The very background and premise of Tempest are framed theatrically: Antonio “plaid” a “part” (205) in deposing Prospero in favour of “him he plaid it for” (206) Alonzo; Ariel “perform[s] to point the Tempest” (306) exactly as dramatist Prospero’s “soule prompts it” (566). Tempest is Shakespeare’s play wherein the verb “to perform” occurs most often (six times). Twice it even under-scores the play’s unity of time. Theatrical performances being generally held between two and five o’clock in the afternoon, the time at TLN 359 is “two glasses” passed “the mid season” (and must “’twixt six & now … be spent most preciously”). While at TLN 1348, Prospero must “yet ere supper time … performe much businesse”, as if the time in Tempest were meant to correspond almost exactly with that of its audience in the “the great Globe it selfe” (1824).
Julia’s exchange with the Host — “He plaies false (father)” to “I would alwaies haue one play but one thing” (1680–91) — is ostensibly about playing music. But Julia is quibbling over theatrical connotations. To “play false” is to act badly, and to “haue one play but one thing” (i.e. oneself) is a tenet of Plato’s anti-theatrical criticism. Later, the disguised Julia will be describing to her rival Silvia her very own predicament and, as Sebastian, speak of her having to play “a lamentable [womans] part” in a “pageant of delight” (1978–85). Thus is the boy actor required to play a girl — Julia — who plays a boy — Sebastian — who played a girl — Ariadne — in “Madam Iulias gowne” (1980). “This passage”, writes Barton, “sets up a series of illusions receding into depth of which the most remote, … in fact represents reality” (1964, p.103).
In the second act, Mistress Ford consents “to act any villany against [Falstaffe]” (640). In the third act, this promised “villany” stands to be performed — “if I do not act it,” says Mistress Page “hisse me” (1382) — but must be aborted because of her jealous husband and two crossed “Qu” (1306,1382). Though not unscathed, the strangely gullible fat knight mistakes it all for a “comedy” (albeit one that never got past its “prologue”). In the fourth act, the wives do successfully carry out their assault on the Falstaffe. And the morality of their “villany”, spoken by Mistress Page solus, rather looks like an extra-dramatic address: “Wiues may be merry, and yet honest too:/ We do not acte [,] that often, iest, and laugh/’Tis old, but true” (1994–6).
Though Duke Vincentio does not like to stage himself (77) to the eyes of his people, he certainly doesn’t mind playing a part. Nor does he mind — as a near proto-Prospero — staging others (namely Angelo as Tirant and his victim, Isabella, as his nemesis). Yet in his meeting with Isabella, it is Angelo himself who — “condemn[ing] the fault” — condemns “the actor of it” (783) so that the actor “live not to act another” (860). Thus the “Angry ape” Angelo will condemn himself by playing “such phantastique trickes” before the “high heaven” of disguised Vincentio as will make “the Angels” — Isabella, Angelo, and the audience — “weepe” (877–9).
Errors falls almost entirely out of our reckoning. No other Folio play makes so few textual references to theatre (the next play with the least number is the incomplete Tymon of Athens with six). Though Errors may be Shakespeare’s earliest play (somewhat retouched for performances at a latter date), it might also have been written (like Venus and Lucrece) during the long theatrical lay-off (due to the plague) of 1592–4. After his somewhat freeform Henry VI plays, Shakespeare may then have turned to classical comedy in order to perhaps review, as Barton suggests, “the [classical] construction of a finely engineered dramatic plot” (Riverside, p.112). The actor, being away from the immediacy of stage, the dramatist may have explored other aspects of his craft, for Errors is the first of three comedies — with Loves Labours and Dreame — largely in rhyme.
“Part” is used eight times, perhaps indicating that the playing of parts is an essential device of Much adoe. In the first act, with “doe you play the flowting Iacke” (178), Benedick mis-takes Claudio’s love for Hero as mere fooling. But Claudio retorts that it is rather Benedick who — “in the de-spight of [Beatrice’s] Beautie” — “Never could maintaine his part” (229). Thus is a certain incipient theatricality suggested. And indeed, in Shakespeare’s third use of a Maske, Don Pedro will have to play — “in some disguise” (311) — the part of the bashful Claudio in wooing Hero. And this wooing is almost un-done by the vice-like Don John’s own impersonation of Benedick (572). As for Beatrice and Benedick they will themselves be gulled into love through their friends’ mises en scène and playing of parts (1041 to 1276).
