Metatheatricality in William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare understands life as a performance, an immense theater in which every person plays a role and wears an individual mask. Just as in dreams, life itself is a fantasy.

Seen in this way, the positions we adopt, the circumstances and vicissitudes that define us, are an illusion. This deeply rooted trait in the English playwright becomes evident throughout his entire body of work.

In Hamlet, the graveyard scene is eloquent. The Prince of Denmark holds the skull of the jester Yorick in his hands and reflects upon the fleeting nature of existence. In the end, we all become dust, regardless of the role we perform. So much suffering, so much struggle, and in the end only dust remains, in the cemetery of nevermore. It is almost a cruel joke. In any case, it is better to laugh than to weep.

His premise that life is a grand theater is developed through the device of metatheatricality. In Hamlet, our protagonist decides to stage a play that reenacts, through mimesis, what occurred in reality, and thus uncover the truth surrounding his father’s death.

In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare asks: “What’s in a name?” and answers that names and things bear no real relationship to one another. A name possesses no transcendence beyond its own arbitrariness.

The Capulet family hosts a masquerade ball where every guest may become whatever he or she desires. The rivalry between the Capulets and the Montagues dissolves within that atmosphere of fantasy. A mere change of identity is enough to alter destiny. The disguise changes everything, erasing the arbitrariness of prejudice, and then, as though through a magical potion, two people destined to hate one another are finally able to meet and fall in love.

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Egeus (through Duke Theseus) forces his daughter Hermia to marry Demetrius instead of Lysander, the man she truly loves. Demetrius and Lysander possess the same qualities: social rank, income, and physical attractiveness. Egeus is therefore imposing his will upon his daughter out of sheer caprice.

Then Puck devises within the forest a world of illusion and magic, a theater, where reality becomes dream, and enchantment allows destiny to reverse itself so that the lovers may reach a happy ending: Demetrius and Helena; Lysander and Hermia.

In Richard III, the malevolent king establishes a direct relationship with the audience, thereby sealing the effect of his life as the performance of a role. His monologues, conversations with his own conscience, become a journey into the depths of a soul burdened by its own contradictions.

Despite his wickedness, his communication with the audience creates empathy and the sensation that we are contemplating a character consciously constructed to perform a role.

There is metatheatricality when Richard hides himself in order to hear what others say about him. On the eve of his final battle, he is visited by the ghosts of those whom he vilely murdered. The specters speak to him and reproach him. The atmosphere that emerges resembles a dream, the nightmare from which its victim struggles to awaken.

By revealing to us the grand theater that is life, Shakespeare is able to descend into the abysses of the soul and capture human passions, transforming them into archetypal characters that allow us to probe our own consciences:

• Jealousy and envy in Othello
• Love and hatred in Romeo and Juliet
• Doubt and the Oedipal conflict in Hamlet
• Friendship and rivalry in Henry V
• Nobility and vileness in Richard III
• Goodness and evil in Macbeth
• Revenge in The Merchant of Venice
• Ambition, courage, and cowardice in Antony and Cleopatra
• Grandeur and misery in The Tempest

All these traits of the human condition Shakespeare transforms into characters who perform them, and there begins the intricate game of complexities, contradictions, and infinite combinations that gradually unveils before our eyes the anatomy of humanity itself.

Thus we reflect upon and understand the most intimate mechanisms of existence in relation both to ourselves and to our fellow human beings.

When Shakespeare causes his characters to develop a theater within their own theater, his purpose is to illustrate with precision that life itself is that theater.

In Hamlet, the troubled young prince stages a play in order to reveal secrets. Yet King Claudius, in his own way, does the same in pursuit of his objective: the murder of his stepson. The final duel between Hamlet and Laertes unfolds within a construction of illusions and lies; it is itself a deception.

Through the metatheatricality of these works, we perceive how fiction and reality operate mimetically. The great illusion, in which you and I interpret roles through our emotions, reveals that passions themselves are malleable and arbitrary.

When Hamlet reflects while holding Yorick’s skull, he is meditating upon the illusory nature of life’s passage; upon how that which appears so serious and transcendental, for example, Alexander the Great and his conquests, is, in the end, as fleeting and ephemeral as a dream.

And perhaps for that very reason, there is little sense in taking the matters of life too seriously. It is no coincidence that this reflection arises from the memory of the court jester, someone who symbolizes perpetual laughter and the eternal joke.

Upon the stage where Shakespeare’s characters parade, life itself is performed. Yet it is a theater, the world of illusions: dreams, magical potions, paradoxes, fairies and goblins, ghosts, witches, and enchantments. It is the school that teaches us the fleeting nature of existence and the masquerade of human life. Once understood, humanity becomes more bearable.

If life is a dream (Pedro Calderón de la Barca was visited by Shakespeare’s muse), and ghosts wander through our consciences, then perhaps the secret lies in acting rightly, without betraying ourselves or others.

At the end of the play, we are but dust capable of clogging a pipe. That fleeting dream, which passes so quickly, invites reflection upon the wisdom of choosing for ourselves a character capable of embracing that lightness and enjoying this great theater.

“To be, or not to be: that is the question.”