Personnage: History, Philology, Performance

Abstract

René Descartes’ depiction of the world as a stage inhabited by characters echoes Shakespeare’s Jaques: “All the world’s a stage, / And all the men and women merely players; / They have their exits and their entrances, / And one man in his time plays many parts” (As You Like It, 2.7.139–43).² The similarity of these metaphors reveals a common idea in early modern France and England. In effect, over time, the words theatrun mun, with the common alternatives amphitheatrum and even globe, took on the meanings of a meeting place for performance; but also as a global vision, whose textual realization was a series of compendia, the first of which was Pierre de Launay’s anthology of European poetry, Theatrum mundi.³

Like actors who, trained not to show any shyness on the face, wear a mask, so too I, at the moment of entering onto the stage of the world where until now I lived as a spectator, goforward masked.

—René Descartes, Larvatus prodeo, 1618¹