`Metatheater': An Essay on Overload

Abstract

xVXetatheater,' a.k.a. 'metadrama' or 'meta play,' was an overload from the start.1 The term 'metatheater' was coined four decades ago by Lionel Abel in a challenging, bushwhacking manifesto.2 Though the book is no longer widely read, I propose to discuss its argument at some length because I feel that its details prefigure some of the puzzles that have been associated with the various uses of the term, espe cially of late among classicists. Abel's thesis was simple: beginning with the Renaissance, tragedy had run its course?Shakespeare wrote only one true tragedy, Macbeth, as did Racine, Athalie?and a new dra matic form, not consonant with the general conception of tragedy, was taking over. 3 In trying to define what constituted this new genre, embracing all manner of playwriting from Shakespeare to the Theater of the Absurd, save only the 'real ist' plays of the later nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, Abel shows a remarkably liberal hand.4 The distinguishing features he associates with metatheater are at one point briefly stated: Without tragedy, of which we may be incapable, there is no philosophic alternative to the two concepts by which I have defined the metaplay: the world is a stage, life is a dream. 5 But this pithy summation, inspired by what he finds in Hamlet and in Life is a Dream,6 turns out to be a false front. As Abel continues, many additional specifications find their way in, and their connection often remains obscure. In trying to catalogue the host of particulars, one feels one is do ing an injustice to the inventiveness of Abel's miscellany and the tangle of his combinations. But for the purposes of this paper they are best laid out as separate entries: