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Ramseyer – 1
Tom Ramseyer
Dr. Ronald Strickland
English 378
7 August 2002
The Play’s the Thing:
A Look at Metadramatics in Three of Shakespeare’s Plays
When attending a performance of a Shakespeare play, a modern playgoer
experiences, through a variety of means, a whole range of thoughts and feelings.
We have been inundated since our youth with the iconic status of William
Shakespeare – his genius, his insight, his poetry, his influence, etc. We cannot
help but come to the theatre with a tremendous amount of “baggage” regarding
the play we are about to witness. If we have read any Shakespeare in school,
we know that these works “deserve” to be respected, studied, and approved; that
they have great things to say about the plight and promise of the human
condition; and that, although the language might make it difficult to understand,
these works exist at the pinnacle of what we call “Culture.” Even before the play
begins, then, we have a strong positive (and possibly elitist) attitude, about what
we are about to see. If it is a good production, we are, at rise, swept away by
some humorous or light initial encounter and are subsequently led by the action
deeply into the story, whether comical, tragic, or adventurous. We may come to
relate to some of the characters, eventually experiencing feelings of admiration,
reaffirmation of life, or pity and fear for and along with them. We might lose our
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sense of self, completely suspend our disbelief, and feel as though we are
actually in the setting with the characters. When this occurs, we feel everything
even more acutely; the comedy is more pronounced, and the cathartic moment of
a tragedy is nearly unbearable. By the end, our predictions (and all of the
English teachers of our youth) are validated and vindicated; we were, indeed,
enlightened in one way or another and are better for it. So often, the experience
of Shakespeare is similar to the above description (as the proponents of Realist
theatre would say it ought to be), but just as often, the “Bard” himself will make it
difficult for us to have this kind of pure experience. Just as we begin to lose our
sense of where we actually are (in a theatre), he will metaphorically throw a
water balloon at us to force us back to reality. He seems to constantly remind us
that we are watching actors perform roles, and that we are assigned a role, too –
that of audience member to a theatrical performance, a role from which we may
not stray. We are not allowed to forget these facts for a very long stretch of time.
For all of the powerful themes, the intriguing plots, the sympathetic or hateful
characters, we cannot get away from the idea of the event. By employing a
variety of metadramatic devices and techniques, William Shakespeare
foregrounds the very nature of playgoing (and of life?).
I
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms defines “metadrama”
thusly:
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drama about drama, or any moment of self-consciousness
by which a play draws attention to its own fictional status as
a theatrical pretence…(Baldick 132)
The concept of metadramatics has become, in the past forty years, much more
than a study of intriguing devices used by playwrights to have a bit of playwright
fun. It has, instead, evolved into a complete and growing literary/dramatic theory.
According to Richard Fly, former English Department Chair at the State
University of New York at Buffalo, the origin of the theory of metadrama is to be
found in 1963, when Lionel Abel’s groundbreaking book Metatheatre: A New
View of Dramatic Form was first published (Fly 126). Abel claimed that
“metatheatre” held to two firm tenets: “(1) the world is a stage and (2) life is a
dream” (Abel 105). His theory states that because of paradigmatic shifts
regarding the human condition around the time of the Renaissance, tragedy was
no longer a valid theatrical form. In the futile attempt to write tragedies, a totally
new form appeared. According to Abel, theatre performances began to reflect
the notion that life itself is a theatricalized event. Playwrights of the time, most
notably Shakespeare, became conscious of this change, and therefore created a
dramatic form, which Abel calls the metaplay (61). He states that these works of
metatheatre grew to encompass plays in both tragic and comic humors.
Subsequent critics, including Sigurd Burkhardt (Shakespearean Meanings,
1968), James L. Calderwood (Shakespearean Metadrama, 1971; Metadrama in
Shakespeare’s Henriad, 1979; and To Be And Not To Be: Negation and
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Metadrama in Hamlet, 1983), Thomas F. Van Laan (Role-playing in
Shakespeare, 1978), and Richard Hornby (Drama, Metadrama, and Perception,
1986) went on to expand and refine Abel’s theory. These theorists and others
present a picture of a Shakespeare who uses the self-reflexive nature of his
plays to address not only the theatricality of life in general, but to shed light on
specific moral and ethical issues in relation to the actual creation of art. That is,
the playwright utilizes metadramatic devices to expose the questions and
subsequent answers that he himself asks and answers about his creation (e.g.,
The Merchant of Venice ponders whether a writer is just a prostitute, trying to
make a buck, or whether his work can, in fact, have some real value and honor.)
(Fly 129). In expounding their metadramatic theory, however, most critics realize
and accept the fact that audiences will not abandon the traditional mimetic
theories, but hope that this might become a new and additional means of
exploring these great plays.
II
Metadramatic moments can occur at any point during a play, and they can
appear in a number of guises. According to drama critic Richard Hornby, five
varieties of metadramatic devices are commonly used in today’s theatre (32).
For purposes of limiting our inquiry to Shakespeare (and specifically to A
Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, and Romeo and Juliet), we
will here focus on three types: Role-playing (including plays within plays), the
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use of internal dramatists, and moments when the “fourth wall” is intentionally
shattered. We will explore the first of these in this section.
Role-playing, in all its manifestations, is the most common metadramatic
form in Shakespeare. Including devices like the wearing of disguises and masks,
plays within plays, pretending to be of a different attitude, and mistaken identities,
role-playing is perhaps the most self-reflexive type of metadrama. After all, what
is a play but a group of real people pretending to be other, and fictional, people.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream can be said to begin with an instance of
metadramatic role-playing. We see Hippolyta (warrior queen of the Amazons)
performing the part of the dutiful subject/wife for the audience of her
conqueror/husband, Theseus. Here, we see role-playing in one of its classic
functions, as a character-delineating device. This play also includes the most
overt expression of role-playing in theatre: the play within the play. Pyramus and
Thisbe, as presented by the mechanicals, offers a tremendous and (we hope)
astonishing contrast in quality between itself and the larger performance. While
we gain a great deal of character information through the rehearsal segments of
Pyramus, the actual performance seems to be for a different purpose, perhaps to
continue the large question of the play: Is there a clear line between imagination
and reality? Of course, associated with the mechanicals’ efforts we find several
other instances of role-playing. The whole idea of costuming and wearing
masks, as Flute does as Thisbe, provides moments of metadrama. Bottom’s ass
head is another example of the costuming device. The last major incidence of
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role-playing happens when the various characters are under the spell of the juice
of the magical flower. Before our eyes, they become completely different
characters than they were in the previous moment.
Romeo and Juliet provides several role-playing samples, both similar and
different from those found in MND. First of all, the aforementioned idea of
wearing a mask as metadramatic role-playing continues in this play. Romeo,
Mercutio, and the rest of the revelers wear masks when they crash the Capulets’
party: “Welcome, gentlemen. I have seen the day / That I have worn a visor,
and could tell / A whispering tale in a fair lady’s ear / Such as would please”
(Greenblatt 886). Capulet, in this statement makes clear the advantages that
will, in fact, be Romeo’s in the wearing of the mask, in effect blessing the coming
indiscretions with his own daughter. Likewise, Juliet allows herself to be more
forward with Romeo because she knows “the mask of night is on [her] face”
(892). Being someone else is much easier, both physically and emotionally,
when we do not have to show our faces. Role-playing appears in the rest of the
play largely when characters pretend to be of a different attitude than their reality
allows. If Juliet does not approve of the name Montague, Romeo is willing to
become someone else immediately. In order to carry out her play with the Friar’s
potion, Juliet pretends to be the dutiful daughter and assents to her fathers wish
that she marry Paris. Her willingness to take the “death” potion shows her
inclination to present a different attitude in order to accomplish her goals. The
failure of this plan, however, makes us question in a very metadramatic way what
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the consequences might be when the wrong audience sees a specific
performance. Finally, at least three characters assign to Romeo a role-playing of
sorts. The Friar, Mercutio, and Romeo himself all, at one time or another, say
that Romeo appears to be “womanish” or feminine. This assignation, like the
other instances of role-playing in Romeo and Juliet, seems to foreground the
notion that the oft-called “duality” of life is not really so dual, but is often simply
two different perspectives on the same reality.
Role-playing in The Merchant of Venice comes in a variety of guises.
