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The Effective Use Of Metatheater In Hamlet By William Shakespeare

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Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, examines various concepts of metatheater, intertwined with remembrance - not only in the remembrance of play, but the forget of time. The motif of Metatheater shows the audience (and reader) that life imitates art, and that there is more to a story after its end.* For you, the audience, you are not told that it is “happily ever after,” rather a brutal conflict leaves few to remember the tale of such a multifaceted and cunning feud.
Act 1 introduces us to the rather preposterous state of Denmark - a King slain and given a poor funeral, and a marriage between the King’s brother and the Queen. Hamlet is rightly peeved and distraught. However, Hamlet encounters the ghost of the past king, his father, and he details the horrific death he suffered. Hamlet exclaimed,
Remember thee?
Ay, thou poor ghost, whiles memory holds a seat
In this distracted globe. Remember thee?
Yea, from the table of my memory,
I’ll wipe away all trivial, fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
That youth and observation copied there,
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the …show more content…

However, Hamlet (and Shakespeare) both understand the fleeting memories of a person’s life can lead to forget. In Shakespeare’s own life, he has gone through the death of John and Hamnet, the father and son of Hamlet respectively, and while he understands the weight of death, the tick of time does not stop, and life continues on. People around him most likely moved on, and this loss of life was likely not on the forefront of their minds. In an example of life imitating art, Shakespeare shows the audience his own inner feelings reflecting on his work - Hamlet calling out to his father’s ghost, I shall remember you! This “distracted globe” as Hamlet refers to, the world in which the moments of pain and joy are reduced to mere fractions in life, Shakespeare vows to remember, and codify, in this

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