that second nature, which in nothing hee sheweth so much as in Poetrie, when with the force of a diuine breath he bringeth things forth far surpassing her dooings . . . . (Smith 1904: I, 157) He even commends the poet’s creation as a golden world, which surpasses the brazen world of nature: Nature neuer set forth the earth in so rich tapistry as diuers Poets haue done, neither with pleasant riuers, fruitful trees, sweet smelling flowers, nor whatsoeuer els may make the too much loued earth more louely. Her world is brasen, the Poets only deliuer a golden. (156) For Sidney, the fictive world not only is independent of the world of nature, but also in its delicate beauty excels the mundane world. Moreover, he 4. See Jonas Barish for the discussion of Puritan attacks on theater.. 8.

(9) accentuates the power of an artifice to shape, influence, or even change our perception of the world of nature: to “bestow a Cyrus vpon the worlde, to make many Cyrus’s” (157). Likewise, George Puttenham calls a poet a maker: A Poet is as much to say as a maker . . . . Such as (by way of resemblance and reuerently) we may say of God; who without any trauell to his diuine imagination made all the world of nought . . . . Euen so the very Poet makes and contriues out of his owne braine both the verse and matter of his poeme, and not by any foreine copie or example . . . . The premises considered, it giueth to the name and profession no smal dignitie and preheminence, aboue all other artificers, Scientificke or Mechanicall. (Smith 1904: II, 3) The Elizabethans also stress the moral function of literature by emphasizing its powerful influence. For example, echoing Sidney’s “to teach and delight,” Hamlet points out the didactic function of the theater: “to show virtue her feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure” (3.2.22-24). This is the most effective justification of drama, which pinpoints the function and purpose of theater to show the world what is the attraction of virtue, and what is the repulsion behind scorn. This is a defense of the theater in line with the Renaissance literary theory to regard literature as a form of teaching. In sum, the ultimate objective of literature is to improve the world (Vickers 10; Ringler 201-11). Or as Brian Vickers puts it, when he analyzes the prescriptive tradition in the Renaissance, The writer was supposed to arouse the reader’s emotions by. 9.

(10) his representation of life, in particular by showing human goodness as admirable, evil as detestable. By so doing the writer would also help to “form” or shape the reader’s character, “inflaming” him to emulate virtue. (9) But this passage, besides emphasizing the didactic function of literature, also touches upon the somewhat controversial issue regarding the powerful influence of illusion on reality. While the Renaissance literary criticism asserts the mimetic theory that “art imitates life,” dramatic representation can be very effective as to change or influence the reality it represents. Again and again, English Renaissance metatheatrical works illustrate a possible reversal of this formula: “art imitates life” is turned to “life imitates art.” Anne Righter argues, The play, holding a mirror up to nature, was bound to reflect the reality represented by its audience. Yet this audience was also forced to recognize the encroachments of illusion upon its own domain. Certain spectators in a theatre might, for a moment, mistake illusion for reality; other playgoers carried the language and gestures of the drama away with them at the conclusion of the performance, for use in the world outside . . . . In sermons and song-books, chronicles and popular pamphlets, Elizabethans were constantly being reminded of the fact that life tends to imitate the theatre. (83) The Puritans attack the theater precisely on the basis that actors have the power. 10.

(11) to change and fashion the shape of reality. Philip Stubbes, for one, warns playgoers against receiving the dissembling art from the actors, in his Anatomie of the Abuses (1583). He tells playgoers to go to the theater, if you will learne falshood; if you will learne cosenage; if you will learne to deceive; if you will learne to play the Hipocrit, to cogge, lye, and falsifie. (qtd. Righter 82) This attack on the theater and players reflects a worry over the confusion, and identification, of illusion and reality possibly found in some theatrical audience; but it also testifies to the persuasiveness and effectiveness of dramatic illusion. Both champions and enemies of the theater believe the theater can change men’s lives and actors have power over reality (Righter 82-83). An art of pretense, drama, attracts a variety of heated philosophical inquiry and debates of the dialectics between appearance and reality. Shakespeare, Anne Righter maintains, tackles and delves deeply into this issue throughout his career. In a dramatic production actors impersonate different roles, pretending to be someone else in this play world. And sometimes these characters, themselves disguises, might assume disguises or role-playing to deceive his fellow characters. Wolfgang Clemen digs into the multiple possibilities of the dialectics between appearance and reality in Shakespeare’s works. He argues, We notice that the contrast between the outward and the inward, between what man pretends to be and what he really is, between what he says in the presence of others and what he thinks alone— that this contrast pervades Shakespearian. 11.

(12) drama in a multiplicity of different forms. (1980: 165) The representations of the relationship of reality and appearance, as Clemen observes, are multiple and, even, contradictory. A straightforward division of reality and appearance can be found in The Merchant of Venice. The casket scenes dramatize episodes in which appearance and reality diverge from each other. The Prince of Morocco makes his choice on the assumption that the golden chest, in accordance with its magnificent outward, surely contains Portia’s picture, while the leaden casket, with its debased quality, could not possibly hold Portia’s image. Likewise the Prince of Arragon is cozened by the external symbolism of the silver casket which bears the inscription: “Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves” (2.9.50).5 In an inspired rumination over the significance of the three chests, Bassanio delivers a moral commonplace on the deception of outward show: So may the outward shows be least themselves— The world is still deceiv’d with ornament. In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt But, being season’d with a gracious voice, Obscures the show of evil? In religion, What damned error but some sober brow Will bless it, and approve it with a text, Hiding the grossness with fair ornament? There is no [vice] so simple but assumes 5. Unless otherwise specified, references to Shakespeare’s works are to The Riverside Shakespeare, Ed.. 12.

(13) Some mark of virtue on his outward parts. . . The seeming truth which cunning times put on To entrap the wisest. (3.2.73-101; emphases added) Bassanio moralizes on the common folly to be taken in by appearances. Deception, dissimulation, hypocrisy, and disguise are devices that dramatize the discrepancy between appearance and reality. Such discrepancy could imply the insufficiency of mimetic representation. But the distinctions and boundaries between appearance and reality, shadow and substance, or pretense and truth are not usually as clear-cut as those in The Merchant. To Lear’s painful question, “Who is it that can tell me who I am?” (1.4.230), the Fool replies: “Lear’s shadow” (231). The Fool substitutes the shadow for the substance. Clemen concludes his study of the interaction between appearance and reality in a note full of uncertainty: Thus we see finally that the examination of the contrast between exterior and interior, between appearance and reality, develops and expands into just this recognition of the ambiguity, the diversity and the problematic character of human nature. (1980: 187) The explorations of dubious interaction of appearance and reality can also be found in the Renaissance philosophy. Montaigne expounds the impossibility to distinguish the false appearance from true nature in “How One Ought to Governe His Will”: Most of our vacations are like playes. Mundus universus. G. Blakemore Evans.. 13.

