The Fourth Wall (Caturday)

Big Cat, Little Cat: The Fourth Wall

Was the Fourth Wall Always There?

Back in my dissertatin’ days, one of my particular interests was: the occasions on which an epic poet talks in the first person. You might say: times when the poet breaks the fourth wall. For example, the way Homer does at the very beginning of the Odyssey: “Tell me now, Muse, of the Man of Many Ways…” Also at the beginning of the Iliad and at the beginning of the Catalogue of Ships in Book 2. I noticed that Homer’s heirs expanded this practice. When Nisus and Euryalus die in each others’ arms after storming the Latin camp (#CouplesGoals), Vergil takes a moment to say how sad this makes him. Him meaning Vergil.

It’s an odd moment, given that a lot of sad things happen in the Aeneid. Dido throws herself living on her own funeral pyre. Aeneas tries to hug his wife’s ghost in the burning wreckage of Troy and his arms pass through her. But these two… um… roommates dying together is, for Vergil, the only moment that merits an extended pause in the narration, the better to lament their passing.

Vergil opens the door a crack. Then Dante kicks it down. The Divine Comedy is explicitly not an epic poem. It’s a comedy. You may not think of it that way, but if you consider that it begins with Dante being separated from God and ends with Dante being reunited with God, you see the parallels between “romantic comedy” and “divine comedy” a bit better.

The Fourth Wall in Theater

Different genres have different expectations, though. Lyric poetry is expected to be written entirely in the first person and addressed entirely to the reader. Now. The intended reader in this case might be the love interest:

A woman’s face with nature’s own hand painted
Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion;

Sonnet 20 (Shakespeare)

Or a generic reader:

My mistress’s eyes are nothing like the sun;

Sonnet 130 (Shakespeare)

But still. A lyric is meant to be spoken or sung by a poet to a listener. An epic poem? The “I” in an epic poem is often more collective, and so is the “you.” A dramatic poem, that is, a play? There is rarely an “I” or a “you” except in terms of characters interacting with each other. Except… Who are is the intended listener of those Shakespeare monologues? They’re talking to themselves, like as not. Fine. But they’re talking out loud, and the other people in the scene can’t hear them.

There’s actually a funny early example from a play of Plautus (I forget which one… my comprehensive exams were a long-ass time ago, though not as long ago as Plautus’ career) in which the play starts with a bunch of characters chatting as if they were actors getting ready to act, and one says: “I hope we’re not doing another play by Plautus. That guy’s the worst.” Apparently, in anther play, one of the actors offers a drink of water to one of the musicians. Good stuff.

Bertold Brecht famously broke the fourth wall early and often in his plays because he didn’t want his audiences to get complacent.

Good Writing is the Oldest, Cheapest, and Best Special Effect

Ultimately, whether you do a cheeky aside or you’re so overcome with emotion that you have to break off mid-scene and address the middle distance (in which there happen to be a thousand audience members munching on popcorn or samosas) what really matters is the writing. If it’s good writing, it’ll work. If it’s bad writing, breaking the fourth wall will neither doom nor save you. It’ll just be one other thing that lands awkwardly. And there are only two real ways to determine which is which is which. In other words, whether your fourth-wall-break works.

1. Think of it analytically: What are you trying to accomplish by breaking the fourth wall? Is this the right way to do it? Is it consistent with the style of the rest of the poem/play/story? If not, what is the goal of the inconsistency?
2. Think of it organically: Have you read it? Does it work? Have other people read it? Does it work for them?

Good luck! Let us know how it goes!

Description

Four identical panels, arranged two-and-two to form a kind of square. In each panel, two cats recline side-by-side on a cushion: on the left, a large orange with darker orange stripes. On the right, a small grey with darker grey stripes. The orange is looking down at the grey as at a friend who has just said something horribly uncouth–but ultimately charming. The grey is staring off into the distance, out-of-frame, as if he can see the wider world outside his little comic strip, and is not impressed.

Panel 1

Big Cat: What’s with the new format, Little Cat?
Little Cat: Oh, you mean the two-and-two instead of three or four cells in a row?

Panel 2

Big Cat: Yeah. Is it an artistic decision?
Little Cat: Nah. It’s probably just so we’ll be more visible on a cell phone.

Panel 3

Big Cat: Oh! So now people can carry us with them wherever they go!
Little Cat: Yeah. Like on the subway. Nestled between the flasher and the bullhorn evangelist.

Panel 4

Big Cat: Wait–do you think if someone threw their cell phone at a bird… we could try to eat the bird?
Little Cat: That’s… actually brilliant. Hey–you! You out there! Yeah, you! The one reading this!