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5 Falstaff, Hal, Coriolanus: Metadrama and the Authority of Policy
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Published:November 2016
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Abstract
This chapter contrasts Coriolanus’ dramatic austerity with the proliferation of metadrama around Hal and Falstaff. Coriolanus gives Shakespeare the chance to deal with authority and authenticity at a safe historical remove, while Falstaff’s metadrama addresses the relationship between authority and moral conduct in a popular and jocular format, as both authority and Vice. The relationship between the dramatisation of these characters reveals connections and disjunctions between an ideal of authoritative authenticity and the inevitable taint of ‘policy’, which is, as ever, mirrored in the drama’s most metadramatic modes. ‘Policy’ in these plays includes informing, self-counterfeiting, and the performative aspect of authority reaching to the very top. In metadrama, as in policy, the polites are at the heart of the drama and eliciting a positive interpretative response is the aim of each. Here the stability of the self-conscious subject is measured against the shifting sands of self-authorship and self-performance, with metadrama and informing as structural and thematic contexts.
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