16 1.3.75.
17 Oedipus Tyrannus,lines 1529–30, in Sophocles (2003) p. 107.
18 Walton (1990: 79) goes further in holding that an author could write a work of fiction in which
everysentence is true. Currie‘What is fiction?’offers a helpful exploration of some problem cases.
19 I am suggesting that historical truth/falsity makes little difference to us in plays likeHamlet;butfora
certain class of plays, namely history plays, I’ll argue (in Chapter 4) that it does make a difference. As
we’ll see, this is more than just a question of whether the history play’spropositionsare true.
20 Not only does it make no difference; it may be, as some have argued, that asking whether a
statement in a play or novel is true or false is inappropriate or somehow misses the point. See
Gale (1971).
21 Obviously, this distinction holds equally for explicit claims, discussed above. Horatio’s statements
about Rome are particular; Polonius’‘words of wisdom’are general or universal.
22 Artaud himself, with whom I began this chapter, writes (in defence of his‘theatre of cruelty’) that
‘we are not free and the sky can still fall on our heads. And above all else, theatre is made to
teach us this’. See Artaud (2010: 57).
23 Hence, for example, when psychoanalytic models were applied to literature, they were said to
‘reveal’the universal features of the characters and explain their real motives and actions. For
Freud on Hamlet, see Freud (1961: 265); see also Jones (1949). Many other kinds of literary
analysis claim to uncover latent or concealed claims.
24 Poetics51b.
25 Poetics54a. For Lessing, Aristotle’s point is that, although there are inconsistent people, they
don’t make for very good characters in plays. See Lessing (1962: Section 34, pp. 98–9).
26 This formed part of the French concept ofles bienséances–roughly a notion of the decorum
appropriate to the stage.
27 Booth (1995: 330).
28 Lessing (1961: Section 30, p. 84).
29 In Strindberg’s case, he thoughtMiss Juliedid present to its audience universal truths–rather
unpleasant, misogynistic ones about how women can never be as good as men. But it didn’tdo
this through fixed character types.
30 See, e.g. Frede (1992). Frede argues that Aristotle posits pleasure in tragic imitation because of
the recognition that certain types of people do certain types of things.
31 This is taken from Shelley (2003: 185). We discuss the context of his claim in Chapter 6.
32 These two features are identified as standard in the literature by Snowdon (2004), although he
goes on to criticise this account.
33 Jacobson (1997: 198).
34 This has proved a popular idea, especially among those who claim that theatre teaches us how to
be moral–claims that we explore in more detail in Chapter 5. Take, for example, Palmer’s claim
that the artwork‘gets us to see something and not merely to know’that something is the case.
See Palmer (1992: 193).
35 This is not true for all plays, of course–and some modern theatre practitioners have attempted
to train audiences to develop certain skills. See e.g. Boal (1995), who prefers to speak of
‘spectactors’than‘spectators’.
36 Brecht, Nietzsche, Stendhal, Coleridge, Lessing, Rousseau and Boucicault are some of the writers
on theatre who have taken it as evident that illusion is involved in theatrical performance in some
way. Hamilton (1982) argues against this, although he largely assumes that illusion implies
deception–an assumption we have reason to challenge.
37 See Fogle (1960).
38 Sparshott (1952). Sparshott is talking about illusion as applied to art in general.
39 Stendhal (1962).
40 See e.g. Reynolds (2000).
41 Dancy (1995: 421).
42 See Gombrich (2002: 190).
43 Taking‘fake’set designs to be an extension of optical illusions follows the structure of Hamilton
(1982: 41), who considers and eventually rejects this formation as an instance of illusion.72 From the World to the Stage