plays about plays

[Shawn Huffman]

On Wed, 22 May 1996, Denis Johnston wrote:
 
> >Since theatre today no longer pretends to be a representation of the world,
> >it has no other object but itself. I am interested in a very particular
> >form of metadrama, that which occurs when the framed drama is well-known.
> >
> Like Mr Verdecchia, I think your assumption here is deeply flawed. Like him
> too, though, I offer an example of a play which uses a well-known play as
> its setting (but not its object): Tom Stoppard's "The Real Inspector Hound,"
> a comic evisceration (and much more!) of stage whodunits in general, and
> "The Mousetrap" in particular.
>
> Is "The Dresser" based on King Lear, to some degree? This opens up another
> area, that of plays about the theatre -- "theatrum mundi" and all that.
 
 
Without going into the debate on whether theatre today can be generally
described as narcissistic metafiction, I think that there has been some
confusion with respect to the kind of metafictional relationships that
O'Neill-Karch is describing.  Theatre within the theatre does not
describe a play that "uses another play as its setting" -- this is an
intertextual question.  To speak of a play within a play, some minimum
conditions have to be met:  the integrity of the inserted play as a
structured whole is usually respected to a certain degree, the inserted
play is framed by the main play, and certain characters of the main play
will become spectators of the inserted play.
 
Teatrum mundi, while I'm in definitions mode, is not theatre about
theatre.  It is an attitude concerning the world, i.e. "All the world's a
stage".  Ross Chambers has an excellent book describing vanitas and
teatrum mundi:  La Comedie au chateau, Paris, Jose Corti, 1970.
 
Shawn Huffman
UQAM