Metafiction, Henry V, and
Shakespearean Hypermedia
by Ronald Fedoruk
Flourish. Enter Chorus.
1045 Thus with imagin'd wing our swift Scene flyes,
horus is the hyperlink, encouraging us to situate ourselves in the story, helping us to understand the events surrounding Agincourt, enabling a rich intertextuality among the various sources of information.
Shakespeare makes a very conscious use of the audience's capacity for imaginative intertextual leaps, knowing his actors can only provide the barest essentials of the story. Regardless how detailed, how spectacular or how lifelike is the scenic representation, it will always be just that; lifelike, never life itself. Instead of relying on showing us the spectacle of ships advancing across the strait, he employs the interaction of his poetry and our imagination, piling image upon image which co-exist in our minds to produce a simulacrum of the confusion of battle. The simulacrum montage provides a framework upon which the audience must hang its own interpretations of the text: interpretations that will be personal and individually relevant to each audience member. This goes beyond intertextuality which usually exists on a solely intellectual level, and it creates a much more emotional response. The resulting meaning will be complex indeed and highly compelling.
Real and detailed scenographic representation in this instance actually gets in the way of poetic understanding. Shakespeare trims his scenography of excess detail to create the most efficient poetic solution. The more sparse is the scenography, the more mobility we have in shifting from one virtual location to another. In the process Shakespeare also creates a more practicable and cheaper staging solution, but this is entirely a collateral benefit. Far from the imperfect representation that prompts Chorus' apology, this simplicity can be a powerful device which actually engages the audience more intensely.
In Hamlet on the Holodeck, Janet Murray talks about immersion in an electronic game as an "active creation of belief". Murray also describes the narrative agency felt by the audience as an aesthetic pleasure derived from participation. Both of these concepts require a degree of autonomous activity on the part of the audience. Our pleasure seems to increase the more we can be immersed and the more we can exert some agency. She makes the point about immersion in a game being stronger as the agency is more immediate, more accessible. In Henry V, as with most of Shakespeare's work, agency is not immediate, we have to spend a good deal of time and thought to achieve a level of satisfaction. and that is where we need the the help of Chorus. Imploring us to exert ourselves, he pitches his own energy level to mirror the amount of work on the part of the audience. His excitement grows as he beholds the scene in his mind's eye and he rallies us to keep our focus on the task.
The cause and effect nature of a dramatic plot requires a high degree of linearity. By contrast, intertextuality is an inherently non-linear approach to understanding, since there is no way to ensure that any of the participants will have experienced all the required texts in the proper order. Allowing us to become immersed in the story and to take an interactive participation in its telling may potentially have consequences on the outcome of the story. We have a heightened awareness of this phenomenon with the use of digital media where connective technologies can carry our stories in several directions, to allow many different contributors to participate in the production, not just the reception, of information.��Marshall McLuhan calls this a "creative process of knowing".
On the surface of it, Shakespeare would seem to be emphasizing a non-linear approach. Each time Chorus arrives on stage we are forced to depart from the linearity of the plot to take what Umberto Eco characterizes as an "inferential walk" and to assimilate a number of intertextual references. Each audience member will take a slightly different walk and each of us is responsible for where that walk takes us. It is however, a limited responsibility. If the audience is expected to interact, then the story has to be structured to determine the levels of participation. In this case, Chorus retains a great deal of control over the linear unfolding of the story, reappearing at specific points, rendering specific information and providing a specific pathway for our interactivity. The audience is really responsible only for our own enjoyment. We have no control over the outcome of the plot.
Ironically, while the performed action of the play and the scenography are presented spatially, the plot requires a rather uncompromising consecutive linear development. With a spatial text, we can absorb images in a random order or even simultaneously. With a written text we can glance ahead, flip pages, skip to the end. But with a spoken text, we must experience it in the manner delivered by the narrator. The pacing and order in which we experience the events is strictly controlled. It is the balance between linear and non-linear forms of understanding that gives Henry V its structure. We can absorb elements of the mise en scene concurrently, but though Chorus encourages us to take tangential inferential walks at certain times during the play, his narration, unfolds in a steadfastly linear manner.
another, creating hybrid systems of signs. -Innocent
Suppose, that you haue seene
The well-appointed King at Douer Peer,
1050 With silken Streamers, the young Phebus fayning;
Play with your Fancies: and in them behold,
Vpon the Hempen Tackle, Ship-boyes climbing;
Heare the shrill Whistle, which doth order giue
To sounds confus'd: behold the threaden Sayles,
1055 Borne with th' inuisible and creeping Wind,
Draw the huge Bottomes through the furrowed Sea,
Bresting the loftie Surge. O, doe but thinke
You stand vpon the Riuage, and behold
A Citie on th' inconstant Billowes dauncing:
1060 For so appeares this Fleet Maiesticall,
Holding due course to Harflew. Follow, follow:
Grapple your minds to sternage of this Nauie,
And leaue your England as dead Mid-night, still,
Guarded with Grandsires, Babyes, and old Women,
1065 Eyther past, or not arriu'd to pyth and puissance:
For who is he, whose Chin is but enricht
With one appearing Hayre, that will not follow
These cull'd and choyse-drawne Caualiers to France?
Worke, worke your Thoughts, and therein see a Siege:
1070 Behold the Ordenance on their Carriages,
With fatall mouthes gaping on girded Harflew.
Suppose th' Embassador from the French comes back:
Tells Harry, That the King doth offer him
Katherine his Daughter, and with her to Dowrie,
1075 Some petty and vnprofitable Dukedomes.
The offer likes not: and the nimble Gunner
With Lynstock now the diuellish Cannon touches,
And downe goes all before them. Still be kind,
1080 And eech out our performance with your mind.
Exit.
