We're all familiar with Hamlet's Player-King. Hamlet uses a visiting troupe of players to reenact his father's death, casting doubles of Claudius, King Hamlet, and Gertrude. These characters are used as foils to reflect Claudius' sins back at him, revealing his guilt and allowing Hamlet to have full confidence in the justification of his revenge.
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| Sarah Ball and Michael Tremblay as the Player King and Queen in the Pacific Conservatory Theatre's production of Hamlet, 2014 |
We talk all the time about performativity, masks, facades, self-representation, etc., but we don't often talk about how up-front these representations are. Orgel's assessment of James and Elizabeth as Player-Monarchs indicates that the general population was well aware of the monarchs' performativity and self-representation, and instead of shying away from the obvious rhetorical moves, approved of them as long as they were performed well.
In the cases of Elizabeth and James, the Player-Monarch reflected a simplistic, role-fulfilling version of the 'real' monarch. It's not a hugely new idea, but qualifying these rulers in this way was immensely helpful for me as a separation between Elizabeth and her self-representation, as well as James and his self-representation. A Player-Monarch does not have the same kind of humanity that the 'real' Elizabeth has; instead, she is allowed to be divine and metaphorical and multi-gendered and all of these things because she is acknowledged to be a vessel of role-fulfillment.
Pageantry in
the Shakespearean Theater. Ed. David M. Bergeron. Athens:
University of Georgia Press, 1985. Print.
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