art for Plato is twice removed from the reality it attempts to portray.^18
Whatever Plato meant by repeatedly distancing himself from the events
of his dialogues, it’s clear that he doesn’t share Socrates’claim that either
a story is true or it is false. Barish puts it nicely:‘The Platonic dialogues,
in general, one suspects, would have trouble with the proposed Platonic
censor.’^19
Finally, I have separated Plato’s claims about the copying of appear-
ances (imitation-mimesis), which primarily occur in Book 10 of The
Republic, from his criticisms of what I’m calling imagination-mimesis,
which primarily occur in Books 2 and 3. Again, although this is not an
unusual division, we should note that Plato does not explicitly distin-
guish them as I have done, so many critics have taken on the challenge of
trying to unify these notions ofmimesistogether with the criticisms Plato
applies to them. Because there is little agreement on how this should
be done, and because it invariably requires an intense examination of the
whole ofThe Republic, together with other Platonic dialogues, I have
chosen not to pursue this line here.^20
Despite these important reservations, Plato’s claims aboutmimesis as
twice-removed from reality – broadly speaking as I have presented
them–are clearly and forcefully put. Certainly, they have been taken
very seriously by philosophers interested in theatre. For that reason, it
seems appropriate to offer some criticisms of Plato’s arguments when
interpreted in this way.
Problems for Plato
Metaphysical presuppositions
First of all, Plato’s claims aboutmimesis in theatre do not come from
nowhere. He has a metaphysical theory about how the world is: the three-
tiered structure described above. And he has a theory about what we
ought to be doing about it: turning towards what he considers thereal
world (of forms) and away from the one that we take to be real but isn’t
(i.e. the world of regular, carpenter-built couches). This is what he con-
siders the task of philosophy–to direct our attention away from what
most people take to be the real world.^21 As Socrates puts it:‘nothing in
human affairs is worth taking that seriously’.^22 Philosophy and theatre,
then, pull in completely opposite directions: one brings you closer to
reality, whereas the other drags you away from it. Hence, one strategy to
combat Plato is to deny that his metaphysical claims about the forms are cor-
rect. If there isn’t this world of forms of which the everyday world is a kind of
imitation (ormimesis), then theatrical imitations of the everyday world are
not imitations of imitations. Of course, few philosophers (myself
28 From the World to the Stage