(14) exercet histrioniam: “All the world doth practise stage-playing.” Wee must play our parts duly, but as the part of a borrowed personage. Of a visard and appearance, wee should not make a real essence, nor proper of that which is another. Wee cannot distinguish the skinne from the shirt; it is sufficient to disguise the face without deforming the breast. (III, 298) This passage not only touches upon the encroachment of appearance upon reality, but also brings out a popular analogy of life and drama: Theatrum mundi. Theatrum mundi, or the world as a theater, is an ancient idea (Righter 65, 168; Greer 35; Curtius 138-44) that becomes quite popular in Renaissance (Righter 84, 165).6 Righter cites many examples from this period in her book.7. Thomas Heywood in his preface to An Apology for Actor (1612). 6. E. R. Curtius traces permutations of the theatrical trope from Plato to Hofmannsthal, and argues the “Totus mundus agit histrionem” idea was revived by John of Salisbury in the twelfth century (139). For further critical explorations of the idea, see E. R. Curtius 138-44, Anne Righter 59-62, Herbert Weisinger 58-70, Thomas B. Stroup 7-36, Jackson I. Cope 1-13, and Kent T. van den Berg 23-40. 7 Here are some examples from Righter 166-67, 172-3. (1) The White Queen’s Pawn: [T]he world’s a stage on which all parts are play’d. (Thomas Middleton, A Game at Chess, 5.3.19) (2) Doll: The world’s a stage, from which strange shapes we borrow: Today we are honest, and ranke knaves tomorrow. (Thomas Dekker and John Webster, Northward Ho!, 1.2.102-3) (3) Boy actor: Not play two parts in one? away, away; ’tis common fashion. Nay if you cannot bear two subtle fronts under one hood, Ideot goe by, goe by; off this world’s stage. (John Marston, Antonio and Mellida, Induction) (4) Prologue: [T]his megacosm, this great world, is no more than a stage, where every one must act his part. (Thomas Middleton, A Faire Quarrell, Prologue) (5) Prologue: All have exits, and must all be stript in tiring house (viz. the grave), for none must carry any thing out of the stock. (Thomas Middleton, A Fair Quarrell, Prologue) (6) Philomusmus: Sad is the plott, sad the Catastrophe. Studioso: Sad are the Chorus in our Tragedy. Philomusmus: And rented thoughts continuall actors bee. Studioso: Woe is the subiect: Philomusmus: Earth the loathed stage,. 14.

(15) adopts this theatrical topos: The world’s a theatre, the earth a stage, Which God and nature doth with actors fill: Kings have their entrance in due equipage, And some their parts play well, and other ill . . . . All men have parts, and each man acts his own. Some citizens, some soldiers, born to adventer, Shepherds, and seamen. Then our play’s begun When we are born, and to the world first enter, And all find exits when their parts are done . . . . He that denies then theatres should be, He may as well deny a world to me. (qtd. Salingar 267) This sounds very much like Jacques’remarks in As You Like It. Heywood also draws a parallel between a man’s real identity in life and a player’s dramatic role on the stage. For Heywood, the world is a theater in which each man plays a part. On this premise, it would be strange to reject theaters, for such rejection would, by implication, deny the world as well. Similarly, the host of. Whereon we act this fained personage. Studioso: Mossy barbarians the spectators be, That sit and laugh at our calamity. (The Return from Parnassus, Part II, 561-68) (7) Malfi: I account this world a tedious Theatre, For I doe play a part in’t’gainst my will. (John Webster, Duchess of Malfi, 4.1.99-100) (8) All our pride is but a jest; None are worst and none are best. Grief and joy and hope and fear Play their pageants everywhere; Vain opinion all doth sway, And the world is but a play. (Philip Rossiter’s “Book of Airs,” The Oxford Book of Sixteenth Century Verse, Ed. E. K. Chambers, 845). 15.

(16) the Light Heart in Ben Jonson’s The New Inn (1629) draws an analogy between life in the world and life on the stage: Where I imagine all the world’s a play; The state and men’s affairs all passages Of life, to spring new scenes, come in, go out, And shift, and vanish; and if I have got A seat to sit at ease here i’mine inn, To see the comedy; and laugh, and chuck At the variety and throng of humours And dispositions that come jostling in And out still, as they one drove hence another: Why, will you envy me my happiness? (1982: IV, 1.3.128-37) As can be seen, English Renaissance dramatists are fascinated by this theatrum mundi analogy, and use it to pinpoint connections between the play world and the real world where men and women assuming social roles in life as players adopting dramatic roles on stage. Beyond the obvious similarity brought forth by this theatrical trope, Jonson also elaborates on a fundamental transformation involved in such imitation in daily life implied by the play metaphor: I have considered, our whole life is like a Play: wherein every man, forgetfull of himselfe, is in travaile with expression of another. Nay, we e so insist in imitating others, as wee cannot (when it is necessary) returne to our selves: like Children, that imitate the vices of Stammerers so long,. 16.

(17) till at last they become such; and make the habit to another nature, as it is never forgotten. (1925-52: VIII, 597) This passage indicates Jonson’s belief in the transformative power of such imitation (Kastan 120), and makes clear the impossibility to distinguish reality from illusion. A dynamic transformation can be perceived in certain tragedies of the period, where dramatic characters are often changed, for better or worse, by the roles they assume in disguises. The association of the world with the stage, an overwhelming feature of Renaissance drama, offers us a chance to reflect upon the nature of the theater, the dialectics between illusion and reality, the reception and manipulation of audience, the theatricality of life, and the like. Also, the recurring play metaphors accentuate the self-analytic and self-reflexive tendency in the plays, exposing further their movement away from mimesis. For Van den Berg, moreover, the self-conscious impulse in these metaplays illustrates the emerging “dual consciousness” (Bethell 1944: 81)8 of an inner self and a public role: Shakespeare uses his theatrical medium as a metaphor to explore the new self-consciousness that was emerging in the urban heterocosm. The actor in the character embodied the duality of inner self and public role; the stage and fictive setting illustrated the difference between reality and the symbols used to describe reality; and the playhouse itself 8. Bethell uses the term to differentiate the player as player and as character. Similar ideas can also be found in William E. Gruber (33) and William B. Worthen (307). Another related idea, the “third eye,” is advanced by Gao Xingjian. See Mei-shu Hwang and Chi-jui Lee for their analyses of Gao’s. 17.

