The seminar will offer an analysis of the Elizabethan understandings of the Theatrum Mundi and will discuss the diverse interpretations about the way onstage and offstage reality intermingle and the audience is involved in the public event of a play – both in the early modern context and in contemporary adaptations of Elizabethan drama. The model of the Elizabethan public playhouse and its involved spectator are used as vectors of festive atmosphere, social cohesion and democratic debate; Shakespearean dramas are read for clues of audience involvement (metadrama, the play metaphor and ritualistic figures of involvement); and present day productions of Shakespeare’s plays are analyzed as contemporary models for shaping social reality through play.
