What is metatheatricality? Does it have a significant function in Old Comedy?

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What is ‘metatheatricality’? Does it have a significant function in Old Comedy?

Old Comedy’s contemporariness with tragedy is a significant part of its history, and yet the fact that they are extremely different traditions cannot fail to go unnoticed (although of course there is more to Greek theatre than the simple dichotomy of comedy and tragedy, as it is more subtly nuanced than this). One of the major aspects to distinguish old comedy from its tragic counterpart is that of metatheatre. Its significance as well as its exact definition ought to be considered, with many particularly illuminative examples coming from Aristophanes’ plays.

Metatheatre is defined as the rupturing of the illusion, whereby the audience becomes aware that they are watching a play, due to direct attention being drawn to certain technological aspects of theatre or to the presence of the audience. This is very different to tragedy, where (apart from the chorus’ parabasis) the action remains strictly grounded in realism, as the audience is intended to empathise with the characters. It would be unfair to say that metatheatre does not allow empathy, as even in the comedies it is possible to like some characters more than others. However, metatheatre does serve to alienate the audience from the illusion and allows them to look upon the comedy more objectively. Some critics go further and into more detail: Schmeling, for example, addresses the issue of the play within the play:

        “The term ‘théâtre dans le théâtre has several equivalents in the majority of languages: play within a play in English, Theater auf dem Theater and Spiel im Spiel in German, Teatro nel Teatro or commedia nella commedia in Italian, etc. All these terms do not correspond exactly; for example, the English notion of the play within a play does not make the same distinction that French and German do between “théâtre dans le théâtre” et “jeu dans le jeu”, the latter being more general than the former.”

It could be argued then, that metatheatre has a varying significance throughout Europe, perhaps due to linguistic constraints. However, it seems that there are perhaps more shades to metatheatre, named in English, than Schmeling gives credit for:

        “[Richard] Hornby in particular sought to identify particular elements of metatheatre, including the play-within-the-play, ceremonies within the play, role-playing within the role, literary or real-life references, and self-reference.”

The most obvious example of ‘real-life reference’ in the plays of Aristophanes lies in their competitive purpose. They were written to be performed competitively, and if reading the plays from a historicist perspective, this is at times evident in the text, thus making the audience aware of its extrinsic as well as intrinsic significance. At lines 445-7 in Birds there is “a reference to the judges at the festival in which the play was competing, the comic poet break[ing] the illusion quite deliberately for humorous effect”:

CHORUS LEADER: I swear on this condition—that I get
 all the judges' and spectators' votes and win.

PISTHETAIROS: Oh, you'll win!

CHORUS LEADER: And if I break the oath
 then let me win by just a single vote.

This reference breaks the illusion by reminding the audience of the play’s dual purpose, and it may be argued that this technique is used to manipulate the response of the audience, by addressing the play’s genesis (and the audience) directly. A slightly different instance of this can be found in The Acharnians, in which Dicaiopolis makes his speech (496ff.) to the audience, rather than to the chorus: “’O hold it not against me’, you spectators”. Kenneth Dover sees this use of metatheatre as “the individual character (not, as in the parabasis, the chorus) who is speaking on the poet’s behalf”. This implies that metatheatre can be viewed (or serve) as a vehicle for the author’s own opinions, and that rather than being almost entirely fictionally based, comedy can assume a slightly didactic or political purpose. This is indicative of a vast difference between the respective purposes of comedy and tragedy.

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As well as the fact that comedy and tragedy clearly serve diverse purposes, certain critics have also identified another key difference in the way the two genres can be considered. Slater argues that

“we must suspend, not our disbelief, but our anachronistic foreknowledge of the action of the plays in order to capture their original performative meaning. This is not the only possible critical approach to the plays – but it is the only approach that respects their integrity as performances in context”.

Tragedy allows the playwright to manipulate the myth as they choose, but ...

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