“If Then the World a Theatre Present…“
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Edited by:
Björn Quiring
About this book
To metaphorize the world as a theatre has been a common procedure since antiquity, but the use of this trope became particularly prominent and pregnant in early modern times, especially in England. Old and new applications of the “theatrum mundi” topos pervaded discourses, often allegorizing the deceitfulness and impermanence of this world as well as the futility of earthly strife. It was frequently woven into arguments against worldly amusements such as the stage: Commercial theatre was declared an undesirable competitor of God’s well-ordered world drama.
Early modern dramatists often reacted to this development by appropriating the metaphor, and in an ingenious twist, some playwrights even appropriated its anti-theatrical impetus: Early modern theatre seemed to discover a denial of its own theatricality at its very core. Drama was found to succeed best when it staged itself as a great unmasking.
To investigate the reasons and effects of these developments, the anthology examines the metaphorical uses of theatre in plays, pamphlets, epics, treatises, legal proclamations and other sources.
Author / Editor information
Björn Quiring, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany.
Topics
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Frontmatter
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Contents
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Introduction
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Having a Good Time at the Theatre of the World: Amusement, Antitheatricality and the Calvinist Use of the Theatrum Mundi Metaphor in Early Modern England
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“Out, out, brief candle”: Shakespeare and the Theatrum Mundi of Hospitality
39 -
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Portraits of Hydra: Theatre and the Many-Headed Multitude
61 -
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“They Have Their Exits and Their Entrances” On Two Basic Operations in the Theatrum Mundi
83 -
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“Look on the Tragic Loading of this Bed”: Performing Community and its Other in Shakespeare’s Othello
115 -
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A Narrow Thing Within One Word The Foreclosure of Nature in Post-Shakespearian Worlds and Times
133 -
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Doubtful Visibilities The Theatrum Mundi of the German Baroque Trauerspiel
153 -
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Metaphysical Skepticism, Incertitude and the Dissolution of the Theatrum Mundi
179 -
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Theatrum Mundi and the Politics of Rebellion in Seventeenth-Century Drama
199 -
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The End of a Trope for the World
221
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