Loves Labour’s Lost is the first of Shakespeare’s three theatre-plays (the other two being Dreame and Hamlet). Almost three-quarters of the play’s theatrical terms (20 out of 28) are gathered in scene 5.2, which includes both the Maske of the Muscovites and the Pageant of Nine Worthies. The Embassage holds in fairly low esteem the Academe’s attempt at a Maske — “Their shallow showes and Prologue vildely pen’d” (2228). While the Academe itself will mostly denigrate the Comics’ attempt at a Pageant — “one shew worse then the Kings and his companie” (2456). Hence, as in Dreame’s 5.2, is most talk rather critical of amateur theatrics.
As in Loves Labours, the passage from scene to scene is according to a fairly set pattern (Athenians/Mechanicals/Fairies). Once again, the pattern is repeated twice before being interrupted in act 3 (while act 5 mostly restores it). But one of the principal structural differences between the two plays are the liaisons that the Fairies provide. Indeed, Puck and Oberon are as much spectators as stage-managers. Hence do the forest ventures of the crossed Athenian lovers make up a “pageant” (TLN 1138) for Oberon and Puck to witness and re-cast at will. As for the multiple inset-play, Pyramus & Thisby, while its finale is obviously catastrophic, its first three parts seem akin to choral interludes that mark the main structural stages of the play.
The plot of the Merchant & the Jew is lightly book-ended by a number of brief theatrical references. In scene 1.1, Salarino compares Antonio’s “Argosies” to “Pageants of the sea” (15), which is followed by Antonio’s own melancholy reference to theatrum mundi — “I hold the world but as the world Gratiano, A stage … “ (85–7) — which serves as the foil to Gratino’s exuberance — “Let me play the fool” (88) — which then introduces the sub-plot of Bassiano & Portia — “Well: tel me now, what Lady…” (128). While, in scene 4.1, Shylock’s “last houre of act” (1924) will itself be foiled by an “act” (albeit a legal one) to be “enacted” against him (2231, 2236). But it is the three short scenes (2.4–6) of Jessica & Lorenzo’s elopement that cluster together the most terms (seven in one hundred and fifty typographical lines). Five of these terms concern “masking”, the very device Shakespeare had already used (in Romeo & Juliet and Loves Labour’s) when he sought to reconcile such seemingly irreconcilable parts as a Capulet and a Montague, the Academe and the Embassage, and now a Christian and a Jew.
I wil tell you the beginning: and if it please your Ladiships, you may see the end, for the best is yet to doe, and heere where you are, they are comming to performe it. (277–80)
Lebeau is referring to Orlando’s wrestling match with Charles (and will do so again in almost exactly the same terms at 308). But Lebeau says something that is equally true of As You Like It itself, the “best” of which is “yet to doe” by players who are indeed coming “heere where you are” to perform. The real and the imaginary performances correspond exactly. And Jaques’ seminal “universal Theater” speech of 2.7 will apparently develop this correspondence further. But Jaques’ speech also works it back again since he makes a stage of “all the world” (1118) of As You Like It (as indeed it is).
Two-thirds of the terms listed appear in the two induction scenes (which open two of the play’s four theatrical levels). Indeed, the Induction’s play-world is so complete as to allow for two types of playgoers with two levels of discourse. Where the Lord, in Induction 1, speaks of a “part” being “aptly fitted and naturally performed” (94–6), the Beggar (and False Lord of Induction 2) prefers “a Christmas gambold or a tumbling tricke” as he casts a wary eye on “houshold stuffe” (291–6). In this 1623 version of Shrew, the aptly-fitted part — according to the prefix Sincklo — was that of Soto (98) in John Fletcher’s Women Pleased (ca.1604–20), which perhaps indicates that the actual players (like John Sincklo) were to name a part in their current repertoire.
As for Shrew itself, the initial action of the play is described as “some shew to welcome [Lucentio and Tranio] to Towne” (346); a “shew” in which they themselves will also “beare [a] part” (500).
With his line “Faith sir, ha’s led the drumme before the English Tragedians” (2369), Parolles tells a bold lie about Bertram. But he is probably telling the truth about the actor performing the role. “Act” appears six times and — with “actor” — makes-up half the above entries. Our list thereby largely consists of a set of variations on a single word: The old king is “[worn] out of act” (276), and his apparent “catastrophe” (304) that of life itself. But with “The help of heauen”, says Helena, the King should also “count the act of men” (759–63). And so will Helena be the King’s saviour, an “earthly actor” showing “heavenly effect” (915–6) whose “honours” are thus derived from her “acts” rather than her “fore-goers” (1037–8). As for the “bed trick”, at the crux of the play, it conjoins a “straining” (1862) with a “lawfull” (1847) act.
While Twelfe Night’s finale reprises the recognition scene of Errors, its scene 1.5, between Viola (a.k.a. Cesario) and Olivia, rather obviously revisits Two Gentlemen’s scene 4.4, between Julia (a.k.a. Sebastian) and Silvia. Both heroines are sent as emissaries by their respective love interests (Proteus and Orison) to “act [their] woes” (276) to their respective rivals (and in both cases, a “picture” of the rival is involved). Julia — as Sebastian — describes herself as having “been fairer, madam, than she is”, which is of the same playful ilk as Viola’s ”I am not that I play” (478) which, itself, resembles Iago’s line “I am not that I am” (Othello, 1.1). Twelfe night also makes — via Feste the Clown — a reference (akin to that of Soto in Shrew) to one of Shakespeare’s other plays: “I would play Lord Pandarus of Phrygia sir, to bring a Cressida to this Troylus” (1263). And in King Lear (3.2), the Fool will reprise Feste’s epilogic song “and the raine it raineth every day”. Hence does Twelfe Night hang rather self-consciously in the middle of Shakespeare dramatic corpus, wherein — Janus-like — it appears to be looking both forward and back. Of course, “If this were plaid upon the stage now, I could condemne it as an improbable fiction” (1649).
“Goe play (boy) play: thy mother playes, and I/ Play too; but so disgrac’d a part, whose issue/ Will hisse me to my Graue” (269–71). Leontes’ line over-stresses its own theatricality. And the same may be said of Hermione’s defence — “deuis’d/ And play’d, to take Spectators” (1210–1) — as well as Perdita’s “I see the Play so lyes/ That I must beare a part” (2533–4). Though all characters remain in action (and all players in character), the play itself repeatedly points to its being nothing more than a figment: “Why then the World, and all that’s in’t, is nothing … Bohemia nothing,/ My Wife is nothing, nor Nothing haue these Nothings,/ If this be nothing” (386–9). But this overt theatricality does not seek to alleviate the play’s obvious contrivances but rather makes them part of an aesthetic conceit.
Though some would cast Shakespeare himself as Time (“and giue my Scene such growing”, 1595), the dramatist might have also played the part of Camillo: “as if The Scene you play, were mine” (2469).
The Bastard Falconbridge almost seems an exploration of a virtuous Richard Plantagenet. And all of the theatrical terms listed above (safe for 1735) belong to him. He not only engages the audience directly (like Richard) but, at times, seemingly includes them in the action. At the siege of Angiers (2.1), he has them play the part of “Scroyles” standing “securely on their battelments” looking for all the world “As in a Theatre, whence they gape and point/ At your industrious Scenes and acts of death.” (689–90). Later, in his embassage to the Dolphin (5.2), he takes the stage with the all-inclusive line: “According to the faire-play of the world Let me haue audience” (2373). And his description of the Dolphin’s forces as “this harness’d Maske” (2386) somewhat anticipates Henry V’s Chorus’ “In little roome confining mightie men” (Epil.).
The first theatrical reference in Richard II famously occurs just past the half-way point — “there the Antique sits … Allowing him a breath, a little Scene To Monarchize” (1522–5). The line is in the first of two scenes (3.2–3) that lead up to Richard’s abdication. And the abdication itself (4.1) is neatly framed by two references that seemingly look askance at the actual performance of Richard II: “future Ages groane for this foule Act” (2058) and “A wofull Pageant haue we here beheld” (2246). Henry IV’s coronation also corresponds exactly with a play where the eyes of the audience — “After a well-grac’d Actor leaues the Stage” [Richard II] — “Are idlely bent on him [Henry IV] that enters next” (2390–2). Which image also recalls Richard’s earlier vision of Henry as “wooing poor craftsmen with the craft of [smiles]” (1.4.28/602).
