本文透過演員與觀眾的交互影響，分析莎士比亞歷史劇中後設戲劇成分。焦點不在某一特定歷史劇，而是理查三世與哈爾王子兩個角色上，不同於大多後設戲劇評論家的堅持，本文並不在劇本?婸`尋自發性斷層，或從解構的角度詮釋文本的自發性斷層。也不將後設戲劇視為既存定理，尤其是深知後設戲劇評論家往往無法為後設戲劇下一個簡明的定義。坦白說，後設戲劇乃文藝復興舞台上某種戲劇形式。
更甚者，後設戲劇乃由幾種後設戲劇形式組成，在專研的過程中，漸漸明白自我指射形式乃是歷史劇中獨有的戲劇形式。自我指射用來質疑觀眾僵化的認知，以及重新檢視史料中誇張和作假的部分。莎士比亞以自我指射來刻劃劇中人物的性格和戲劇觀點中的歷史人物。透過分析自我指射，希望能釐清莎士比亞對歷史的態度，也堅持莎士比亞修正史料中所呈現的理查三世與哈爾王子，並強化戲劇觀點的真實性。

Abstract
This thesis aims to analyze metadramatic elements in Shakespearean history plays mainly from the interplay between the actor and the audience. I do not focus on a particular history play but on two characters: Richard III and Prince Hal. Different from most critics of metadrama, I do not search for ruptures in a dramatic text or interpret those ruptures from the deconstructionist’s perspective. Nor do I view metadrama as an established theory when I notice that most critics of metadrama fail to offer a succinct definition to the term. To be specific, metadrama is a kind of dramatic practice on the Renaissance stage.
Furthermore, matadrama is constituted of types of metadramatic modes, and during my research, I gradually realize that self-reference is a peculiar phenomenon in history plays. The function of self-reference is to challenge the audience’s fixed perception of things and to reexamine the part of exaggeration and counterfeit in the historical documents. Shakespeare uses self-reference to develop not only the personality of dramatic personae but also his theatrical perspective of historical characters.　By analyzing self-reference, I wish to clarify Shakespeare’s attitude toward historical characters. Also, I shall argue that Shakespeare modifies the historical portrayals of Richard III and Prince Hal and authenticates the theatrical perspective of them.

