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Metatheatricality (esp. with ref to Shakespeare)

I thought I'd post this in the university course section, rather than academic help since degree level students will probably know more than A level-ers. :smile:

Could someone please tell me what metatheatricality means (particularly with reference to King Henry V)? My teacher mentioned it, explained it briefly then told me to look it up on the 'net. I'm not entirely sure I understand it though. Could someone explain it to me? Rep is available. :smile:

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Reply 1
Xanthe
I thought I'd post this in the university course section, rather than academic help since degree level students will probably know more than A level-ers. :smile:

Could someone please tell me what metatheatricality means (particularly with reference to King Henry V)? My teacher mentioned it, explained it briefly then told me to look it up on the 'net. I'm not entirely sure I understand it though. Could someone explain it to me? Rep is available. :smile:


"Literally, 'beyond theatre'; plays or theatrical acts that are self-consciously theatrical, that refer back to the art of the theatre and call attention to their own theatricality."

Ie a play that acknowledges that it is itself a play (for example if a character addresses the play's audience directly) and examines the relationships between theatre and reality.

I think.
Reply 2
Okay. But I need to know where metatheatricality occurs in Henry V. Is it in the battle scenes?
Reply 3
This happens in one of Shakespeare's historical plays (i'm not sure if it's Henry V or not) where an actor's original character acts the part of the king as he sits on a throne. There is also a reference somewhere in Shakespeare to all of us being actors, world is a stage etc etc. These things are extremely referential and cause the audience to realise that acting is taking place. Shakespeare never attempted to construct reality, his staging was fairly bare, it was up to the language in the speech to provoke the audience's imagination. For example plays were performed in the day in natural light, to indicate that it is night there will be a reference to the darkness in the dialogue in the first few lines of the scene.

Sorry i rambled a bit there, i hope some of it is relevant. xx

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Hmm i don't know enough about Henry V to help you there. xx
Reply 4
Xanthe
Okay. But I need to know where metatheatricality occurs in Henry V. Is it in the battle scenes?


Haven't read it for ages... doesn't the chorus introduce each act of the play/ comment on the plot etc? That would be one example.
Reply 5
Xanthe
Okay. But I need to know where metatheatricality occurs in Henry V. Is it in the battle scenes?
perhaps it could be...

but upon seeing the title of this topic, i instantly thought of the chorus (at the start) of henry v. that is a direct address to the audience. although its not exactly a character in the play doing the talking, it is done on stage and i suppose counts ass metatheatricality to some extent.

also, in king lear IV.vi, lear says "when we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools". it's not explicitly metatheatrical, but i've always had the feeling that it could/would be acted so that there is some sort of hand gesture towards, or implied awareness of, the audience.
Reply 6
the best examples of metathetricality would possibly be found in more modern plays... beckett's "waiting for godot" has a good example..


HAMM:
Clov!
CLOV (impatiently):
What is it?
HAMM:
We're not beginning to... to... mean something?
CLOV:
Mean something! You and I, mean something!
(Brief laugh.)
Ah that's a good one!
In 'Henry V', the first thing that springs to mind as metatheatrical is the opening.

The best example might be the scenes involving the Players in 'Hamlet', but there are various short passages that might be taken as metatheatre, such as the Lear example given by silence, or this from 'The Tempest':

Prospero
These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind.


Critics like to point out that "the great globe itself" might refer to the Globe theatre; same thing when Hamlet asks, "I, thou poore Ghost, while memory holds a seate /
In this distracted Globe: Remember thee?".

Revenge tragedies that employ the 'play within a play', e.g. Kyd's 'Spanish Tragedy', are also interesting to look at in terms of metatheatre. The Kyd is hilariously brutal.

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silence
the best examples of metathetricality would possibly be found in more modern plays... beckett's "waiting for godot" has a good example..