First, we find many examples of the masquerading and costuming type. For
example, a disguise/costume is worn by Jessica when she is running away from
her father’s home, and they are worn my by Portia and Nerissa when they are
running to Venice to save Bassanio’s friend Antonio. We see, then, that roleplaying can assist one in finding an escape from something bad or a path to
something good (or are they the same?). Interestingly, in each of these
metadramatic moments of costuming, we see an instance of cross-dressing. The
effect of this today is unusual, but it might have been even more unusual in
Shakespeare’s day, when we consider the idea that the audience would have
been witnessing men dressed as and portraying women who are attempting to
dress as and portray men. Such moments are thick with self-reflexivity. We also
see in this play (like in MND) that role-playing can be used for comedic effect.
Lancelot pretends to be someone else in Act II, Sc. 2 in order to tease and have
some fun with his nearly blind father. While there is a sadness about the
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concept, the overall effect is one of comedy, providing Shakespeare a
metadramatic stage for his mastery of the language and of characterization.
Role-playing in Merchant also shows itself in the trial scene, which seems very
nearly a play within the play. As a staged event, this trial apparently has a preordained outcome: “We all expect a gentle answer, Jew” (Greenblatt 1129). The
characters, then, are simply players performing their assigned parts in the
production. Who, though, is the audience here? Shylock? Anonio? The real
“audience”? It seems to be anyone who might learn from this overtly didactic
presentation. That scenario would rule out most of the characters – certainly
Bassanio. Clearly, Shakespeare uses the device of role-playing deftly and
prolifically, and with a clear understanding of its many possible effects.
III
Perhaps the most complex and fascinating of all of the metadramatic
devices a playwright can incorporate is that of the internal dramatist.
Shakespearean scholar Thomas F. Van Laan clarifies the concept of the internal
dramatist in his 1978 book Role-playing in Shakespeare. He explains:
The internal dramatist…rarely acts from self-delusion or loss
of bearings. He [or she] always has a firm goal in mind,
usually a materialistic one, and he tends to plot with care
before he acts, although…he often plots only one scene at a
time. …The internal dramatist is a skilled actor in his own
right, but he seems even more impressive as a director. He
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manipulates his fellow characters as if they were characters
of his own invention rather than Shakespeare’s. The usual
climax of his drama is the conversion of his victim by
compelling him to accept a new role….He is usually a byfigure, a more or less subordinate character who initiates
things, or keeps them astir, thereby providing occasion for
the comic or tragic sufferings of the protagonists. (223-4)
Two internal dramatists dominate the workings of A Midsummer Night’s Dream:
Puck and Oberon. For most of the play, Puck serves as Oberon’s henchman,
placing drops of the magical flower juice on the eyes of those selected by
Oberon. Instances do occur, however, where Puck clearly directs the action.
The most obvious example of this is the scene in which he changes Bottom into
an ass. Although one could argue that he does this simply to enhance Oberon’s
plan to have Titania fall in love with a monster of some sort, the situation seems
more to be one of Puck’s choosing. He is having fun, and the whole scene
metadramatically asks whether most directorial decisions are not simply based
upon the whim or passing fancy of the director. Oberon would probably not have
relished the humorous possibilities of Bottom and the ass nearly as much as
Puck did. While Puck’s directorial choices are based upon fancy, Oberon’s are
made much more upon scheming and politics. He wants justice for Helena, and
so he instructs Puck to use the flower to serve that need. He also wants what he
sees as justice for himself (but which appears to us to be greed or political
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positioning); therefore, he places the magic potion on the eyes of Titania. Thus
he hopes to get the Indian boy and solve all of their problems. Oberon has a fully
developed plan, however ill-conceived, and Puck allows himself to be led by his
humor. In some sense, it might be suggested that while Oberon plays the
director, Puck’s position is one of stage manager – both key roles in the internal
dramatization.
Romeo and Juliet incorporates several internal dramatists. Some
examples seem to be quite limited in their actions, but their small incidents of
direction or internal playwrighting have a tremendous impact on the ultimate
outcome of the story. It seems clear, for example, that Shakespeare wants fate
(or circumstances beyond ones control) to serve as the force in charge of this
play, but often Romeo – as well as other characters – rebel against the direction
of fate. When it is day out, he chooses to “[make] himself an artificial night”
(Greenblatt 876). When he receives news of Juliet’s death from Balthasar, he
again chooses to rebel against the reality of the situation: “Then I defy you,
stars” (930). By deciding to disregard, without forethought, the direction of fate
as seen in ‘clear’ realities, Romeo, the rogue actor, continually disregards the
plan of the real director and upsets the possibility for a good outcome for himself
and for Juliet. By metadramatically placing Fate in the position of director,
Shakespeare seems to be forcing us to wonder what happens when one
chooses not to follow direction; perhaps we wind up being “fortune’s fool” (907).
One other example of the use of the internal dramatist worth mentioning in
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Romeo and Juliet is the case of Friar Lawrence. He does much to attempt to
control the action of the other characters, and ultimately fails. By his failures (the
marriage, the potion, the note, etc.), Shakespeare calls into doubt the purity of
his motives. We wonder whether perhaps he is driven more by his own ego
rather than by a sense of compassion for the situation of the two young lovers.
His failure and his fleeing from the tomb seem to suggest this.
In The Merchant of Venice, one character above all others takes on the
role of internal dramatist. Portia directs the action of the play in two separate
instances: the first involves the casks and the choice of a husband, and the
second occurs at the trial scene. In each case she stages the action of the
scene, placing characters and props in specific spots, reminiscent of a sort of
play within the play. The cask scenes are even opened with a ceremonial
drawing aside and subsequent closing of the curtains by director’s assistant
Nerissa. While Portia portrays herself to the other characters as the dutiful and
obedient daughter, following the instructions of her beloved and deceased father,
she clearly has much more power than she reveals. By her dialogue regarding
the stupidity of the choices of the first two suitors, she seems to know the secret
of the casks – she is, after all, in control of the keys. Also, the way in which she
leads Bassanio to the correct casket is an indication of her role in this scene. In
the courtroom scene, the Duke is an internal dramatist – sort of a producer – but
Portia directs the action to the Duke’s desired end. Her manipulation of the
contract, the law, and the characters’ emotions serves to pit one against the
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other, leaving herself as the only example of sense or wisdom in the entire room.
Her self-aggrandizement is reminiscent of the scenes at Belmont where she (or
at least her likeness) is literally placed on a pedestal and kept inviolate behind
the curtain, like a prize held just out of reach by Monty Hall. In the end, Portia’s
actions lead the courtroom scene to its desired “gentle answer” (Greenblatt
1129). Shylock, her victim, has converted as we knew he would, and all is well in
Venice. Internal dramatists are powerful forces, and when presented with skill
and intelligence – as they are in Shakespeare – they offer us a strong
metadramatic view of the work.
IV
The third large category of metadramatic devises apparent in these three
works is that of the more overt gesture or dialogue. At times characters seem to
step out of themselves and come to an audience directly through their speech or
their actions. Often these kinds of overt approaches seem trite and too obvious,
but again, with skill, they can be made to be incredibly effective. A Midsummer
Night’s Dream is a perfect forum for this type of technique, since the play has so
much to do with obscuring that line between the real world and the “fairy world”
(a pseudonym for the world of the stage). Here, as in any play, any use of the
aside breaks the psychological proscenium (of course, the stage proscenium did
not exist in Shakespeare’s time). Soliloquies, too, can function in this same way,
depending on the actor and the direction given him or her. One tremendous, and
oddly subtle, moment of such metadrama occurs during the performance of
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Pyramus and Thisbe by the mechanicals. Theseus makes a joking comment
(probably intended to one of the other newlyweds) about the play, and Bottom
blatantly breaks his character and speaks straight to the Duke. It is a humorous
moment, but it is also a profound one, forcing a careful viewer to consider
questions regarding the relationship between the stage and the audience: Is
there a real separation between the two worlds? If so, why? How much does
one existence have to do with the other? What is the role of the audience? etc.
