Clear mirrors and scripture in English, 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, Shakespeare 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 while remaining elusively undefined. By reviewing Shakespeare’s mirror metaphors, the method that created characters, “detachable from the play like real people,” slowly emerges. Shakespeare used mirror metaphors far more than his contemporaries. Shakespeare’s Mirrors charts the way his drama developed the representation of the unstageable: St. Paul’s metaphysical conception of human nature glimpsed through a glass darkly.
Introduction: Shakespeare’s Mirror Metaphors
Prologue: “The Mirror of All Martial Men,” (Living up to Stereotypes)
Mirrors in the Cultural and Historical Context of Sixteenth Century England
Henry VI, Part One
1. “Amorous Looking-Glass:” The Self-Infatuation of the Regal Perfomer in the Early Histories
Richard III and Henry VI, Parts Two and Three
Richard II
2. “Dissembling Glass of Mine:” Female Self-Evaluation within the Patriarchal Genre of Courtship Comedy
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
The Comedy of Errors
The Taming of the Shrew
Love’s Labour’s Lost
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
The Merchant of Venice
As You Like It
3. “The Mirror of All Christian Kings:” Increasing Tension between Classical Action and Christian Passivity
Henry IV, Part Two
Henry V
Julius Caesar
4. “The Mirror up to Nature:” Hamlet’s Metaphysical Redirection of the Purpose of Playing Hamlet
Metatheatre Subverting the Classical Tradition
Shakespeare’s Rivalry with Ben Jonson
Hamlet’s Pauline Education at Wittenberg
The Gravedigger Scene as Christian Exegesis
Venetian Mirrors and the Representation of the Self in the Context of the Revolutionary Social and Scientific Environment of the Sixteenth Century
5. “Glassy Essence:” The Fraudulent Hypocrisy of Impious Authority
Troilus and Cressida
Measure for Measure
Timon of Athens
6. “Spacious Mirror:” The Epic Futility of Political Activity in a World Without Redemption King Lear
Macbeth
Antony and Cleopatra
Coriolanus
7. “My Glass, Mine Own:” Human Play and Identity Reconciled Through Performative Faith Pericles, Prince of Tyre
Cymbeline
The Winter’s Tale
The Tempest
The Two Noble Kinsmen
Henry VIII
Epilogue: “Through A Glass, Darkly”
Bibliography
Biography
Edward Evans received his Ph.D. in English Literature from Bar-Ilan University, and is currently research fellow and teaching assistant in the English Linguistics and Literature Department at Bar-Ilan University.
