r a word. The audience accepts this as a known convention. The effect of this is that the audience continues to interpret and actively participate in the metadramatic constructs, and co-operating with the artificiality of the play thereby increasing their involvement and enjoyment in the play as a whole. Shakespeare is not afraid to parody his own work. When Hamlet meets the Players he begins to quote a passage. Note the style of the lines, “The rugged Pyrrhus, like th’ Hyrcanian beast...” (Act II, scene ii, line 425) They are written in a pompous, mechanical formal style using exaggerated metaphors and similes: “With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrus / Old grandsire Priam seeks” (Act II, scene ii, lines 438-440) This style was much used by Shakespeare’s earlier contemporaries, the sort of passionate speechifying Bottom makes use of in Midsummer:-“That will ask some tears in the true performing ofit: if I do it, let the audience look to theireyes; I will move storms, I will condole in somemeasure. To the rest: yet my chief humour is for atyrant:”(Act I, scene ii lines 21-25)This melodramatic over acting style however, is not that far removed from some of Shakespeare’s earlier plays such as Titus Andronicus which critics have remarked is sometimes a little wooden, and as Midsummer was written before Hamlet we can surmise that Shakespeare was aware enough of his former style to be willing to parody it. Whilst Shakespeare may have found these lines a little flat, the Elizabethan audience would probably not find these lines as outmoded as a current audience might. However it is certain that the style of the lines are in contrast to the style of Hamlet which makes them stand out. The effect of this is to foreground the theatrical for those audience members who knew Shakespeare’s and his contemporaries’ work well, and who would understand the parody. Perfor...
