Shakespeare and Metatheatrical Representation Perry McPartland Shakespeare and Metatheatrical Representation Dissertation for the degree philosophiae doctor University of Agder Faculty of Foreign Languages and Translation 2020 Doctoral dissertations at the University of Agder 303 ISSN: 1504-9272 ISBN: 978-82-8427-005-0 Perry McPartland, 2020 Print: 07 Media, Kristiansand Acknowledgements Firstly, I would like to thank the University of Agder for the financial and material support given to this project. Particular thanks must go to the staff of the Department of Foreign Languages and Translation for their expertise and generosity over the three years that I have been working on this dissertation. I must also express my gratitude for the research grant which enabled me to spend nine valuable months working at Det norske institut i Roma, and to also thank the staff there for their friendliness and professionalism. Enormous thanks must go to my supervisors. My original supervisor, Professor Roy Tommy Eriksen, passed away April 2019. He is very much missed. I benefited greatly from his model of academic dedication as well as from his gracious companionship. Subsequently, Professor Per Sivefors took on the role as my main supervisor, and Professor Oddvar Holmesland became my assistant supervisor. I am deeply indebted to both for the insight and support they have provided as well as for their camaraderie. Thanks must also go to Professor Stuart Sillars who supervised my MA thesis at Bergen University. His acumen and intellectual generosity set me on the path which has culminated in the present study, and I was fortunate enough to benefit from these qualities again when he acted as the opponent for my 90 percent seminar. I should also mention the contribution made by two other professors at the University of Agder, Charles Armstrong and Michael Prince, who, even though they were not directly involved in my project, offered me valuable feedback and encouragement. Thanks must also be extended to all the professors that I was fortunate to study under during my three years at Bergen University. A special debt of gratitude is owed to Professor Øyunn Hestetun, sadly no longer with us, whose energy and effortless generosity contributed in no small part in helping me make my original PhD application. In 2014 I was invited to join the Bergen-Volda Shakespeare Network, and the conferences that have been arranged over the years have been illuminating. My thanks go to all its members. I have benefitted enormously from the quality of the research that has been shared, and have been humbled by the welcome I received, as well as by the support that the group’s members have extended to my own academic efforts. Special thanks must go to Professor Charles Moseley and Associate Professor Svenn-Arve Myklebost for their feedback and friendship. Love and thanks go to my friends (Vincent Stephen deserves special mention for his thoughtful responses to a number of these articles) and to my English and Norwegian families. Anything that I might manage to accomplish owes a significant debt to all of you. Finally, and most importantly, a world of thanks to my wonderful wife, Maria Hjelmeland and my amazing children, Sean and Ivarna, without whom none of this would mean anything. Perry McPartland Kristiansand, June 25th 2020 Summary Forholdet mellom scenisk representasjon og metateater hos Shakespeare har tradisjonelt blitt oppfattet antagonistisk: publikum ses enten som fanget inn av scenens skinn av virkelighet, eller som fremmedgjort og skeptisk distansert fra den. Min forskning viser imidlertid at Shakespeares drama kun realiseres gjennom forfalskende effekter og posisjoner, men at det likevel ikke er noe motsetningsforhold mellom representasjon og metateater. Tvert imot suspenderes virkningen av hver enkelt modalitet; begge forblir i spill, og dramatikeren kan utnytte det generative potensialet som ligger i hver av dem. Kort sagt, representasjon og metateater flettes sammen som et overordnet kunstgrep. Dette er en risikabel estetisk strategi som på hvert trinn lett kan feile. Jeg analyserer hvordan Shakespeare lar motsetning, simulering og parodi virke sammen, og hevder at han med dette bidrar til å gi renessanseteatret en unik form for estetisk representasjon. vi Note on Publication The first two articles presented in this dissertation have already appeared in academic journals. “Holy Words and Low Folly in A Midsummer Night’s Dream” was published in Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, vol. 254, no. 1, 2017, pp. 48-66, and “Political Shakespeare and the Blessing of Art” appeared in EMCO, vol. 4, no.1, 2018, pp. 1-6. Minor corrections have been made to these two articles. A number of pieces that I have otherwise published have also found their