Chapter 4 "The Mirror up to Nature" Hamlet's Metaphysical Revolution in the Purpose of Playing
Material type:
ArticlePublication details: Taylor & Francis Routledge [Imprint] 2025Description: 1 electronic resource (47 p.)Content type: - text
- computer
- online resource
- 9781032726984
- 9781032727004
- Interest qualifiers
- Relating to specific groups and cultures or social and cultural interests
- Relating to specific and significant cultural interests
- Biography, Literature and Literary studies
- Plays, playscripts
- Classic and pre-20th century plays
- Literature: history and criticism
- Literary studies: plays and playwrights
- Shakespeare
- early modern literature
- hamlet
- metadrama
- soliloquy
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Clear mirrors and The Geneva Bible revolutionary innovations of the Elizabethan age, inspired Shakespeare's drive towards a new purpose for drama. Shakespeare reversed the conventional mirror metaphor for drama, implying drama cannot reflect the substance of human nature, and developed a method of characterization, through metadrama, self-awareness and soliloquy, to project St. Paul's idea of conscience onto the Elizabethan stage. This revolutionary method of characterization, aesthetic existence beyond performance, has long been sensed but remains frustratingly uncategorized. Shakespeare's Mirrors charts the invention of a drama that staged the unstageable: St. Paul's metaphysical conception of human nature glimpsed through a looking glass darkly.
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eng
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