...illusion: "The truth is, that the spectators are always in their senses, and know, from first act to last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players." 23 Before we conclude, however, that Johnson was an utter skeptic who deined the efficacy of illusion,...

...The truth is that the spectators are always in their senses and know, from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players.12 In other words, the dramatic fiction does not set out to deceive the audience by pretending...

...truth is, that the spectators are always in their senses, and know, from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players." 5. I have argued that there is a common metaphysical grounding for the Essay on Criticism and the Essay...

...dictum that in the theater "the spectators are always in their senses, and know, from first to last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players."13 Unless we are subjected to some sort of trickery which hides the frame from our eyes and...

...truth is that the spectators are always in their senses, and know, from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players .... It will be asked how the drama moves, if it is not credited. It is credited with all the credit...

...truth is. that the spectators are always in their senses, and know, from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players < Co/2 3 1 > . They come to hear a certain number of lines recited with just gesture and elegant modulation....

...Samuel Johnson: "the spectators are always in their senses, and know, from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players." 44 If Johnson is correct, spectators would not only have shared Cleopatra's fear, as Davies claims,...

...having burst the bubble to his own satisfaction, the spectators 'are always in their senses', know that 'the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players'. That reductivist position turns into a dismissive account of the theatre as a whole: a play is merely...

...Shakespearean drama, and when he insists that the spectators 'know, from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players', he is denying that the play asks us to take it for real life.6 Coleridge thinks the spectator - temporarily...

...maintains that "the spectators are always in their senses, and know from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players" ("Preface to Shakespeare," Selections, 24), Coleridge insists that the audience makes no determination...