way into the dissertation in one form or another, and these are noted below. The Introduction makes use of my article, “How to Paint the Plays”, published in EMCO, vol. 6, no. 1, 2015, pp. 31-40, and “Shakespeare, Art and Artifice: An Interview with Stuart Sillars”, published in EMCO, vol. 4, no. 2, 2019, pp. 1-31. It also references my “Titania and Bottom and a Vitruvian Fairy: A new reference to the work of Leonardo da Vinci in Henry Fuseli’s Titania and Bottom”, published in American Notes and Queries, December 2019, as well as my review of Shakespeare’s Pictures: Visual Objects in the Drama by Keir Elam, published in the Review of English Studies, vol. 70, no. 293, 2019, pp. 171-174. “Holy Words and Low Folly in A Midsummer Night’s Dream” references my “Transgendering Thisne”, published in American Notes and Queries, vol. 29, no. 3, 2016. “Green Plots, Hawthorn Brakes and an Ass’s Nole: Imaginative Translation in A Midsummer Night’s Dream” references my review of A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Third Series (The Arden Shakespeare) by William Shakespeare, edited by Sukanta Chaudhuri, published in Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, vol. 255, no. 1, 2018. “‘Mocked with art’: Contradiction and Affect in The Winter’s Tale’s ‘Statue’ Scene’” makes use of my “‘Quit presently the chapel’; A note on setting in the final scene of The Winter’s Tale”, published in Notes and Queries, vol. 67, issue 2, June 2020. “‘Exit [Chuckling]’: Exposition, Role and Dissimulation in The Winter’s Tale” makes use of my “‘This seeming lady and her brother’: Further remarks on the doubling of Perdita with Mamillius in The Winter’s Tale”, published in Notes and Queries, vol. 67, no. 2, June 2020, and references my “References to the doubling of Autolycus and the bear in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale”, published in Notes and Queries, vol. 66, no. 3, September 2019, pp. 454-457. vii Contents Acknowledgements ………………………………………………………………v Summary in Norwegian ………………………………………………………….vi Note on Publication …………………………………………………………….vii Introduction ………………………………………………………………………1 1 Metatheatrical representation ………………………………………....3 1.1 Preliminary definitions ………………………………………..3 1.2 Metatheatre’s relationship to representation …………………..6 1.3 Metatheatrical representation: a reading ………………………9 1.4 Methodology and analysis …………………………………...15 2 A critical framework ………………………………………….……...19 2.1 An economy of duality ……………………………..…….…..19 2.2 Dissimulation and mimesis: rhetoric, ekphrasis, copia ….…...24 2.3 Rhetoric ……………………….………………………….…..26 2.4 Ekphrasis ……………………………………………………..28 2.5 Copia …………………………………………………………34 2.6. A critical convergence ……………………………………….37 3 Metatheatrical representation and the model of estrangement: a survey of metatheatrical criticism ………………………...……39 3.1 The theatrical reference model of metatheatre ………….……39 3.2 Brecht’s model of estrangement ……………………….……..40 3.3 The impact of estrangement in the theatrical reference model ……………………………………………………..43 3.4 Metatheatre’s critical consolidation ………………………….45 3.5 Shakespeare’s ‘theatre of estrangement’ ……….…………….46 3.6 In response to the estrangement model ………………………53 4 The poetics of mimesis and the early modern theatre …………………59 4.1 Mimesis in the early modern era ………………………….….59 4.2 Representation’s rhetoricality: the poetics of mimesis and estrangement ………………………………………….65 4.3 Mimesis and estrangement redeployed ………………………69 5 Towards an outline of Shakespeare’s metatheatrical representation …73 5.1 ‘A willing suspension of disbelief’ reexamined and reapplied ………………………………………………….73 5.2 A representational register ……………………………………74 viii 5.3 An outline of Shakespeare’s metatheatrical representation …..77 Articles ……………………………………………………………...…………..83 Introduction to the articles ………...……………………………………..85 Holy Words and Low Folly in A Midsummer Night’s Dream ……….…...91 Political Shakespeare and the Blessing of Art: A Midsummer Night’s Dream ……………………………...…………………………...111 Green Plots, Hawthorn Brakes and an Ass’s Nole: Imaginative Translation in A Midsummer Night’s Dream ……………………….………..121 Dissimulation and the Dover Cliff: Metatheatrical Dissimulation in King Lear …………….………………………………………....137 ‘Mocked with art’: Contradiction and Affect in The Winter’s Tale’s ‘Statue’ Scene’ ………………………………………………….161 ‘Exit [Chuckling]’: Exposition, Role and Dissimulation in The Winter’s Tale ………………………………………….……185 Works Cited ……………………………………………………………………209 ix List of figures 1. The decollation of John the Baptist from Reginald Scott’s The Discoverie of Witchcraft ………………………………………………………………..180 x Introduction 1 1. Metatheatrical representation 1.1 Preliminary definitions If this discussion of Shakespeare’s drama is to concentrate on what I have termed ‘metatheatrical