(18) offered an architectural emblem of the interlocking subjective and objective worlds within which everyone must play his or her part. (40) For Shakespeare and his contemporaries, the age-old notion of theatrum mundi, or world-as-theater, not only refers to the theatricality of life, but also denotes theater-as-world, which emphasizes the mimetic representation of dramatic works. The distinction or boundary between theater and life, or the play world and the real world, is not always clear-cut. In many cases, the boundary is blurred or even disappears: life becomes a form of theater, a form of acting; theater becomes a way of life.. The present study, by elaborating on the. impingement of appearance and reality upon each other, aims at achieving the goal of metatheater itself: to make the theater “a symbol for making unseen realities seen, for exposing the secret places of the human heart and objectifying them in a way without which they would be unbearable to look upon” (Forker 217).. II. Context of Metatheatrical Criticism Since the 1960s the metadramatic tendency in Shakespeare’s plays has been a popular concern in Shakespearean criticism. Many scholars have noticed the predominance of the play metaphors and dramatic imageries in Shakespeare’s works well before the term “metatheater” came into being. For example, in Play within a Play published in 1958, Robert J. Nelson examines the functions of the internal plays in playwrights from Shakespeare to Anouilh.. concept.. 18.

(19) Anne Righter points out the predominant role of the play metaphors in Shakespeare’s works (89). She traces Shakespeare’s changing attitudes toward the relation of illusion and reality, and toward the theater itself from the first tetralogy till the end of his career in her widely read Shakespeare and the Idea of the Play, first published in 1962. The play metaphors, she maintains, “remind the audience of the playlike nature of its own life” on the one hand, and “lend an ominous, portentous quality to the action on the stage” on the other (92). Moreover, they function more as rhetorical flourishes in Shakespeare’s early plays, while assuming structural and thematic significance in his mature works (92). Maynard Mack, in “Engagement and Detachment in Shakespeare’s Plays,” investigates the audience’s response in relation to the playwright’s application of dramatic imagery in the play. He cites three examples to contend the importance of “detachment” in the theater: Sartre’s comments on the necessity for the playwright to control the effect of dramatic illusion to achieve self-knowledge rather than self-indulgence (1962: 276), Brecht’s “alienation” principle to help spectators remain reflective (276), and James Shirley’s observation of the Renaissance spectator’s increasing engagement on the one hand, and his awareness of such engagement on the other (277). The bare stage, open daylight, jostling crowd, acting style (with more recitation), inept actors, among others, are factors that pull in the direction of detachment (277). Whereas the “well-graced actor” (Richard II, 5.2.24), effective props, splendid costumes and a dramatist’s powerful imagination pull toward engagement (277-78). He believes both forces are functioning to maintain a balance:. 19.

(20) The crux of the matter . . . is that this stage [the Elizabethan stage] and the style of drama played on it enjoyed a system of built-in balances between the forces drawing the spectator to identify with the faces in the mirror and those which reminded him that they were reflections.. (277). In short, a “dual consciousness” (Bethell 1944: 81) or “seeing double” (Hornby 32) is advocated in a spectator’s mind. But it is Lionel Abel who laid the foundation for metatheatrical criticism. In his ground-breaking book entitled Metatheatre: A New View of Dramatic Form (1963), he advocates “metatheatre” as a distinct genre. With his emphasis on the fictiveness of plot and character, which he calls “the playwright’s invention” (Abel 59), Abel foregrounds the illusion of theatrical reality created by a dramatic performance. For Abel, all “metaplays” or “works of metatheatre” (61) “are theatre pieces about life seen as already theatricalized”; the metatheatrical heroes are different from other theatrical figures in that “t hey are aware of their own theatricality” (60). He concludes his study of metatheater with two observations: (i) The world is a stage; (ii) Life is a dream (105). The first statement implies that “the world is a projection of human consciousness” (113): it is a man-made artifice, created by imagination. The second one emphasizes the flexibility and malleability of fate, and the dream-like nature of existence (113). From a modern point of view, metaplays are interesting because they acknowledge their inherent theatricality: they “have the quality of having been thought, rather than of having simply occurred” (Abel 60-61). Abel believes. 20.

(21) “the playwright has the obligation to acknowledge in the very structure of his play that it was his imagination which controlled the event from beginning to end” (61). He himself provides an example of metatheatrical criticism on some dramatic works, including a metadramatic reading of Hamlet, in which he classifies Claudius, Polonius, and Hamlet as playwright-characters who compose scripts for others and themselves. Robert Egan, with his Drama within Drama (1975), endeavors to show Shakespeare’s concept of his art during the last years of his career by examining King Lear, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest. He shows that the success or failure of Shakespeare’s characters’ attempts to try “to control or alter reality directly through the exercise of dramatic illusion” functions as an indication of the attempts to shape the relationship between the art of the play itself and the real world of its audience (1). Prospero, comparable to Shakespeare himself, substitutes his dramatic illusions for reality in his spectators’eyes. The onstage audience do not know they are watching an artificial play-within-a-play staged by Prospero, mistakenly taking the illusion for reality. For Egan, through this manipulation of a play’s “aesthetic boundaries, internal and external,” Shakespeare attempts to “actualize in reality the vital patterns of order inherent in art,” rather than to dissolve the distinction between reality and drama (3). James L. Calderwood, another influential critic in Shakespearean metadramatic criticism, persistently focuses on the exploration of the idea of self-consciousness in Shakespeare’s works. He finds that Shakespeare often includes his own comments on, and observation of, the art of drama in the. 21.

