1
Hwang
Hwang Ji Yeon
Ron Strickland
378: Shakespeare on Stage
08/08/03
Metadramatic Techniques and Their Effects on the Audience in King Lear
I
As Richard Fly points out, metadramatic approach in Shakespearean criticism is concerned with interpreting Shakespeare’s plays in terms of the reflection of “the artist’s ongoing struggle to understand and master the expressive potential of his medium” (24). The medium here is drama itself as an art form. I think that the core of metadramatic approach to the plays is this emphasis of the ‘medium’. It does not exclude the aspect of meanings a play may create. But its main concern is to trace the process in which a piece of drama is made. Usually, drama making process begins with the consideration for the concrete theatre space the dramatic work is to be staged. So, the understanding of dramatic medium is related with that of the theatre. Theatre itself is not only the starting point but also the closing one for a dramatist. Putting emphasis on the aspect of the theatre and the elements of the theatre, I want to examine in King Lear the relationship between the theatre and the play written for staging in the theatre condition. It will show that the metadramatic techniques used in King Lear resulted from the consideration for the theatre and for the audience seeing the play performed.
First, I want to focus on the prevalent theatre going habit at Shakespeare’s time. According to Andrew Gurr, with increasing population of London, theatres from 1574 to 1642 found their regular audience to “help the players to stay prosperous” (213). He says that “there was on average over that seventy years or so of London commercial theatre as many as a million visits to the playhouse a year”(212). Though the admission prices differed according to the seating places, “the basic penny at the Globe in 1600” (215) was relatively cheap compared with other forms of entertainment at the time. Once people were admitted to the public theatre, they could see all kinds of people of different classes. As John Davies put it, “citizens and artisans joined with gentlemen and prostitutes, porters and household servants” could attend the same play (Gurr 217). This fact supports Jean Howard’s opinion that in the age of “heightened social mobility” (10), theatre could be a place of “social change and contestation” (11). I think this is the aspect of interaction between the theatre audiences. The theatre space and the presence of “people from the whole social gamut” (Gurr 217) at the same place could make the audiences think of their life in terms of theatre. So, Jaques’ speech beginning with “all the world’s a stage” shows the theatre metaphor prevalent among people at the time. Even Queen Elizabeth I used theatre metaphor to communicate with the people and to display her power to the whole English subjects. When she said that “we princes are set on stages in the sight and view of all the world” (Greenblatt 21), she seemed to have thought that she was seen to the people like an actor seen to the audience and that therefore, she must manipulate her image as a king.
Like this, theatre in Shakespeare’s time functioned as a cultural place to offer people an opportunity to meet people of various class and profession as well as to give an entertainment. Through this theater experience, they could share the common consciousness that they were similar to the actors playing the designated roles. According to Jean E. Howard, this kind of phenomenon shows that “the theater shared a discourse of theatricality with the larger culture” (10). That is, under the popular theatre-related sayings, there were the greater social changes triggered by the “transition from feudalism to capitalism” (10). Exposed to the changing social positions and identities, people came to have “the sense that in some fundamental way men and women were actors in a self-scripted theater and must forge the identities once taken for granted”(Howard 10).
But, according to Anne Righter, Shakespeare’s use of the play metaphor stands out among his contemporaries. She says that “the association of the world with the stage fundamental to Elizabethan drama built itself deeply into his (Shakespeare’s) imagination, and into the structure of his plays” (89). Her remark emphasizes that Shakespeare’s plays are unique in the matadramatic frames. The frequent use of the play image, “a meditation upon the nature of the theatre” (Righter 89) and the reflection of “the relation of illusion and reality” (Righter 89) are important qualities of metadrama. Righter points out the metadramatic aspect of Shakespeare’s plays as follows: “Shakespeare’s genius perceived in the metaphor (play metaphor) a virtually inexhaustible means of expression, reflecting the multiple possibilities inherent in the dramatic situation itself” (89).
James L. Calderwood defines metadrama (or metatheatre) as “a dramatic genre that does go beyond drama (at least drama of a traditional sort), becoming a kind of anti-form in which the boundaries between the play as a work of self-contained art and life are dissolved” (4). Anne Righter’s remark and that of James L. Calderwood show us the way a drama becomes metadramatic; to use Michael Shapiro’s term, it’s through “self-reference” (146). Here, self-reference means that a play reminds us (the reader or the audience) of its being a play. Sidney Homan expresses this metadramatic situation as a moment “when the theater turns to itself” (10). According to Homan’s explanation, the metadramatic moments, especially in Shakespeare’s plays, make us “conscious of his art” by referring “not just to theatrical references in the text itself but to metaphors based on all the components of the theater” (11). He enumerates the components of the theater like this; “the act of creation on the playwright’s part, the resulting text, the techniques of acting and the delivery of that text, and the presence and function of the audience” (11). I think that the four things Homan lists are very important elements when we discuss the metadramatic techniques. Especially, I think, the playwright’s creating process and the function of the audience are more important than the other two components. Considering the amphitheatres of Shakespeare’s time, we cannot put too much importance on the audience part in the process of writing a play. So my main concern in this paper is to emphasize the relation between the metadramatic techniques and the audience in King Lear.
II
From the explanations above, we can find that King Lear also deals with a society in which great social change accompanies the crisis of role playing of the members living in that society. In the center of the play, we witness that the king’s role comes to nothing. Lear’s statement to Cordelia that “Nothing will come of nothing” is an echo throughout the play and can be applied, I think, to the metadramatic aspect of this play. If someone’s role in the society he lives in is nothing, he comes to nothing. That Lear and Edgar, after they are stripped of their fixed position, come to nothing reminds us constantly that our presence in the world is only playing of the designated role. The fool’s remark (1.4 187-88) after seeing Lear mistreated by Goneril that he is better than Lear because he is a fool makes sense in terms of role playing. In the fool’s thought process, we can find an association of life with play metaphor. If we all are actors on the stage, the role of a fool is better than nothing.
Thomas F. Van Lann, in his Role-Playing in Shakespeare, begins his reading of King Lear by showing that Lear’s playlet in the opening scene goes wrong. According to Van Lann, the first scene of King Lear seems to be a well-rehearsed play except Cordelia’s response. Lear’s remark to Cordelia’s “nothing”, “How, how, Cordelia!. Mend your speech a little,/ Lest you may mar your fortunes” supports Van Laan’s opinion that Lear “treats Cordelia like an actress who has forgotten her lines”(198). To his point, I want to add that Lear in this speech acts like a director of a performance. Van Laan thinks it important that from the first, Lear does play-acting instead of role-playing. According to him, Lear’s play-acting of his imaginary role, instead of role-playing expected of him, begins all the following tragedies. Lear’s plan to “divest himself partially of his role as king but to retain only its rights and privileges violates the demands of his role” (199).I find that Van Laan’s notion of role-playing is too complex, but that his opinion that Lear is acting according to his playlet is very helpful to enlarge the perspective of metadrama in King Lear. His term ‘playlet’ is similar to the script of the dramatist. Though he does not use the word ‘surrogate dramatist’, I think that his notion of ‘play-acting according to the playlet’ is the same as that of ‘surrogate dramatist’ who does the playwright’s trade in the play. James L.Calderwood calls surrogate dramatist ‘internal dramatist’ and lists “Aaron, Oberon, Iago, Prospero, all the kings, whose successes and failures in governing men and events reflect Shakespeare’s in governing them” (16). The reason Calderwood included all the kings in the category of internal dramatist can be applied to Van Laan’s notion of play-acting of King Lear. Like most kings, Lear in the first scene of King Lear directs characters according to his own scripts and in this sense, he acts as a surrogate dramatist.
Besides Lear, there are more surrogate dramatists in King Lear. Above all, Edmund is a representative surrogate dramatist. Van Laan points out that “Lear’s nullification of the roles upon which order depends creates an ideal setting for Edmund” (200). Here, we can imagine Edmund’s position as a bastard son in the early modern England. According to Lawrence Stone, from the thirteenth century, bastards were “legally excluded from property inheritance” (30). So Edmund is as good as nothing in the social hierarchy of that period. Jean E. Howard mentions that “Renaissance drama is full of such displaced types (as Edmund)-Bosolas and Vindices and Bussy D’Amboises-who for one reason or another find themselves without a socially defined identity and so are forced to embrace the path of self-fashioning” (44). I think that Edmund’s play-acting as a surrogate dramatist is a way of ‘self-fashioning’ to fulfill his ambition-from ‘nothing’ to something- in this society of disorder and mobility. His virtuoso-like acting ability when he changes roles rapidly in act 2, scene 1 shows his desire for the roles denied to him in the society.
According to Van Laan, Goneril also acts as a surrogate dramatist. But she “begins not as actor but as playwright-director, working through her agent, Oswald” (Van Laan 201). What Lear accepts from her house is her invention and is performed by her servants including Oswald. If the audience can think about the relation between Goneril and Oswald, that is, the relation between a puppeteer and a puppet, they can enjoy a puppet show embedded in the main play, King Lear.
Kent and Edgar also play the surrogate dramatist role, though their purposes are different from those of Edmund and Goneril. This shows that surrogate dramatist not always does the villainous part. I think that surrogate dramatist technique is a kind of supplemental device to bridge the gap between the real dramatist and the manipulating characters. In the case of manipulating characters, the intervention of the real dramatist would lessen the dramatic suspense easier than the characters’ own plot- making. Kent’s purpose of his own play-script is to serve Lear in the ignorance of his identity. In Act I, Scene iv, he says in aside that “If thou canst serve where thou dost stand condemned, / Thy master, whom thou lov’st, shall find thee full of labour” (5-6). Edgar writes his own play to preserve himself in the bestial world in which he is betrayed by his own brother (though half-brother). His play-script shows the detailed direction how to act the Bedlam beggar. He says that “My face I’ll grime with filth, / Blanket my loins, elf all my hair with knots” (2.2. 175-176). I find that this direction is for a make-up staff in the modern theatre.
