The Burning Issue: Metadrama and Contested Authority in Chettle’s Hoffman

In Chettle’s The Tragedy of Hoffman, authority is in flux again and here metadrama bites both ways as its usurping and informing metadramatic actors are punished by hidden audiences. Although the play’s metadramatic structure initially facilitates the active power of the vengeful protagonist and draws the offstage audience into his confidence, it is also used by the play’s antagonists as onstage audiences, in this case to redress an ill rather than to provoke one, providing the downfall of the plotters. The avenger’s deceptive usurping of authority and privilege is punished by the burning crown that boils the brains of the subject, perhaps a fitting punishment for the thought-crime of assuming or impersonating authority, either as pirate, impostor, or authorial plotter. However, the burning crown also bespeaks an authority troubled by its own mechanisms of control and punishment.