Nine of the eleven terms listed above are clustered around the “Play extempory” scene, wherein Hal foretells of his banishing “plumpe Iacke” (1439). Whereas Falstaffe’s comical extra-dramatic address (topically akin to Hamlet’s “little ayes) — “no Boyes play heere, I can tell you” (3039) — just precedes the play’s catastrophic stage direction: “Enter Dowglas, he fights with Falstaffe, who fals down as if he were dead. The Prince killeth Percie” (3040–1). Both of Hal’s antagonists (the Rebel and the Riot) thus appear to have died. A correspondence that is not lost on the prince himself who has them lying “in blood” (3075) side by side. Falstaffe, of course, is counterfeiting. Not so the prince, whose grief — though genuine — remains cautionary: “I should haue a heauy misse of thee/ If I were much in loue with Vanity” (3070–1).
Northumberland would have the play’s “Title-leafe” foretell a “Tragicke Volume” (as, indeed, it is for the rebels and for Falstaffe). But 2Henry IV is, to paraphrase Polonius, “Comicall-Historicall”. Its main device (as Rumour informs us) is mis-apprehension: “smooth-Comforts-false, worse then True-wrongs” (43). The History proper is framed by two theatrical references (albeit to theatrum mundi). Northumberland’s “And let this world no longer be a stage / To feede Contention in a ling’ring Act” (215) opens the principal argument. While the ailing King’s “For all my Reigne, hath been but as a Scene Acting that argument” (2733) closes it. And as Hal requires the Chief Justice to “prompt [his] ear” (3004), he thereby also spells Falstaffe’s doom.
All but four of the terms gleaned from Henry V belong to the Chorus. Thus the play appears rather intent on providing a lesson in “spectatorship” to its audience. Almost every aspect of the theatre is covered, from its architecture (Scaffold, Wooden O, cock-pit), through its dramaturgical parlance (prologue, scene, tragedie, prompt, Q, “shift [of] scene”), to an appreciation of its limitations (“eech out our performance with your mind”, 1080). It even provides an argument— if not for “the purpose of playing” itself — then, at least, for that of playgoing: “Minding true things, by what their Mock’ries bee” (1842).
The Oxford editors (TC, p.219) would limit Shakespeare’s involvement in 1HenryVI to the Roses’ scene (2.4/926–1068) and to the six scenes leading up to and including Talbot’s death (4.2–7/1948–2263). None of which contain any theatrical terms. So perhaps 1HenryVI provides us with an example of the type of incidental theatricality other playwrights resorted to (albeit, in this case, inspired by Shakespeare’s 2 & 3Hvi). Talbot has “enacted wonders” (134) “applauded through the Realme of France” (807–8). He is involved in a “wofull Tragedie” (548), albeit his “part” is the “smallest” (893). Meanwhile “Murther … “hath been enacted through [the] enmetie” (116) of Gloster and Winchester. And if, in their making peace, Gloster does not “dissemble” (1356), the “sterne and tragicall” (1341) Winchester does. Joan La Pucelle “brauely [plays] her part” (1684) in Talbot’s downfall, while King Henry “Prettily … [plays] the orator” (1927).
By wishing to “play my part in Fortune’s pageant” (342) the Duchess of Gloster — even as she defines the play itself — hastens the fall of her Husband. And in scene 3.1, which leads to Gloster’s final exit and subsequent death, Suffolk will attack Gloster on seemingly theatrical grounds: “in his simple shew he harbours Treason” (1348). Gloster continues this theatrical image with “Mine is made the Prologue to their Play” (1451). While King Henry sees “the map of honor, truth and loyalty” in Gloster’s face, he looks after him “with sad unhelpful tears” and “cannot do him good” (1520). Though Margaret exactly repeats Suffolk’s earlier attack, recognizing that “Glosters shew Beguiles [Henry]” (1527), she also knows her husband to be “cold in great Affaires” (1526). Henry is thereby cast — not as a player among players — but as a mere spectator to his own downfall. And if York would substitute himself for the ineffectual King Henry, he knows “that’s not suddenly to be perform’d” (1033).