Isn't that from 'Endgame'? Brilliant play, esp. "What is there to keep me here? / The dialogue."
Reply 8
Thanks everyone for your replys. It's been really useful.
Reply 9
Da Bachtopus
Isn't that from 'Endgame'? Brilliant play, esp. "What is there to keep me here? / The dialogue."
yes it is. don't know why i wrote that.

kyd rules. the play within a play is a strange confusing concept.
Reply 10
So would metatheatricality apply to people playing a role inside a play? Such as Iago in Othello? Or is that just stretching it too far?
Definitely an interesting concept.
Reply 11
Personally i think it has to be a bit more obvious than that, if Iago played an actor for example. xx
Reply 12
supercat
So would metatheatricality apply to people playing a role inside a play? Such as Iago in Othello? Or is that just stretching it too far?
Definitely an interesting concept.

i don't think that would be an example of it. it's possible to argue that some soliloquies could be metatheatrical on occasion, when it seems as if the character is really addressing the audience. but it could just be very effective drama sucks us in, rather than the characters actively engaging with us on a personal level to create that effect.

metatheatrical moments in a play will often be very obvious. you can get it quite a bit in comedy, but that does tend to occur more when actors decide to improvise (so it's not often scripted). if i were to make up an example of someone saying something metatheatrical in a play, imagine two characters Master silence and his butler supercat. supercat says "Master silence, i think you ought to get some sleep, it's getting late". Then master silence could reply, metatheatrically, something like "i suppose so; i'm quite tired, this is the second performance i've done today!" it can also be said as an aside, and when not, you'd rarely get a response of complete seriousness from the other actor(s).
It means wherever they address the audience directly, either introducing themselves or speaking to the audience specifically like some other people have said. I think there is an example in Coriolanus when someone addresses the audience with 'And I am the son of...'? Maybe someone could clarify this?

Also the quote someone mentioned earlier about 'All the world's a stage and all the people merely players is from As You Like It and is said by Jaques. (Sorry couldn't resist that!) :biggrin:
Reply 14
The Lady Raven


Also the quote someone mentioned earlier about 'All the world's a stage and all the people merely players is from As You Like It and is said by Jaques. (Sorry couldn't resist that!) :biggrin:



Thankyou for clarifying that for me :biggrin:
So could any character used as a device to relate information to the audience be metatheatrical? Like Tom in The Glass Menagerie, or Alfieri in A View From The Bridge? Even though they are still *themselves* as a character and are effectively just narrators? Or is it when they explicitely aknowledge that what you're seeing is a play?

Also, would Woman In Black be quite a good example? The whole idea of the main character getting an actor to perform his story to the audience? Though I may completely have the wrong end of the stick...
Reply 16
i know you're looking at shakespeare, but a really good comparison point to help you understand meta-theatricality would be the works of bertolt brecht. he was a german playwright, but a lot of his plays are translated - i'd reccommend getting hold of a copy of mother courage. he was pioneer of using estrangement effects , to remind the audience that the play is not actual reality, and thus hopefully forcing them to consider it more objectively, and take some kind of reflection or moral or didactism away from the experience. google him. v interesting.

also, bear in mind that this idea of meta - self conscious art- is applicable not just to theatre - poems that point out they are poems, novels aware of their novel status etc are all examples of meta-literature.

and last of all, have a look at JA Cuddon's dictionary of literary terms and theory - v useful.
Reply 17
I guess the test is: does the line (or speech) remind you that you're in a theatre? Does it shake you out of being involved in the story, and remind you that you are in fact sitting in an audience, watching a play?
This reminds me of the Prologue to Pyramus and Thisbe in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Quince says:

'If we offend, it is with our good will.
That you should think, we come not to offend,
But with good will. To show our simple skill,
That is the true beginning of our end.
Consider then, we come but in despite.
We do not come, as minding to content you,
Our true intent is. All for your delight
We are not here. That you should here repent you,
The actors are at hand: and, by their show,
You shall know all that you are like to know,'

I suppose it's sort of in the realm of the metatheatrical, but a lecturer made an interesting point about this piece the other day. Generally Shakespeare would have left his plays unpunctuated and the job of punctuating would have been the editor's. Anyway, the lecturer said that this was perhaps the only text we can be certain that Shakespeare punctuated himself because the humour comes from the misplaced fullstops and commas. We looked at the piece without any punctuation and it's possibly to punctuate it in such a way that it's garbled but means the opposite of what it means with the punctuation as it is now. Anyway, food for thought and all that!
Reply 19
Another example of metatheatricality in Shakespeare would be the speech by Time in The Winter's Tale.

The Henry V chorus is metatheatrical because it asks the audience to imagine the battle scenes with their minds. Drawing attention to the fact they are watching a play that will not be realistically representing the action. Hope that helps. :smile: