This chapter attempts to verify what, presumably, everyone knows: the unusual degree to which Shakespeare resorted — through the words “he delights in” — to the play metaphor. Hence does this chapter pursue our general survey of Shakespeare’s metatheatre in the plays of the First Folio on textual or metalinguistic grounds. The purpose of this textual survey is two-fold. Play by play, it tries to discern and contextualize some of the strategies behind Shakespeare’s theatrical metalanguage (or of his own theatre speaking about theatre). While, taken as a whole, it provides a general overview that objectively establishes just how much he resorted to an intrinsically theatrical vocabulary in performance. What this survey would demonstrate, then, is the consistency and persistence of Shakespeare’s theatrical metalanguage.
To our knowledge there exists no thorough comprehensive survey of theatrical terms in Shakespeare’s dramatic writings. Even though such a survey would concern the very language of his chosen trade. Yet, both Barton and Calderwood (Barton, 1964; Calderwood, 1971) having written studies that constitute partial analyses of such a survey, most likely compiled something like it for their own use. That they did not include it in their writings is perhaps due to the belief that an extended perusal of any number of concordances (Bartlett, 1894; Spevack, 1973, 1968–80) would suffice in establishing the extent of Shakespeare’s theatrical metalanguage. But, indeed, such concordances are usually alphabetical, so that navigating between individual terms in order to get a sense of their number and location in any given play can be quite tedious. Furthermore, if concordances are exhaustive they aren’t necessarily comprehensive in that they do not distinguish between a theatrical act and an act of parliament, a stage in a theatre and a stage of a journey, or between playing a theatrical or a musical part (even though some allowance should certainly be made for the playhouse resonance of such terms).
What constitutes for us today a clearly recognizable theatrical vocabulary is not quite what it was for Shakespeare and his audience (Dessen, 1995). Hence words such as “character”, “set” and “cast” though they might resonate with us today would not have at the time of Shakespeare (having acquired their theatrical meanings in the mid to late 18th century). Whereas terms like “prologue”, “epilogue” and “interlude” that are not particularly theatrical today most likely were back then. For us a “Catastrophe” is a “disaster” but for Shakespeare it still meant the final reversal of a play (Baldwin, 1947).
Ultimately, our survey’s list of theatrical terms mostly grew out of Shakespeare’s own manifest use of them. Hence do classical dramatic genres (tragedy, comedy), dramaturgical units (play, act, scene), and structural terms (prologue, epilogue, catastrophe) form the obvious basis of his theatrical vocabulary. To which initial list, terms relating to architecture (theatre, stage), personnel (actor, player, comedian, tragedian, prompter) and the practice of theatre itself (perform, show, part, cue) were then added. Words referring to medieval or courtly dramatic practice (pageant, maske, interlude) also found their way into our list, as well as many other incidentals (gambold, scaffold, tyringhouse, properties, Rossius and — of course — “Rounded O” and Globe).