Throughout 3HenryVI, Shakespeare appears to be repeatedly calling for a close correspondence of play and performance: “And if thou tell’st the heauie Storie right/ Vpon my Soule, the hearers will shed Teares” (627–8), while York in this final passion of 1.4 defies Margaret, his line certainly challenges the players themselves to tell the “storie right”. And Northumberland’s reaction to it — “see how inly Sorrow gripes his Soule” (638) — cannot but be an indication of what is expected of the actor interpreting the part of York. Scene 2.3 opens with “Excursions” followed by the entrances of Warwick (“as Runners with a Race”, 1057), Edward (s.d. “running”), Clarence, and Richard. Thus is the stage occupied by four out of breath actors when Warwick’s speaks his line “Why stand we like soft-hearted women heere … And looke vpon, as if the Tragedie/ Were plaid in iest, by counterfetting Actors” (1085–8). Whereupon the kneeling Warwick promises to do better: “neuer pawse againe, neuer stand still” (1090). In scene 5.6, Henry’s premonitory line “What Scene of death hath Rossius now to Acte?” (3084) is self-conscious and thereby casts a final theatrical, ritualistic light on this particular compact between play and players. Edward’s call for “comicke shewes” (3214) ends the play by conflating the jig with its fiction.
There is hardly a scene of Richard’s rise that isn’t theatrically marked (it is the play where “to dissemble” appears most often). This is largely due to Richard’s Vice-like quality, enabling him to play Chorus in his own Tragedy. But unlike Shakespeare’s other Vices (Aaron, Don John and Edmund), Richard engages his audience in the manner to which it was accustomed in the “old comedie”. It appears as if Shakespeare’s strategy in resorting to this device were to play history as religion of state. Yet Richard’s engagement does not survive his own coronation (4.2). After Buckingham’s “Play the Maids part” (2264), most terms belong to Margaret.
What we oft doe best, By sicke Interpreters (once weake ones) is Not ours, or not allow’d; what worst, as oft Hitting a grosser quality, is cride vp For our best Act (416–20)
Though Wolsey’s line concerns an unpopular tax that the King would have him revoke, Shakespeare himself rather seems to bitterly bemoan that is own “worst” Act is as oft as not “cride up” for his best. While his best work is mangled out of recognition by either poor actors (“Not ours”) or censorship (“not allow’d”). Of course, the line also applies to Buckingham, whose own “sicke interpreter”, the false Surveyor, would have him (with a nod to Richard III) “play a part” that Buckingham never meant “to act” (545–6).
Troilus & Cressida is full of pageantry. In 1.3, Ulysses complains that Patroclus “pageants us” (611) while he himself pageants Patroclus and Achilles (613, 625, 630). In 3.3, Thersites performs “the Pageant of Ajax” (2127). In 3.2, Troilus professes that, in “Cupids Pageant” (1705), his “will is infinite” though his “act a slave to limit” (1713). Which prompts Cressida to wonder if Troilus is not one of those “Monsters” (i.e. actors) who have “the voyce of Lyons, and the act of Hares” (1718). Troilus’s answer is unequivocal: “Are there such? Such are not wee” (1720) (i.e. “I am not an actor”). Yet the principal action of the play is framed by the two eponymous characters playing audience to each other’s show. Cressida in 1.2 looks over the procession of Trojan heroes in which Troilus bears a part. And Troilus, in 5.2, will be a spectator to Cressid and Diomed’s “coact[ed]” (3112) wooing scene, wherein Cressida proves herself a “monster”.
Coriolanus’ functional analogy is that of an actor so ill-suited for the part that he is required to play (1366, 2216) that no amount of prompting (2213) can make him play it convincingly. The eponymous character’s tragic flaw, then, is that he can only “play the man I am” (2101), who speaks according to the “matter which [his] heart prompts” (2213). Unlike his own mother, Volumnia, he cannot dissemble (2161). Yet Coriolanus’ exploits are so much described in terms of acts and scenes (769, 1310, 3253), that in the end he has no choice — when finally called upon to perform his “duty” to Volumnia’s “part” (3524) — but to acknowledge his own correspondence to a “dull actor” (3390) in an “unnatural scene” that the audience “laugh[s] at” (3542).
Though vice Aaron (2176, 2227, 2508) and Tamora (1021, 2366) show a degree of theatrical self-awareness, nowhere is the play’s theatricality made more manifest than in the development of its eponymous character. Titus, from killing his own son Mutius (1.1) to killing his daughter Lavinia (5.3), never fails to surprise us. Pleading for his sons’ lives (3.1), Titus will “tell my sorrowes bootles to the stones … they are better then the Tribunes” (1172–4). Faced with his mutilated daughter, the heads of his two sons, and his own amputated hand, Titus (perhaps in anticipation of the audience’s own reaction to this improbable accumulation of horrors) laughs (1413). His suggesting that Lavinia “play the scribe” (1073) with her stubs or that, in emulation of her, they bite their tongues “and in dumbe shewes/ Passe the remainder of our hatefull dayes” (1275) is darkly humorous. His referring to the “tragicke tale of Philomel” (1592) — which prompts Marcus’ near aside “why should nature build so foule a den/ Vnlesse the Gods delight in tragedies?” (1604) — will itself cause actor Titus — “Ile play the cooke” (2494) — to re-enact the classical tale of Virginius: “A patterne, president, and liuely warrant/ For me (most wretched) to performe the like” (2547).
The Folio’s text, devoid of Prologue, lacks the “two houres trafficque of our Stage” as well as — in Benvolio’s speech of 1.4 “Weele haue no Cupid hood winkt with a skarfe” (458) — the tantalizing lines “Nor no without booke Prologue faintly spoke/ After the Prompter, for our entrance”.
References to “act” and “acting” are made by only two characters: Friar Laurence (1393, 1927, 2415) and Juliet (1660, 2500). Juliet is certainly the play’s principal actor: “My dismall Sceane, I needs must act alone” (2500). And had the play been a reconciliatory comedy — “To turne your houshould[s’] rancor to pure Loue” (1101) — Friar Laurence would have gladly been its producer. As it stands, he is a prompter whose mis-cue has disastrous effects (as he readily admits in his final speech of 5.3). As for Romeo — excepting for his being “prompted” by love “to enquire” (878) in the balcony scene (1.5) — he mostly reacts: either to the play’s two catalysts, Benvolio and Tybalt, or to the bidding of Juliet or the stratagems of Friar Laurence. Indeed, it is probably his not being an actor that contributes to his being defined as “true Romeo” (3134) in the play’s final scene.
In scene 5.1, the Painter and the Poet come seeking Timon’s patronage. They have nothing to “present vnto him” but their “visitation” along with the painter’s “promise” and the Poet’s “intent” (2216–22). The Painter (clearly the art-theorist of the two) then plays off a seminal opposition (recurrent in Shakespeare and elsewhere) between promise and performance: “Promising, is the verie Ayre o’th’ Time/ It opens the eyes of Expectation/ Performance, is euer the duller for his acte” (2224–6). Theatre, which links together both performance and act, is thereby slighted. Yet, “The deede of Saying [being] quite out of vse” (2228), the purpose of both supplicants is to dissemble (to act as if they intended to fulfill their promises to Timon).
Timon, who has eavesdropped upon their conversation, has them play a little scene of his own devising, wherein Painter and Poet is each made privy (“You that way, and you this”, 2330) to Timon’s critique of the other’s acting: “I, and you hear him cogge,/See him dissemble,/ Know his grosse patchery” (2316–8).
Caesar — as he basks in a theatre of popular adulation (364–5) — says of Cassius that “He loues no Playes” (305). Yet it is Cassius who, not only orchestrates the tragedy, but also recognizes its lasting value (while suggesting its present performance): “How many Ages hence / Shall this our lofty Scene be acted ouer,/In State vnborne, and Accents yet vnknowne” (1327). But if Cassius is the play’s producer, then Brutus is its principal player. For though Brutus perceives the gulf and interim “Betweene the acting of a dreadfull thing,/ And the first motion” (684), he will bear his purpose “as our Roman Actors do” (864). Where Cassius sees “a lofty scene”, Brutus rather sees Caesar “bleeding in sport” (1329) in “this our present Acte” (1367).
