Drama and the Postmodern: Assessing the Limits of Metatheatre By ...

Chapter 1

Spatial Ambiguity and the Early Modern/Postmodern in King Lear

Jenn Stephenson

I am not quixotic enough to argue here that King Lear is an unequivocal work of postmodernism.¹ Rather, my ambitions in pairing early modern Shakespeare with postmodern poetics are more modest. The first aim of this study is to illustrate a unique metatheatrical strategy at play in the so-called Dover cliff scene of King Lear concerning spatial ambiguity. Should we believe Edgar who tells Gloucester that he has been climbing for some time and now stands at the top of a perilous cliff? Or ought we to believe the blinded Gloucester who is doubtful? How are these opposing verbal claims each supported by Renaissance traditions regarding verbal scene painting and nonrepresentational minimal staging? Out of this moment of spatial indeterminacy comes a metatheatrical doubling