Staging Subversions: The Performance-within-a-Play in French Classical Theater defines a new
type of metadrama using Le Tartuffe as its paradigm and explores the complex ambiguous and
enlightening relationships that metadrama maintains with the social and political orders. While
metadramatic scenes are most often concerned with theater itself the performance-within-a-play
adopts an important function in the play's plot and consequently in the social world of the
play. The performance-within-a-play is particularly associated by the classical playwrights
with the family structure with the class system with women's social roles and with the
politics of absolutism.
