Though the sheer number of devices (twenty-eight plays-in-play and fifty-six disguises) is striking enough, it is rather that most occurrences (twenty-four plays-in-play and thirty-five disguises) are structurally significant that is perhaps most astonishing. For it is indeed the devices’ structural significance that our highlighting of their ‘insetting’ does bring to the fore. Hence was Shakespeare’s use of these two devices not only persistent, but built into the very structure of a great number of his plays. Twenty-five of Shakespeare’s plays (all of the comedies, four of the histories, and seven of his tragedies) require one of these two devices in order to either be problematically ‘sent-off’, or satisfyingly resolved.
Shakespeare’s early affection for the double or triple plot (as indicated by Two Gents, Shrew and 2&3Hvi) might partially explain this metatheatrical propensity. Since secondary or tertiary plots are often, perforce, ‘inset’ within a play’s primary plot. What is more, it often appears as if some of Shakespeare’s secondary plots were introduced as entirely new plays (a ploy especially evident in Winters Tale, 2Hvi, Julius Caesar and Cymbeline). Shakespeare’s rather extraordinary ‘plotting’ and sense of theatre are perhaps also indicative of another metatheatrical level altogether. One that remains largely untapped (and would be mostly irrecoverable were it not for scholars versed in, both, the canon and the plays’ original staging). For something metatheatrical does seem to happen between Shakespeare’s plays. The shape of a particular event or part, the use of a particular device, often appearing meant to recall a similar occurrence in another play (as the ‘Maskers’ of Merchant, Much Adoe, and Henry VIII strongly recall those of Romeo & Juliet). Indeed, that playgoers familiar with Shakespeare dramatic works — his themes and strategies — were meant to read and anticipate more of the structural ‘signposts’ of Cymbeline, The Winters Tale and The Tempest than would have been otherwise possible, appears to one of the underlying strategies of the dramatist’s final manner. A manner whose aim appears to have been a complete (structural) transparency.