(22) plays, constantly drawing our attention to the medium itself. Calderwood advocates the importance of metatheatrical concerns in his criticism of Shakespeare’s texts. He points out the dominant Shakespearean theme of a constant and never flagging concern of the dramatic art itself in his first book-length study in Shakespearean Metadrama (1971), including “its materials, its media of language and theater, its generic forms and conventions, its relationship to truth and the social order” (5). In Metadrama in Shakespeare’s Henriad (1979), Calderwood delves into the dialectics of truth and falsehood involved in the dramatic representation of historical reality. In To Be and Not to Be (1983), he goes on to demonstrate the significance of theatricality in Hamlet for the character, the audience, and the playwright. Richard Hornby, in Drama, Metadrama, and Perception (1986), provides a concise and form-oriented analysis of the genre, pinpointing several easily recognizable forms of metadrama, such as the play-within-the-play, role playing, self-reference, and so on. He supplies a “broader overview of metadrama as a phenomenon,” and expands his study to playwrights such as Sophocles, Büchner, Strindberg, Ibsen, and Pinter (31). In the early 1990s, Judd D. Hubert’s Metatheater: The Example of Shakespeare (1991) conducts a performative approach to six Shakepearean plays “to show how the medium operates, by means of latent comparisons, away from, though not necessarily in opposition to, mimetic representation, which paradoxically relies on staging” (1). Hubert argues that, metadrama, with its self-exposing devices, “frequently serves to enhance its most intense moments” (2), and also encourages “a more active participation” and. 22.

(23) “identification with a character” (3). For Hubert, metadramatic impulse in a play tends to disrupt the mimetic illusion, freeing a play from being a mere copy of the reality. Moreover, the disruption of illusion through self-exposing devices engages the audience even more deeply and persuasively. In the simplest and broadest term, metatheater is theater about theater, or drama about drama (Hornby 31; Newey 87; Chiu 2000: 2). Richard Horby furnishes the following definition: Briefly, metadrama can be defined as drama about drama; it occurs whenever the subject of a play turns out to be, in some sense, drama itself. (31) He argues that “all drama is metadramatic, since its subject is always . . . the drama/culture complex” (31). But to define all drama as metadrama will not clarify the issue at hand. Some qualifications are in order if we want to establish a common basis for further discussion. In her Metadrama: Shakespeare and Stoppard (2000), Chin-jung Chiu defines metadrama as follows: Technically, any play which has as its subject other play(s) or drama in general, or which attempts to describe and analyze dramatic practice and theatrical connections and to establish general “poetics” for this particular genre qualifies as metadrama. (2-3) While these ideas constitute a simple definition of the metatheater, I would like to emphasize that one of the most important criteria is the self-consciousness of the drama’s exploration of itself in every possible aspect, ranging from its. 23.

(24) medium, convention, form, function, status, and so on. The self-conscious references and reflexivity are explicit and unmistakable. Hornby’s list of the varieties of conscious metadrama includes: (i) the play within the play, (ii) the ceremony within the play, (iii) role playing within the role, (iv) literary and real-life reference, (v) self reference, and (vi) drama and perception (32). Except the last item, which is too general to designate any specific category, the first five items, though sometimes under different names, can be easily identified, and are commonly discussed in metadramatic criticism. With this list, Hornby presents an easy-to-follow model for later critical practice. In the light of these considerations, a wide range of manifestations can all be categorized as “metadramatic”: a play-within-a-play (dumb show, inset playlet, masque, pageant, interlude), a framed structure (induction, prologue and epilogue, chorus), uses of play metaphors and theatrical imageries, playwright-characters (characters that tend to manipulate other fellow characters like a director or a playwright setting up his play), and audience manipulation. On the top of these, Katherine Newey adds plays that “have for their subject matter the theatre and the theatrical profession . . . [and] rely on the spectators’knowledge of current theatrical practices for the full impact of the humour, satire, or pathos” (87). But as Hornby emphasizes, “the manner in which a given play is metadramatic, and the degree to which the metadramatic is consciously employed, can vary widely” (32). It would be wrong to suppose metatheatrical critics have reached a consensus on these topics. Far from it. Different, sometimes contradictory, arguments to key issues are quite common. For example, some regard the. 24.

(25) self-reflexive impulse in metadrama as a means to encourage reflection (Mack 1962: 280-81), while others deem the impulse a manifestation of its narcissism (Chiu 2000: 16; Fly 124). In sum, as Tobin Nellhaus observes, three related but different views toward metatheater or metatheatricality can be identified. First, critics like Dieter Mehl and Richard Hornby tend to focus on the metatheatrical forms and devices, but fail to explain the historical significance of these strategies. Second, other critics, such as Lionel Abel and Judd Hubert, concentrate less on the formal aspects (for example plays-within-the-plays or theatrical self-references), but emphasize the self-conscious exploration of theatricality of the dramatic characters (for instance their self-dramatization and acting as playwrights, directors or actors). Third, some critics assert that “theatrical self-reflexivity has few or no historical boundaries . . . [and] results from the very nature of art, or in some versions, from the nature of discourse” (Nellhaus 4). For Jacques Derrida, Nellhaus argues, self-reference is “an inherent part of writing, perhaps writing’s only meaning” (4). Richard Fly characterizes the effort of the critics in the “m etadramatic school” (138) as a tendency to view his [Shakespeare’s] masterpieces not simply as “windows” opening out upon a richly-textured panorama of general human experience, but as “mirror” reflecting the artist’s ongoing struggle to understand and master the expressive potential of his medium. (124) Fly’s “mirror” metaphor reminds us of Hamlet’s view of drama, though with a twist. According to Hamlet, the purpose of playing is to hold the mirror up. 25.

(26) to nature. He highlights the mimetic nature of dramatic art, considering drama as a representation of nature, or of reality. By asserting this mimesis, the Prince of Denmark brings out the reflective nature of acting, which is like a mirror reflecting the reality. In line with the Renaissance literary theory to regard literature as a reflection of reality, Hamlet uses the mirror metaphor in the tradition of mimesis. In contrast, Fly plays up the self-reflexive nature, rather than the reflective nature, of the mirror metaphor. He underscores the predominance of the role of the medium and the metaphor of the theater in these metadramatic criticisms. For Fly, the mirrored image is the medium, not the reality. As can be seen in this brief survey of some key arguments from earlier metadramatic criticisms, a metatheatrical reading of the Early Modern drama is basically a performance-oriented criticism. It also offers a reconsideration of the philosophical and ontological debates concerning the genre of drama. The purpose of the present study is, first of all, to illustrate the interpretive forces of a metatheatrical perspective on the English Renaissance texts. Richard Fly stresses the tendency toward self-indulgence in metadrama: “the drama in [such] plays becomes dislodged from plot and character and situated in the playwright’s self-conscious interaction with himself, his medium, and his audience” (124). A metadramatic reading of dramatic works tends to concentrate on excavating the self-reflexive, self-analytic, and anti-mimetic aspects. I want to explore the extent to which the metadramatic elements are thematically incorporated into the dramatic texts examined. Furthermore, I would like to apply this metadramatic reading to some non-Shakespearean. 26.

