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How Does William Shakespeare's Use Of Metadrama

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‘Shakespeare’s plays reflect not life but art.’ Make use of this remark in writing an essay on Shakespeare’s use of Metadrama.

Shakespeare constantly plays with metadrama and the perception of his plays as theatre and not life with the complications inherent that in life we all play roles and perceive life in different ways. The play has recognition of its existence as theatre, which has relevance to a contemporary world that is increasingly aware of precisely how its values and practices are constructed and legitimised through perceptions of reality.
Critic Mark Currie posits that metadrama allows its readers a better understanding of the fundamental structures of narrative …show more content…

This essay examines the various metadramatic constructions that Shakespeare used to achieve this and examines the effect of these dramatic constructs for the audience.
Dramatic constructions were written to be presented and understood in performance. The nature of these constructions lies in how they are assembled. How the words work with and against each other – ambiguity, paradox, pun, literary and cultural reference. Some aspects of the works are conscious, some unconscious but the playwright’s intentions do not matter as we the audience view the art first and then the artist.
There are certain conventions used in Elizabethan theatre. The audience needs to know how these conventions work before they can accept them. As there were only two or three professional theatre groups operating at the time Shakespeare knew his audience and there is evidence to suggest that he wrote specifically for these people who no doubt kept returning because they enjoyed the way he wrote and the experience of the play.
One convention which foregrounds the theatrical is the ‘aside’ where for example Hamlet speaks very loudly so that the audience who may be ten meters away can hear him clearly and yet another person on the stage only three meters away cannot hear a word. The audience accepts this as a known

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