“Two Truths are told/ As happy Prologues to the swelling Act/ Of the Imperiall Theame” (238–40) directly follows Macbeth’s first meeting with the weird sisters and his being proclaimed Thane of Cawdor (1.3). What he then says to Duncan in the next scene, “Your Highnesse part is to receiue our Duties” (307), cannot but be ominous. And if those “happy prologues” were indeed the beginning of the end for Duncan, then Rosse’s line “Thou seest the Heauens, as troubled with mans Act, Threaten his bloody Stage” (930–1) sounds his epilogue, as Macbeth goes “to Scone/ To be inuested” (965–6). Thus, throughout the course of this headlong play, do theatrical references serve as so many structural markers: “Our selfe will mingle with Society/ And play the humble Host” (1259–60) precedes the confirmation of Banquo’s death (1270) and the appearance of his ghost (1299). The “angerly” looking Hecate, berating the Sisters for not calling upon her “to beare my part” (1438), sounds Macbeth’s fall. While the eerily calm “Life’s but a walking Shadow, a poore Player/ That struts and frets his houre vpon the Stage/ And then is heard no more” (2345–7) is Macbeth’s response to his Lady’s death, even as the line itself harks back to the “swelling Act” of 1.3.
Under construction.
In his soliloquy of 1.2, Edmund introduces himself as something of a Vice character. This impression is further reinforced by his mention — just as Edgar makes his entrance — of an older dramatic genre: “Pat he comes like the Catastrophe of the old Comedie” (463). Edmund then briefly suggests his stratagem — “my Cue is villanous Melancholly with a sighe like Tom/ o’ Bedlam” (464–5) — before he begins to dissemble in earnest: “O these Eclipses do portend these diui-/sions” (466–7). Hence is Edmund’s “Tom o’Bedlam” more a figure of deceit and Chaos than Edgar’s “poore Turlygod poore Tom” (1271). But, unbeknownst to each other, both brothers will play a version of the same Tom. Of course, what the bastard son Edmund wants — “I haue one thing, of a queazie question/ Which I must act” (947–8) — is Edgar’s legitimacy. And this reversal of positions is indeed enacted by Edmund himself when, in scene 2.1, he makes Gloster believe that it was he, Edmund, came upon Edgar “Mumbling of wicked charmes and conjuring the Moone” (973). But perhaps this mis-cognisance of two brothers finds an apt counterpart in the recognition of two others: “I know thee well enough,” says Lear, “thy name is Glouster: … we came crying hither/… When we are borne, we cry that we are come/ To this great stage of Fooles” (2619–26).
Othello is a strong actor in war — “Were it my Cue to fight, I should haue knowne it Without a Prompter” (302–3) — yet he remains a weak one in matters of the heart: “Oh hardnes to dissemble!” (2175). The Moore is therefore no match for his prompter Iago, to whom half the terms in the above table belong (68, 166, 882, 948, 1040, 1242, 1461 & 1473). “Act” appears three times in scene 1.1, and three times again in 5.2. It occurs nowhere else. Hence does the word itself seem to frame the entire action of a play that runs from a “native act” (68) of dissembling (“I am not what I am”) to the “heauie Act” (3685) of murder.
Neither Antony nor Cleopatra can stand to be upstaged, as Cleopatra herself (394–5) and Ventidius (1510, 1524) make perfectly clear. But the play does not so much ply them against each other, as it does their theatre against Octavius’ politics: “[It] cannot be/ We shall remaine in friendship,” says Octavius, “our conditions/ So diffring in their acts” (809–11). Octavius would hardly “be Stag’d to’th’ shew/ Against a Sworder” (2186–7) because — exactly as Julius Caesar says of Cassius — “He loues no Playes/ As thou dost Antony: he heares no Musicke” (Julius Caesar 1.2.203–4/305–6). If Antony’s performance in Julius Caesar won the day, in this case, the cause is lost: “you haue shewne all Hectors” (2655). Hence is Cleopatra’s suicide (5.2) motivated as much by fear of “The quicke Comedians” (3459) as by her wanting to see the dead Antony “rowse himselfe/ To praise my Noble Act” (3535–6). For it imports to Cleopatra that “the World see/ [their] Noblenesse well acted” (3251–2).
All theatrical references occur in the second half of the play. They begin with the appearance, in 3.3, of Belarius, Guiderius and Arviragus, the three “disguised” characters (whose “recognition” represents Cymbeline’s final resolution). Their somewhat contrived appearance — following, as it does, Posthumus’ dread command to Pisanio in 3.2 — reaffirms the play’s comic-romantic character. And in the following scene (3.4) Pisanio shows that he had no intention of performing Posthumus’s wish (and that Cymbeline is no Othello). Thus the occurrence and frequency of theatrical references in Cymbeline’s second half is probably meant to sustain this comedic undertone. Note Posthumus’ word-play: who’ll “fight against” (2882) and then “resume” (3007) the “part I came in”.