Metafiction, Henry V, and
Shakespearean Hypermedia

by Ronald Fedoruk
with Chrisopher Gaze as Chorus
March, 2010

O For a Muse of Fire, that would ascend

The brightest Heauen of Inuention:

A Kingdome for a Stage, Princes to Act,

5 And Monarchs to behold the swelling Scene.

   -narration is self-reflexive

t the 1999 International Congress of Theatre Design (OISTAT), Québec dramatist and filmmaker Robert Lepage addressed the enduring, possibly eternal, institution of a select group of artists collaboratively entrusted with the responsibility of preserving the story.  Gathered around the campfire, our distant ancestors would remember, relate, share and combine all that they knew.  In the process they preserved, maybe even invented, culture.  The narrative that they created has been passed on orally, from one generation of storytellers to the next, without any more technology than a campfire.

Generations of artists have employed verse, music, drama and visual art as tools for information, using the campfire as a means of gathering people into their stories.  Anyone looking for knowledge was drawn to the campfire in the expectation of being entertained as well as enlightened.  When we became a literate culture, enthralled by the power of written stories, our fascination with the written text made print media replace the campfire as a centre of information.  In a very short century and a half we've discovered photography, film and digital media as storytelling tools.  Today we are evolving a different campfire again, and the technologies get ever more diverse and seductive.   Now when we want information, we are drawn to a much more complex and demanding campfire than our ancestors could have possibley imagined.

But the process for the artist is unchanged.  Storytellers still must pursue the creative endeavours that define a rich and healthy culture.  It is storytellers who must fuel the campfire.  Someone must have the responsibility to ensure that stories are preserved, retold, and reinvented.  It is for this endeavour that storytellers are so valuable, so highly prized and celebrated. 

This examination of William Shakespeare's Henry V is part of a series that explores the various ways in which storytellers, past and present, gather around their various campfires in order to relate, share and combine our stories; in order to invent culture.

In Henry V, with his most extensive use of a Chorus, Shakespeare has created a complex, multi-dimensional character capable of relating the story, while at the same time articulating the very nature of the layered and interactive art of his storytelling.  An examination of the character Chorus reveals Shakespeare's understanding of the processes we now call meta-fiction, reception theory and hypermedia.

   . ...Go To PROLOGUE ... .

   -narration in virtual

   -narration is hypertextual

   -narration is inferential

   -narration is omni-temporal

   -narration is performative

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Adolphe Appia: Staging Wagnerian Drama:
Peter Loeffler, trans, Basel 1982, Birkhauser

... ...

Graham Allen: Intertextuality,

London and New York, 2000, Routledge

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Susan Bennett: Theatre Audiences,

London and New York, 1997, Routledge

... ...

John Cheever: The Stories of John Cheever,

New York, 2000,  Vintage

... ...

Jacques Derrida : Dissemination,

Chicago, 1981,  University of Chicago Press

... ...

J. Yellowlees Douglas and Andrew Hargadon:

The Pleasures of Immersion and Engagement - schemas, scripts and the fifth business
http://web.nwe.ufl.edu/~jdouglas/dc12303-Douglas.pdf

... ...

Umberto Eco: Foucault's Pendulum,

New York, 2007,  Harcourt, Brace

... ...

Will Eisner: Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative,

Paramus , NJ, 1996, Poorhouse Press

... ...

Gunter Gebauer & Christoph Wulf:

Mimesis: Culture-Art-Society, Don Reneau, trans.

Berkeley, 1992, University of California Press

... ...

Homer, The Iliad,

http://classics.mit.edu/Homer/iliad.1.i.html

... ...

David Lodge, ed: Modern Criticism and Theory.

London and New York, 1988, Longman

... ...

Stephane Mallarme: Mimique, in

Œuvres Complètes; Henri Mondor et G. Jean-Aubry

Paris, c.1945, Gallimard

... ...

Scott McCloud: Understanding Comics,

New York, 1994, Harper Collins

... ...

Marshall McLuhan: Understanding Media - The Extension of Man

Corte Madera CA, 2003, Gingko Press

... ...

Janet H. Murray: Hamlet on the Holodeck - The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace,

Cambridge Mass, 1997, MIT Press

... ...

Richard Schechner: Performance Theory,

London and New York, 1988, Routledge

... ...

Skaay: Being in Being,

Vancouver, 2001, Douglas and McIntyre

... ...

William Shakespeare:  Henry V,

London 1999, Penguin

... ...

William Shakespeare:  Henry V,

http://www.ise.uvic.ca/Annex/Texts/H5/F1/Scene

... ...

William Shakespeare:  Henry V,

http://www.william-shakespeare.info/shakespeare-play-king-henry-v.htm

... ...

William Shakespeare:  Henry V,

http://shakespeare.mit.edu/henryv

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Images

http://www.answers.com/topic/henry-v-of-england-illustration-from-cassell-s-history-of-england-century-edition-published-circa-1902-jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiReader/William_Shakespeare
http://www.donatoart.com/gallery/agincourtprogress.html
http://radar.ngcsu.edu/~bcorrigan/index.htm
http://www.gameprotv.com/foro/viewtopic.php?p=46714&sid=3ab93b0f59afa88ad7e8dc282543fbfe
http://www.flickr.mud.yahoo.com/photos/96185638@N00/139996198/
http://www.todayspatio.com/manuf_afterglow/mercer_island_torch.htm

Copyright © 2007, 2010 by Ronald Fedoruk
Copyright  © Internet Shakespeare Editions

The material published on this site is intended be used for educational, non-profit purposes.  All uses of this material for other than educational, non-profit purposes must be negotiated with the owner of the copyright.

Enquiries may be directed to: rfedoruk@interchange.ubc.ca

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