Contents
Abstract i

Introduction 1-7

Chapter 1 Metadramatic Modes and History Plays 8-28

Chapter 2 A Born Devil or a Devil by condition? 29-63

Chapter 3 A Prince Suddenly Reformed or a Prince at Playing Roles? 64-102

Conclusion 103-106

Works Cited 107-111

Works Cited
Abel, Lionel. Metatheatre: a New View of Dramatic Form. NY: Hill and Wang,
1963.
Axton, Marie. The Queen’s Two Bodies: Drama and the Elizabethan Succession. London, Royal Historical Society, 1977.
Baines, Barbara J. “Kingship of the Silent King: A Study of Shakespeare’s Bolingbroke.” English Studies 61.1(1980): 24-36.
Baker, Herschel. “Introduction of Richard II.” The Riverside of Shakespeare. Boston: Hounghton Mifflin, 1974. 800-804.
Barton, Anne. “Shakespeare and the Limits of Language.” Shakespeare Survey 24 (1971): 19-30.
Bassnett, Susan. Shakespeare: The Elizabethan Plays. London: Macmillan, 1993.
Berman, Ronald. “Anarchy and Order in Richard III and King John.” Shakespeare
Survey 20 (1967): 51-59.
Bradbrook, M. C. “Shakespeare and the Multiple Theaters of Jacobean London.” The Elizabethan Theatre 6 (1978): 88-105.
Brockbank, J.P. “The Frame of Disorder—Henry VI.” Shakespeare: The Histories.
Ed. Waith, Eugene M. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1965. 55-65.
Brockett, Oscar G., and Franklin J. Hildy. History of the Theatre. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1999.
Brooks, Harold F. “‘Richard III’, Unhistorical Amplifications: the Women’s Scenes and Seneca.” Modern Language Review 75 (1980): 721-37.
Bullough, Geoffrey. “Introduction to Richard III.” Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare. Vol. 3. London: Routledge, 1975. 221-248.
______. “Introduction to 1Henry IV.” Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare. Vol. 4. London: Routledge, 1975. 155-179.
______. “Introduction to 2Henry IV.” Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare. Vol. 4. London: Routledge, 1975. 249-267.
______. “Introduction to Henry V.” Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare. Vol. 4. London: Routledge, 1975. 347-375.
Calderwood, James L. Metadrama in Shakespeare’s Henriad: Richard II to Henry V. Los Angeles: U of California P, 1979.
______. Shakespearean Metadrama. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1971.
Candido, Joseph. “Getting Loose in the Henry VI Plays.” Shakespeare Quarterly
35.4 (1984): 392-406.
Chandler, David. “A Lost Butter Proverb the Key to a Crux in 1 Henry IV.”
English Language Notes 33.4 (1996): 19-24.
Crewe, Jonathan. “Reforming Prince Hal: the Sovereign Inheritor in 2 Henry IV.” Renaissance Drama 21(1990): 225-42.
Dayton, Paige V. “The Making of a Mysogynist.” Journal of Evolutionary Psychology 9.3-4 (1988): 346-351.
Dorsten, Jan Van. “Literary Patronage in Elizabethan England: The Early Phase.” Patronage in the Renaissance. Ed. Guy Fitch Lytle and Stephen Orgel. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1981. 191-206.
Eliot, T. S. “From Philip Massinger (1920).” Selected Prose of T. S. Eliot. Ed. Frank Kermode. N.Y.: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975. 153-160.
Gairdner, James. “Richard III.” Dictionary of National Bibliography. Ed. Sir Leslie Stephen and Sir Sidney Lee. Vol. 16. London: Oxford UP, c1917.1044-1051.
Grennan, Eamon. “‘This Story Shall the Good Man Teach His Son’: Henry V and the Art of History.” Papers on Language & Literature 15.4 (1979): 370-382.
Gurr, Andrew. “Henry V and the Bees’ commonwealth.” Shakespeare Survey 30 (1977): 61-72.
Hapgood, Robert. “Shakespeare’s Thematic Modes of Speech: Richard II to Henry V.” Shakespeare Survey 20 (1967): 41-49.
Hellenga, Robert R. “Elizabethan Dramatic Conventions and Elizabethan Reality.”
Renaissance Drama 12 (1981): 27-49.
Hornby, Richard. Drama, Metadrama, and Perception. London and Toronto: Associated UP, 1986.
Howard, Jean E., and Phyllis Rackin. Engendering a Nation: a Feminist Account of Shakespeare’s English Histories. London: Routledge, 1997.
Hubert, Judd D. Metatheater: the Example of Shakespeare. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1991.
Hunt, Maurice. “Shakespeare’s King Richard III and the Problematics of Tudor
Bastardy.” Papers on Language and Literature 33.2 (1997): 115-41.
Jones, G. P. “Henry V: the Chorus and the Audience.” Shakespeare Survey 31(1978): 93-103.
Kernan, Alvin B. The Playwright as Magician: Shakespeare’s Image of the Poet in the English Public Theater. New Haven: Yale UP, 1979.
Kingsford, Charles Lethbridge. “Henry V.” Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. Sir Leslie Stephen and Sir Sidney Lee. Vol.9. London: Oxford UP, c1917.494-507.
Lovrod, Marie. “The Rise of Metadrama and the Fall of the Omniscient Observer.” Modern Drama 37 (1994): 497-508.
Milward, Peter. Shakespeare’s Meta-drama: Hamlet and Macbeth. Tokyo: Daitō, 2003.
Moulton, Ian Frederick. “‘A Monster Great Deformed”: the Unruly Masculinity of Richard III.” Shakespeare Quarterly 47.3 (1996): 251-68.
Pearlman, E. “The Invention of Richard of Gloucester.” Shakespeare Quarterly
43.4 (1993): 410-29.
Peck, Linda Levy. “Court Patronage and Government Policy: The Jacobean Dilemma.” Patronage in the Renaissance. Ed. Guy Fitch Lytle and Stephen Orgel. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1981. 27-46.
Pinciss, G. M. “The Old Honor and the New Courtesy: 1 Henry IV.” Shakespeare Survey 31(1978): 85-91.
Righter, Anne. Shakespeare and the Idea of the Play. Baltimore: Penguin, 1962.
Rossiter, A. P. “Angel with Horns: the Unity of Richard III.” William Shakespeare: Histories & Poems. Ed. Harold Bloom. N.Y.: Chelsea, 1986. 169-186.
Sanders, Norman. “The True Prince and the False Thief: Prince Hal and the Shift of Identity.” Shakespeare Survey 30 (1977): 29-34.
Seltzer, Daniel. “Prince Hal and Tragic Style.” Shakespeare Survey 30 (1977): 13-27.
Shakespeare, William. The Riverside of Shakespeare. Ed. G. Blackmore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974.
Shapiro, Michael. “Role-playing, Reflexivity, and Metadrama in Recent Shakespeare Criticism.” Renaissance Drama 7 (1981): 145-161.
Shaw, John. “The Staging of Parody and Parallels in 1 Henry IV.” Shakespeare Survey 20 (1967): 61-73.
Sisk, John P. “Prince Hal and the Specialists.” Shakespeare Quarterly 28 (1977): 520-24.
Somerset, J. A. B. “Falstaff, the Prince, and the Pattern of 2 Henry IV.” Shakespeare Survey 30 (1977): 35-45.
Stoll, E.E. Art and artifice in Shakespeare: a Study in Dramatic Contrast and Illusion. Cambridge: Cambridge, 1933.
Swanson, R. N. Church and Society in Late Medieval England. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989.
Talt , James. “Richard II.” Dictionary of National Bibliography. Ed. Sir Leslie Stephen and Sir Sidney Lee. Vol. 16. London: Oxford UP, c1917.1031-1044.
Tout, Thomas Frederick. “Henry VI.” Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. Sir Leslie Stephen and Sir Sidney Lee. Vol.9. London: Oxford UP, 1917. 507-520.
_______. “Henry IV.” Dictionary of National Bibliography. Ed. Sir Leslie Stephen and Sir Sidney Lee. Vol. 9. London: Oxford UP, c1917.482-494.
Traister, Barbarah. “‘I will…Be like a king’: Henry V Plays Richard II.” Colby Quarterly 26.2 (1990): 112-21.
Walch, Gunter. “‘Henry V as Working-House of Ideology.” Shakespeare Survey
40 (1988): 63-8.
Warren, Roger. “‘Contrarieties Agree’: an Aspect of dramatic Technique in ‘Henry
VI.’” Shakespeare Survey 37(1984): 75-83.
Watson, Robert N. “Horsemanship in Shakespeare’s Second Tetralogy.” English Literary Renaissance 13.3 (1983): 274-300.
Wilshire, Bruce. Role Playing and Identity: the Limits of Theatre as Metaphor. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1982.
Wilson, Richard. “Introduction: Historicising New Historicism.” New Historicism and Renaissance Drama. Ed. Richard Wilson and Richard Dutton. London: Longman, 1992. 1-18.
Zamir, Tzachi. “A Case of Unfair Proportions: Philosophy in Literature.” New Literary History 29.3 (1998): 501-20.