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In 1963, Lionel Abel coined the term "metatheatre" to identify theatre that is self-reflexive. Metatheatre, or metadrama, as it is now more commonly referred to, uses the stage to explore theatricality and, very often, its relation to life. Discussions of metadrama subsequent to Abel's have elaborated the concept, identifying characteristic elements and the problems that are raised and addressed by this form of theatre. Robert J. Nelson examines how the "play within the play" functions as a self-conscious reflection of "a given dramatist's controlling conception of the theater...[and of] major movements of Western literature."(1) June Schlueter points out that when a playwright focusses on role-playing within a theatrical production s/he addresses the modern existential identity crisis. She says: "in emphasizing the rift between the essential self...and the role-playing self...the playwright immediately suggests the loss of identity experienced by modern man as well as a sense of the artificiality of theater and the essentially dramatic quality of life."(2) Bruce Wilshire builds on this idea of the relationship between dramatic role and identity, using the theatre's examples of metadramatic role-playing to philosophically examine identity formation and the ways in which "theatre is a consummation of the main line of human development--a development that is theatre-like at crucial junctures."(3) Richard Hornby provides an extensive and useful discussion of a broad range of metadramatic devices including the play within the play, the ceremony within the play, the role within the role, literary and real-life reference within the play, and self-reference within the play. He argues that metadramatic plays work in relation to the collection of all other plays and art forms, in an involute relation which he calls the "drama/culture complex."(4) Hornby goes on to suggest that the rise of metadrama in Western theatre reflects a growing existential cynicism in the wake of the industrial revolution. Richard Schechner's work, The End of Humanism, addresses the metadramatic and its reflection of and potential impact upon power relations in the post-modern world.
All of these critics, while defining, enlarging and explicating the concept of metadrama, share a common ground in their analysis of it. All recognize Shakespeare's Hamlet as representing an original and critical moment in the development of metadrama, and all see an evolutionary unfolding of the form since that...