(27) works in the hope of determining the extent to which such self-conscious and self-reflexive impulse is represented on the Early Modern stage, a consciousness related to Stephen Greenblatt’s observation of an emerging “self-fashioning” tendency in this period (1980: 3).. III. Chapter Description. This study adopts the metatheatrical perspective as outlined above to explore the theatrical self-reflexivity and metatheatricality in five English Renaissance plays: Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Othello and Hamlet, and The Revenger’s Tragedy, with references to related plays if necessary. The metatheatrical critical perspective will highlight the theatrical self-reflexivity common on the Early Modern stage. To supply a more systematic examination of the metatheatrical elements in these plays, this study organizes the following chapters in accordance with different metatheatrical topics: role-playing, playwright-character, inset play and audience perception after a brief summary of the Renaissance view toward dramatic art and a brief account of the metatheatrical criticism. These topics are the most fundamental issues in the discussion about metatheatricality. In each chapter a survey and discussion of metatheatrical theory and practice related to the assigned topic will be provided first to set up the critical framework for the reading of dramatic works, followed by in-depth analyses of two plays that may provide a contrast to the same issue, while drawing on other plays in the hope of bringing. 27.

(28) out a much fuller description of the issues at hand. The second chapter explores the subtle and cunning disguises embodied in the practice of role-playing especially in Hamlet and Vindice. Deception, dissimulation, hypocrisy, and disguise are some important manifestations and representations of the complex mechanism of role-playing. By exposing the cunning manipulation behind a character in disguise, dramatists make manifest the underlying calculation and playacting, laying bare the fiction of the theatrical illusion and, by extension, the theatricality of life. Through a character’s metatheatrical sensitivity, a playwright could bring forth the dialectics of drama and life, illusion and reality, seeming and being, acting and doing illustrated in the mechanism of role-playing. The third chapter traces a type of playwright-character, a character “employing a playwright’s consciousness of drama to impose a certain posture or attitude on another” (Abel 46). Like a playwright inventing plots and arranging dramatic action, a full-fledged playwright-character tends to manipulate his fellow characters with carefully wrought illusion. Mephostophilis and Iago are such playwright-characters. Faustus and Othello, on the other hand, are a different type of playwright-characters.. They indulge. in self-dramatization, constantly casting roles and dramatic action for themselves. They want to be the authors of their own destiny. Moreover, in these different playwright-characters, a theatrical parallel between the gradual formation of their plots and that of a dramatic piece is established. Chapter Four examines the significance of inset plays, including a play-within-a-play. A play-within-a-play can lend a fuller insight into the. 28.

(29) interplay of illusion and reality, presenting two, sometimes even more, different planes of dramatic illusion. It mirrors the larger play in some detail, from the casting of roles, rehearsing, playacting on the same stage, to matching a play to an audience. For example, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Hamlet bring up the subject of theater and theatrical performance in their dramatic action, the internal theatrical practices reflecting the self-conscious and self-reflexive impulses common in this period. By bringing in a group of (touring) players, both plays draw our attention to the whole business of theater. Hamlet, in particular, plays up the nature of dramatic performance, including the impersonation of the player and the falsification of feelings. The Prince questions the genuineness of the First Player’s playacting pretense, a gesture underscoring his own theatrical impersonation and pretense. The play-within-the-play functions not only as a weapon to rip open the illusory appearances in the Danish court, but also as a reminder to the play proper’s own pretense. Chapter Five dissects the dramatic mechanism of audience engagement and detachment in some metaplays. A Johnsonian attitude of detachment indicates the spectator’s “constant awareness ‘that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players’” (Shapiro 146). In contrast a Coleridgean response of engagement represents the spectator that responds in “a state of rapt absorption in the work of art, as in a dream” (146). Asides and soliloquies are two common devices that playwrights use to engage their audience. On the other hand, metatheatrical devices, including the use of dramatic imagery, disguise, role-playing, plot repetition and imitation,. 29.

(30) and inset plays, draw our attention to the play’s plotting, and expose the play’s artificiality and its status as an artifact. In general, dramatists use metatheatrical devices to encourage “detachment”— to maintain a balance of perception. Thus, these devices are generally considered to be distancing for the benefit of increasing reflection on the meaning of what we see (Mack 1962: 281). But, interestingly, it appears that the more an audience is reminded of the fiction, the more it falls for the invention. The more a dramatist emphasizes the illusion, the more an audience believes it. This study concludes with an exploration of the mirror metaphor and its self-reflexivity. The purpose of dramatic art, according to Hamlet, is to hold a mirror up to nature, reflecting life and reality. Renaissance metadrama illustrates its function as a mirror, which reflects the dramatic medium and its limit and capability of capturing reality. With an external mediation, it is easier for a person to behold himself. Metadrama supplies that means of external mediation, through whose help we can see the image of the appearances of reality, which in turn is an approach to self-knowledge. The self-reflexivity of metatheater denotes the theater’s self-conscious reflection on itself as a medium where illusion, reality, imagination and truth meet and interact. This study hopes to illustrate that a metatheatrical reading of Renaissance drama not only helps a reader to better grasp the dramatic medium, but also lends depth and substantiality to the insight and understanding of the dramatic meaning. The quintessence of theater bordering reality and illusion becomes a niche for playwrights to explore the dynamics of the onstage and offstage. 30.

(31) worlds. It is hoped that the findings of this study can shed light on the metadramatic implications in these plays with a constant attention to the playwrights’ dramaturgy.. 31.

(32) CHAPTER TWO “Forms to His Conceit”9: Role-playing in Hamlet10 and The Revenger’s Tragedy Perdita Methinks I play as I have seen them do In Whitsun pastorals. Sure this robe of mine Does change my disposition. (Winter’s Tale, 4.4.133-35) Hamlet ’Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, Nor customary suits of solemn black, Nor windy suspiration of forc’d breath, No, nor the fruitful river in the eye, Nor the dejected haviour of the visage, Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief, That can denote me truly. (Hamlet, 1.2.77-83)11 Hamlet Is it not monstrous that this player here, But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, Could force his soul so to his own conceit That from her working all his visage wann’d, Tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect, A broken voice, and his whole function suiting With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing! (Hamlet, 2.2.545-51). After a survey of different views toward dramatic art and artist in the Renaissance England and a general summary of the context of metatheatrical criticism in the past few decades, the second chapter now explores the subtle 9. This is from Hamlet, 2.2.551. A Chinese version of an early draft on this play was published in Chung-Wai Literary Monthly 31.1 (2002): 35-58. 11 References to this play are from Hamlet, The Arden edition, Ed. Harold Jenkins. 10. 32.

