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Theatre

Play about a play – metatheatre. Self referential.

1. play within a play – use of theatrical conventions e.g. asides, soliliquies, fiction to illicit fact.
2. views on theatre – closest we get to seeing Shakespeare’s views.
3. spying and deceit – acting. Appearance versus reality.
4. semantic field of theatre “prologue” “distracted globe” “actions a man might play”
5. melodramatic theatrical scenes – opening scene, ghost, Polonius’ death, grave scene, duel, deaths.
6. revenge theatre conventions – questioning the morality of revenge because Shakespeare subverts traditional conventions.

Soliloquies

• contradictions between and within them
• function and effect --> insight and rapport
• plots change in character
• stops using the device halfway --> no longer confused and agonising.

Elizabethan theatre --> more willing to suspend their disbelief and to accept a soliloquy as a device.

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Originally posted by BeckySparrow on TSR Forums.