Although most critics affirm the importance of interior direction and role-playing in many of Shakespeares plays, there is a considerable disagreement concerning the result of this role playing: does it lead to positive growth or to degeneration? Moreover, this debate is often associated with the sixteenth-century controversy about the role of the theater in society. Some moralists insist that the theater can be an instrument for instilling virtue while others view the theater as sinful, debasing, and a catalyst to social breakdown. In this thesis, I will explore the antitheatrical prejudice in the early modern era and show how Shakespeare responds and counters these arguments by creating characters in As You Like It and King Lear who employ theatrical means to experience identity formation and personal growth. Using Jonas Barishs The Antitheatrical Prejudice as my central source, I will explore the attacks against the theater, demonstrating how this opposition reverberates throughout the diatribes of early modern moralists, for whom role-playing and playgoing tend to rank abnormally high in the hierarchy of sins (Barish 80). Moreover, by expanding the criticism of Jean Howard and Susanne Wofford, I will explore Rosalinds role-playing as Ganymede in As You Like It and its success through the orchestrated marriages between herself and Orlando and Silvius and Phoebe. Also, throughout King Lear, Edgar takes on many different roles, at first to protect himself from Gloucester and later to pursue his own search for identity. Edgar's complete assimilation of guises is a concrete refutation of the antitheatrical prejudices of the period. These impersonations demonstrate how role-playing can be a positive process, subversively suggesting that an individual person, not God, can define identity, that fulfilling a destiny is the province of each man or woman, and that mimicry can be constructive. In conclusion, therefore, in both of these plays Shakespeare explores the way in which the characters' actions affirm or debunk the antitheatrical prejudice, countering the arguments of the antitheatrical pamphleteers by demonstrating that through drama individuals can explore and elucidate an indifferent world.

Shakespeare uses metadrama as a rhetorical vehicle for responding to antitheatricalism; realistic drama and staged theatricality therefore coexist in his plays. The cultural context of the early modern era, especially its antitheatrical rhetoric and the predominance of theatricality throughout the structures of its society, illumines the interaction of metadrama and antitheatricality Shakespeare's plays, particularly Troilus and Cressida and King Lear. By failing to consider adequately the unique nature of the emergence of early modern theater and the equally distinct reaction to its popularity, previous scholarship considering antitheatricality has exhibited essentialism and a universalizing tendency similar to that of the antitheatricalists. The paucity of specifically protheatrical response in prose to the immense antitheatrical work of polemicists such as William Prynne and to antitheatrical tracts and publications signals the presence of protheatrical response within the literature of the stage: its plays. Metadramatic critics have noted that metadrama provides a subtle means of establishing a connection between actors and their audience and that it serves as a means of interrogating various deployments of theatrical power and the motives implied by its use. Troilus and Cressida celebrates, interrogates, and reproves the theater, engaging the proponents and detractors of the theater through depictions of Ulysses and Pandarus as effective and ineffective interior directors, respectively. Ulysses's militaristic drive toward victory at all costs demonstrates his affinity to the figure of the stage Machiavel, while his seemingly inexplicable hostility toward Achilles similarly marks his connection to the figure of the Vice. Pandarus's relation to theatricality highlights the negative associations of theater and prostitution apparent in the works of the antitheatricalists. His self-delusory propensity to motivate others to actions to which they are already predisposed mocks and calls into question the assertion that theater exerts motivational power over its audience. Literary critics considering King Lear observe that identity loss underpins the tragic process apparent in the plays' protagonists. Depictions of staged theatrical ability and inability and positive depictions of antitheatrical Puritanism pervade King Lear. The deployment of theatricality in the play both emphasizes its creative and soteriological function and embodies the harmful potential of dramaturgical art.