(33) and cunning disguises embodied in the practice of role-playing. Deception, dissimulation, hypocrisy, and disguise are some important manifestations and representations of the complex mechanism of role-playing. By exposing the cunning manipulation behind a character in disguise, dramatists make manifest the underlying calculation and playacting, laying bare the fiction of the theatrical illusion and, by extension, the theatricality of life. Through a character’s metatheatrical sensitivity, a playwright could bring forth the dialectics of drama and life, illusion and reality, seeming and being, acting and doing illustrated in the mechanism of role-playing. When an actor, through costume, gesture, and voice, impersonates a dramatic role, be it a king or a beggar, a Romeo or a Juliet, he acts on a primary or dramatic level. When an actor impersonates a dramatic role, who then assumes playacting to disguise himself and deceive others, as in the form of cross-dressing, he acts on a secondary or metadramatic level. A dramatic character sometimes assumes a gesture of self-dramatization, a mixture of both the dramatic and metadramatic modalities, investing a tinct of artificiality and theatricality in his action. Hamlet and The Revenger’s Tragedy are filled with role-playing throughout. Critics have emphasized the transformative effect upon the characters adopting role-playing in both plays (Hall 1-19; Mack 1955: 44-46). Based on their findings, this chapter intends to focus on self-conscious explorations of the dynamics of role-playing by the dramatic characters themselves, and elaborates on both the positive and negative possibilities arising from it. By nature an actor, Hamlet is addicted to self-dramatization, be there. 33.

(34) on-stage audience or not. He casts himself in many roles: a mourner, a mad man, a malcontent, or an avenger. The other characters in the Danish court also play roles when dealing with Hamlet. With all these different forms of role-playing, the play delves into the nature of acting, the dialectics of appearance and reality, and the theatricality of life. In The Revenger’s Tragedy Vindice also dramatizes himself as a satirist, a malancholiac, a malcontent, and a revenger respectively as the plot develops, constantly changing his roles. He manipulates his fellow characters and the dramatic action in his pursuit of revenge. Through a careful metatheatrical design, the play delineates the gradual transformation of Vindice, unlike Hamlet, from a seeker of justice to a cold-blooded killer. In this way, the play reflects upon the inadequacy of private justice and illustrates the transformation of role-playing on the avenger’s true self; metatheater is articulated with the presentation of a major theme.. I. From Social Roles to Dramatic Roles Role is a term commonly used in both daily life and theatrical contexts, wonderfully coalescing the social and dramatic dimensions of a person’s identity. In the popular Renaissance concept of theatrum mundi, men are conceived to be players improvising their multifarious social roles in their daily performances and appearances on the stage that is the world. Michel de Montaigne, in “How One Ought to Governe His Will,” emphasizes “All the world doth practise stage-playing” (III, 98), a popular analogy that elaborates on the theatrical dimension with men and women adopting roles in life just like. 34.

(35) players assuming roles in a playhouse. In a study of character-types in city comedy, Theodore B. Leinwand writes of the overwhelming discussion of social roles in the early modern England: The drama, pamphlets, letters and proclamations of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries constitute an unceasing discussion of social roles: the role of the sovereign and that of the gentry as gentlemen or as gallants, the role (and so the status) of the newly wealthy merchant and that of the usurer, and every other conceivable role, from city wife to courtier. (10) Leinwand’s major interest is on the interaction of a social role and a dramatic representation of that role, mutually shaping and reshaping each other. His concern of the relation between role and self is especially relevant to the present study: This discourse of social roles both on and off the stage suggests a variety of relations between an often unspecifiable self and the enacted role of a given moment. At times, we want to ask whether a role or a repertory of roles has altogether replaced the self: when identity reifies, “a total identification of the individual with his socially assigned typifications” may result. (11) A substantial and sometimes permanent metamorphosis of the self may be brought about by the assumption of a role, as illustrated in changes in a character’s psychology. We recall Ben Jonson’s warning:. 35.

(36) I have considered our whole life is like a Play wherein every man forgetfull of himself, is in travaile with expression of another. Nay, we so insist in imitating others, as we cannot (when it is necessary) returne to our selves: like Children, that imitate the vices of Stammerers so long, till at last they become such; and make the habit to another nature, as it is never forgotten. (1925-52: VIII, 597) This passage indicates that a role may sometimes corrupt, contaminate, change, or replace the self— as illustrated in some dramatic characters we will examine in this chapter. In Joan Lord Hall’s words, Frequently the plays focus on the protagonist as actor, suggesting how histrionic awareness, or a conscious dramatisation of self, can enhance or undermine identity. But they also portray in some depth characters who assume personae and are subsequently changed by them. (1) For certain dramatic characters, fundamental transformations in their selves take place when they engage in role-playing. At times, they become “others” and can no longer return to their original self. For example, Vindice in The Revenger’s Tragedy tells his brother they “are made strange fellows” (1.3.170)12 and he is “hired” to kill himself (4.2.207). In many cases, role-playing comes with changes of clothes. The costume metaphor is essential in the sense that it gives an airy nothing a form or shape. 12. All references to this play are to The Revenger’s Tragedy, Ed. R. A. Foakes, who, though admitting to much uncertainty about the author, assigned the play to Cyril Tourneur in his 1966 edition. But, taking in the recent criticism of the play, he added Thomas Middleton as a candidate of the author in. 36.

(37) Jacobean tragedies in particular, Hall argues, by visually correlating moral or spiritual change with physical disguise, show the converse movement: how appearance can turn into reality. (19) When Vindice changes his clothes in his disguise as Piato, he “quickly turn[s] into another” (1.1.134), a “base-coined pander” (1.1.81). His brother Hippolito guarantees that he is completely another man: “As if another man had been sent whole / Into the world, and none wist how he came” (1.3.2-3). He is indeed “far enough from [him]self” (1.3.1). The development of the play suggests that change of costume denotes a subtle moral and psychological metamorphosis, which is manifested in Vindice’s deterioration into a corrupt revenger, taking pride in his ingenious intrigues that destroy his enemies. Actors are often associated with chameleons or Proteus, capable of changing shapes and playing different roles. Richard of York is one of such arch-players, who is very proud of his acting expertise: Why, I can smile, and murther whiles I smile, And cry “Content” to that which grieves my heart, And wet my cheeks with artificial tears, And frame my face to all occasions. I’ll drown more sailors than the mermaid shall, I’ll slay more gazers than the basilisk, I’ll play the orator as well as Nestor, Deceive more slily than Ulysses could,. his 1996 edition. For the authorship controversy, see David J. Lake.. 37.

(38) And like a Sinon, take another Troy. I can add colors to the chameleon, Change shapes with Proteus for advantages, And set the murtherous Machevil to school. (3 Henry VI, 3.2.182-93) In The Taming of the Shrew, to trick Sly into believing himself a Lord, the “real” Lord assigns his page to playact Sly’s wife: Lord. Sirrah, go you to Barthol’mew my page And see him dressed in all suits like a lady. That done, conduct him to the drunkard’s chamber, And call him “madam,” do him obeisance . . . . I know the boy will well usurp the grace, Voice, gait and action of a gentlewoman. (Induction I, 101-04, 127-28). To be exact, this is an example of a “role-playing within the role” (Hornby 67). Similar to the transvestite practice in the theater of the period, the Lord assigns his young page Batholomew a female role, bringing our attention to how a boy actor impersonates a female character with acting skills incorporating voice, gait, costume, and movement. Coriolanus supplies another view toward actors and role-playing. Volumnia, along with Roman patricians, instructs her son, as an actor, to play a role in order to save himself from the revolting plebeians masterminded by the wily and hostile tribunes, Brutus and Sicinius. Like a director, she gives very detailed acting instructions, including the precise prop, gesture, lines, and facial. 38.

(39) expression Coriolanus should put on. I prithee now, my son, Go to them, with this bonnet in thy hand, And thus far having stretched it— here be with them— Thy knee bussing the stones— for in such business Action is eloquence, and the eyes of th’ignorant More learned than the ears— waving thy head, Which often thus correcting thy stout heart, Now humble as the ripest mulberry That will not hold the handling. Or say to them Thou art their soldier, and being bred in broils Has not the soft way which, thou dost confess, Were fit for thee to use as they to claim, In asking their good loves; but thou wilt frame Thyself, forsooth, hereafter theirs, so far As thou hast power and person. (3.2.74-88) Despite his unwillingness to playact a role, Coriolanus nevertheless persuades himself to take up the assigned role. His struggle mainly stems from a negative view of playacting which conflicts with his own disposition, with honesty and integrity on which he prides himself. Yet, he has an extensive, if primarily negative, understanding of acting: Well, I must do ’t. Away, my disposition, and possess me Some harlot’s spirit! My throat of war be turned,. 39.

(40) Which choired with my drum, into a pipe Small as an eunuch or the virgin voice That babies lulls asleep! The smiles of knaves Tent in my cheeks, and schoolboys’tears take up The glasses of my sight! A beggar’s tongue Make motion through my lips, and my armed knees, Who bowed but in my stirrup, bend like his That hath received an alms!. (3.2.112-22). The theatrical ingredients Coriolanus uses to envision his histrionic mission include changes of spirit and voice, facial expressions (smiles, tears), ways of speaking, and gestures. But since his playacting aims at deceiving his audience, the plebeians, these theatrical reminders carry negative implications, including insincerity, deceit, falseness, and hypocrisy. His self-image as a hero is replaced by that of a harlot, a eunuch, a knave, a schoolboy, and a beggar, all of whom he surely despises.. II. “Action is eloquence”: The Dynamics of Role-playing 13 This chapter does not intend to arrive at a psychologically realistic view of roles and characters in drama, but rather at revealing the dynamic interaction between a role and a self when a dramatic character takes up disguises. This chapter does not treat dramatic characters as if they were real persons, but rather regard them as “imagined persons” (Murray 1) endowed wi th 13. “Action is eloquence” is from Coriolanus, 3.2.78; “The Dynamics of Role-playing” is from Joan. 40.

(41) psychological depth and generic conventions. The abundant theatrical reminders that inform the audience they are watching a play serve to disrupt their possible response to take dramatic characters as real persons. As some recent studies invoke, a non-representational, or metatheatrical awareness that we are watching actors perform on a stage could even facilitate our involvement with representation and deepen our understanding of it.14 In its essence, a dramatic performance is a feat of role-playing, which is an essential aspect not only in the theatrical representation of the play proper, but also in the devices of any theatrical disguise within the play world. On a primary or dramatic level, an actor, through costumes, gestures, facial expressions, body movements and voice, impersonates a dramatic character, be it a king or a beggar, a Romeo or a Juliet. On a secondary or metadramatic level, an actor impersonates a character, who then assumes another role (or roles) to disguise himself/herself and deceive others, such as the cross-dressing heroines. Another subtle form of role-playing is self-dramatization, a mixture of both dramatic and metadramatic modalities. A dramatic character is sometimes apt to assume a gesture of self-dramatization, investing a tinct of artificiality and theatricality in his/her action. Role-playing sways the spectators the way oration sways the listeners. Peter B. Murray believes The principles of oratory taught an actor that by vividly imagining the events which move the character and responding fully to the script’s language, he could “force his soul so to his Lord Hall’s title of her book.. 41.

(42) own conceit” that he would be carried into the thoughts and emotions of the character. Indeed, actors were commonly praised for appearing to be the characters they played and for moving the audience. (2) The example of Hamlet illustrates at least two kinds of acting styles available to the English Renaissance adult companies: one is a stylized and formal presentation, exemplified in the First Player’s Priam and Hecuba speech and The Mousetrap, which resembles Brecht’s “separation of actor from persona” (Hall 4); the other is a more naturalistic and realistic impersonation, illustrated in the play proper, which is closer to Stanislavki’s “immersion of the actor in his role” (4). But we need to realize that an Elizabethan view toward “natural” acting is quite different from ours: Elizabethans praised as natural or “to the life” an acting style that used heightened poetic language to make the expression of emotion seem authentic and thereby moved the audience. (Murray 3) An actor’s immersion into his dramatic character, no doubt, brings forth a life-like representation, which in turn increases an audience’s sense of illusion and engagement with the character and dramatic action. A formalistic and stylized mannerism of acting, on the other hand, will remind an audience of the theatricality and artificiality of the theatrical performance, thereby increasing their sense of detachment from the action. Also, a character’s self-conscious alienation from his role cautions an audience from a complete identification 14. See, for example, Cartwright 1-39, Grainger 17-22, Styan 185-205, and Parry 1990: 99-109.. 42.