Like this, surrogate dramatist technique is used by many characters in King Lear. Van Laan observes that “almost every character (of King Lear) engages in play-acting of one kind or another” (201). I think that his remark is related with the deceptive roles many characters in King Lear play beyond their original fixed roles. In my opinion, the presence of multiple surrogate dramatists in the tragedy of King Lear shows the disordered and unstable society in which the old value and the new one struggle for the hegemony of power. The resolution of the struggle in this play does not end in harmony as in the comedies. Unlike in the comedies, the surrogate dramatists in the tragedies, I think, contribute to throwing the opposing forces into relief. Their manipulations of their own plays are usually delivered in soliloquies or asides. The special speech acts such as soliloquy and aside, conventionalized dramatic device, emphasize theatricality different from every day lives. Theatre experience gives the audience an ‘artificial’ entertainment. In many cases, the acting of surrogate dramatist, through the direct address to the audience, tends to make another play within a play.
Apart from the surrogate dramatist technique, the play metaphor does a metadramatic function. The play metaphor, according to Anne Righter, originated “from an ancient group of resemblances between life and drama” (113). The play metaphor, I think, carries always a pair of persons, that is, the original person and its ‘double’ or its agent. Antonin Artaud expresses the essence of the theatre by the phrase ‘theatre and its double’. As his term ‘double’ suggests, the use of theatre -related words in a play make the drama ‘metadramatic’ by their self-referentiality.
Edmund’s second soliloquy in Act I, Scene ii is metadramatic in that his speech reminds the audience of the fictive situation by the use of theatrical terms. On Edgar’s appearance just at the right time when he lets out Edgar’s name, he says like this; “ and on’s cue out he comes, like the catastrophe of the old comedy; mine is villainous melancholy, with a sigh like them of Bedlam ”(1. 2. 129-131). The words like ‘stage’, ‘act’, ‘play’, ‘comedy’ and ‘tragedy’ are suggestive of the theatre and emphasize the theatricality of the performance the audiences are experiencing.
Kent’s statement that Oswald takes “Vanity the puppet’s part against the royalty of her father” (2. 1. 33-34) also reflects his consciousness of the theatrical situation he is in. In act 4, scene 1, after seeing Gloucester with no eyes, Edgar cries in aside that “Bad is the trade that must play fool to sorrow, / Ang’ring itself and others” (37-38). In act 4, scene 5, Lear also uses the play metaphor when he sees Gloucester whose eyes were plucked out. He says that “When we are born, we cry that we are come / To this great stage of fools” (171-172).
I think that these play metaphors express the consciousness of life’s finiteness. Our life is supposed to end like the play ends after the limited play time. Also, these play metaphors reveal that our life has many unwanted parts we must play in the course of life. According to Herbert Weisinger, the theatrum mundi (all the world’s a stage) metaphor Shakespeare uses is a “powerful, brooding Renassance theme of time” (62). With the actual theatres and people’s play-going habits in the early modern England, the play metaphor functioned as a mirror for the life as a theatre. Weisinger interprets the appearance of play metaphor “as a symptom of sophisticated disillusionment” (63). He thinks that this play metaphor “signalize that intellectual crisis of the Renaissance” (70) and he summarizes the crisis citing Panovsky’s definition as “the consistent destruction or obscurantism of borderlines which the Middle Ages had established and observed, while not as yet renouncing the use of the concepts previously defined by these borderlines” (70). Considering Weisinger’s thought about the play metaphor, I think that the play metaphor used in the plays of Shakespeare blurs the borderline between reality and illusion. It does not mean that the attitude of the audience is always alienated from the play performed. Rather, it means that the play makes the audience engaged some times and other times it makes the audience detached. I think this is the real meaning of the “distancing” (Mack 280) Shakespeare supplied with the audience.
In connection with the ‘distancing’ effect, I think that Robert Nelson’s opinion that “the Shakespearean subplot often serves as a kind of play within a play, an ironic mirror of the main plot” (11) is interesting for the discussion of metadramatic techniques in Shakespeare. According to his opinion, the two- plot structure of King Lear gives the play metadramatic perspective. In other words, we can see King Lear family plot in comparison with the Gloucester family plot and vice versa. And in this process, each plot functions as a mirror reflecting each other. Some similarities also contribute to making mirror effect. Each plot has a father figure who doesn’t tell the good from the evil with his eyes open and also has a villain type figure and a scapegoat type one among children. In relation to the thematic aspect, we can also find some parallel points such as the victory of villainy over justice in the early part, the sufferings of the main characters in the middle phase and the awakening of them together with the punishment of the evil characters in the resolution. Especially, the repetition of the word ‘nothing’ across two plots reveals the interdependence of them at thematic level. Through these correspondences to the character types and the similar structures and themes between the two plots, King Lear’s subplot can be said to do some metadramatic functions.