These questions are some of the basic ones of the entire play, and they are
asked simply, yet powerfully, in this simple and comic moment. The same
questions come up at other times in the play, as well. At the end of the play,
Puck speaks and epilogue that directly addresses the audience. In these sixteen
short lines of trochaic tetrameter asks us to consider the dreamlike quality of the
act of playgoing, yet in the very act of asking the question, he metadramatically
forces both the concept of “the play” and its specific content into the conscious
reality of our waking world. There seems to be no line between the two (or three)
worlds. This play is a play about the consciousness of the drama of life; here,
the play truly the subject of the play.
An unusual usage of the Chorus is the main example of this type of
metadramatic device in Romeo and Juliet (besides the standard usages of
asides and soliloquies). The ancient character, “Chorus,” is used occasionally in
Shakespeare, but its transformation in this play is unlike any other that comes to
mind. Choruses have traditionally served two functions, to offer narrative (to set
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scenes or fill in gaps in action), and to comment on the action (usually
representing society at large). In Romeo and Juliet, the Chorus begins serving
these functions by presenting sonnets of introduction to the first two acts of the
five-act play. The audience would fully expect the return of the Chorus later in
the play, but it never returns. Its duties are usurped by several of the “regular”
characters in the play. Benvolio and the Friar, along with other characters in
smaller instances, take over the narrative aspect of the Chorus, and the
commentary function is assumed by the Prince. The final speech given by the
Prince seems awfully like it should have been a Chorus speech. He seems to be
speaking directly to the audience and not so much to the characters. The
metadramatic feeling is created by the fact that the audience understands the
usurpations that have taken place. When we hear “A glooming peace this
morning with it brings. / The sun for sorrow will not show his head….” (Greenblatt
939), we hear, in the dialogue, the persona of the Chorus, but we see the figure
of the Prince.
The Merchant of Venice is one of those several plays of Shakespeare in
which characters speak dialogue that directly ties the play to the world outside of
the play. In this play, life is referred to, in a variety of means, as being like a
stage. From the very beginning, we hear such references. Salerio says to
Antonie, “…Or as it were the pageants of the sea – do everpeer the petty
traffickers…” (Greenblatt 1090), suggestion that his mind works in a way like an
actor in a play. Only a few lines later, Antonio speaks a similar sentiment: “I hold
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the world but as the world, Graziano – / A stage where every man must play a
part, / And mine a sad one” (1092). Thus, the “stage” is set for the idea that
everyone has his or her own place in this great play, and that their destiny must
be fulfilled in that place. These references continue throughout the play, and the
characters live up to them. We see characters who refuse to move out of their
characterizations, however stereotyped they may be: Antonio, the superior
merchant; Shylock, the money-grubbing Jew; Graziano, the loud-mouthed
playboy; and Bassanio, the man led by his desires and passions more than by
reality. Perhaps, Shakespeare might be telling us, some people will only see
themselves as characters on a stage, and nothing more.
V
At times, the use of a metadramatic device can be seen as a clever ploy
by the playwright, a chance to show his technique. In Shakespeare, however,
the pervasiveness of metadrama seems to point to something much more
profound. In most instances, the metadramatics in Shakespeare’s plays are
attempts to call attention to the theatrical nature of life and our part in that drama.
We are all given a role (gender, social status, intellect, talent, etc.), and often we
find ourselves trying to break free from the impositions of our director and
become someone else through political empowerment, class mobility, or escape
from prejudice of whatever sort. Sometimes, we may simply find a need to
escape from the “real” world for awhile (whichever world that is). Perhaps these
are the reasons, as demonstrated in the plays, that we all role-play at times, or
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try to be our own internal dramatist. We create our own plays about that larger
play – life itself.
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Works Cited
Abel, Lionel. Metatheatre: A New View of Dramatic Form. New York: Hill and
Wang, 1963.
Baldick, Chris. “metadrama or metatheatre.” The Concise Oxford Dictionary of
Literary Terms. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1990.
Fly, Richard. “The Evolution of Shakespearean Metadrama: Abel, Burckhardt,
and Calderwood.” Comparative Drama. 20.2 (Summer 1986): 124-139.
Greenblatt, Stephen, gen. ed. The Norton Shakespeare. New York: Norton,
1997.
Hornby, Richard. Drama Metadrama, and Perception. Lewisburg: Bucknell UP,
1986.
Van Laan, Thomas F. Role-playing in Shakespeare. Toronto: U of Toronto P,
1978.