(43) with the theatrical illusion. This chapter mainly focuses on self-conscious explorations, positive or negative, of the dynamics of role-playing by the dramatic characters themselves. This is the metadramatic aspect of role-playing. Through a character’s metatheatrical sensitivity, a playwright brings forth the dialectics of drama and life, illusion and reality, seeming and being, acting and doing in the mechanism of role-playing. In some cases, a character assuming role-playing can even be transformed by his adopted role, making a fiction into a reality. Alan Kennedy’s remarks on the “protean self” created in modern fiction are relevant: [I]t is possible for the fictional roles, the invented roles, to mould the Self. That is, fictions can remake the individual; we can and do become what we pretend to be. (22) Shakespeare’s cross-dressing heroines create new identities with their physical disguises to impersonate men. Viola-Cesario in Twelfth Night, for example, remains passive and submissive when s/he is with Orsino, mainly a feminine-like position trapped in “her” seemingly hopeless passion. In contrast, when s/he takes up the part Cesario, a male surrogate wooer, to court Olivia for Orsino, s/he becomes creative, resourceful, and aggressive, a much more masculine-like temperament. The explorations of role-playing help to illustrate different possibilities arising from it: it can be destructive, bringing a corruption to the self; or creative, acting out a fuller realization of self (Hall 1). From an even more subversive perspective, role-playing facilitates a route of “transgression” (Hawkes 28). For example, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bottom the. 43.

(44) weaver in the play within playacts a heroic lover, crossing his social boundary to an upper level. Role-playing, in Terence Hawkes’ analysis, “has always contained an obvious potential for transgression, particularly in a society regulated by rigid social hierarchies” (28). Besides this, he goes on to point out the self-exposing acts of transgression when crossing boundaries. Using the “Wall” in Pyramus and Thisby to expound this, he argues, Walls traditionally support, separate and thus preserve by division. A wall both recognizes difference and proposes its maintenance: it is a bulwark against change . . . . All societies make use of walls, literally or metaphorically deployed, and they obviously supply a major means of generating and reinforcing meaning in any culture. To breach a wall, or to transgress the boundary it marks, risks challenging the structure of differences on which meaning in a society is based.. (29). The next sections, by contrasting two revenge plays, Hamlet and The Revenger’s Tragedy, explore the mechanism of role-playing represented in dramatic texts. A reading of Hamlet is first provided.. III. Hamlet: “Action that a man might play” 15 In Hamlet role-playing is an exceptionally conspicuous thematic concern not only in the theatrical reality of the play-within-a-play, but also in the every day life in the court of Denmark. Charles R. Forker, for one, explores the 15. This is from Hamlet, 1.2.84.. 44.

(45) theatrical symbolism in Hamlet, and argues that “The very court of Denmark is like a stage upon which all the major characters except Horatio take parts, play roles, and practice to deceive” (217). The explicitness of role-playing in most of the characters in the Danish court highlights the theatricality of court life. Shakespeare reflects a contemporary interest in this kind of court life in Hamlet. People become interested in following the more and more sumptuous court life in late Elizabethan and ensuing Jacobean courts. The first court scene, in sharp contrast to the bleakness and gloominess of the previous ghost scene, introduces strange antitheses into the world of Denmark. The newly crowned king Claudius, a “master of rhetoric” (Hubert 93), delivers a public announcement of the royal marriage in ceremonious language and long-winded syntax embedded in the form of syllogism in an attempt to tone down the problematic nature of such an instant marriage. His speech, marked by elaborate rhetorical figures, Latinate sentence structure ending with verbs and syntactical balance, is an example of “the grand style” (Adamson 571) in classical rhetoric, a style with sweeping power of persuasion. It also demonstrates his theatrical performance of the kingly role in highly rhetorical language that is very formal if seen against other speeches or dialogues. Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother’s death The memory be green, and that it us befitted To bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom To be contracted in one brow of woe, Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature. 45.

(46) That we with wisest sorrow think on him Together with remembrance of ourselves. Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen, Th’imperial jointress to this warlike state, Have we, as ’twere with a defeated joy, With an auspicious and a dropping eye, With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage, In equal scale weighing delight and dole, Taken to wife.. (1.2.1-14). Claudius stuffs his major clause of “our sometime sister have we taken to wife” with lots of subordinate clauses full of antitheses and oxymorons to create suspense to the simple fact of the marriage. His use of syllogism imposes a seemingly rational ground for the hasty marriage with his sister-in-law shortly after his brother’s death. His opening speech touches upon two important recent events: the death of old Hamlet, his brother; the marriage with Gertrude, his brother’s wife. The timing and the incestuous nature of the marriage are factors that Claudius endeavors to neutralize in his flourishing language (Perng 2001: xlvi -l; Booth 1992: 65). But, ironically, the oxymorons he uses underline the unintended disclosure of his hypocrisy: an auspicious and a dropping eye, mirth in funeral and dirge in marriage, delight and dole.16 The excessive use of antitheses only exposes his explicit intention to divert attention from his self-interest. Though covered under the sugarcoated. 16. Jenkins points out: “It was proverbially said of the false man that he looks up with one eye and down with the other . . . . To laugh with one eye and weep with the other . . . which was traditionally applied to Fortune . . . in indication of her fickleness” (434).. 46.

(47) rhetoric, the hidden political and moral corruption can still be perceived, because the more Claudius tries to cover the more he reveals. In contrast with the dolefully delighted newly-weds, Hamlet is overwhelmed by mournful sorrow over his father’s death, and a bitter sense of betrayal by his mother’s inconstancy, the forgetfulness of the courtiers, and the hypocrisy of his uncle. His insistence on dressing in a black suit is an intentional outward signification of his inner feelings, a gesture to defy the hypocrisy he discerns in the people surrounding him. In addition, he is consciously playing the role of a mourner, “costumed in black, a virtual memento mori to the glittering, opulently dressed court of Denmark” (Wilds 142). Seeing Hamlet in deep mourning for his father’s death, Gertrude requests him to “cast thy nighted colour off” (1.2.68). For her, Hamlet’s wailful countenance is like his black cloak that can be cast off at will. And through her metaphor of costume, she means, in one aspect, to encourage him to throw away the sorrows like discarding a piece of unwanted garment. But in another respect, she seems to accuse him of being hypocritical. In addition, she wants him to play the role of an obedient son. But he continues obstinately to play the role of a melancholiac and a malcontent.. Thus, the use of costume as a. metaphor of mourning brings the operation of role-playing into the foreground. Hamlet angrily rejects the metaphor of costume. For him, as Greenblatt points out, “his grief is not a theatrical performance, a mere costume to be put on and then discarded” (1997: 1660). He bitterly and sarcastically rejects Gertrude’s metaphor of costume.. 47.