''Vladimir Nabokov's Comic Quest for Reality' - Nottingham eTheses

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plete isolation and the fact that there is no way out
of it, not even through love.
The second device in the creation of Cincinnatus'
unreal imitation-and-dream world are constant references
to the theatre and the circus. They are too
numerous to list. They are used so consistently throughout
the novel as to involve everybody and everything
in the "performance" of which Cincinnatus finds himself
the frightened and bewildered centre. People
wear masks and make-up, false beards and toupees, and
costumes of various descriptions. They assume
theatrical poses, sing and dance and serve letters on
salvers as they do in plays. All the typical items of
stage property. are there, and natural phenomena, too,
sun and moon and clouds, are clearly parts of the
stage-scenery, and time itself has nothing to do with
real
time.
Significantly, it is in terms of a bad and unskilful
theatrical production, of low, cheap comedy, and of
a bad circus performance, that Cincinnatus' world is
described.
The world represented in a play and on the stage
may be modelled on our own; it may represent our world
faithfully or it may be a stylized or distorted version
of it. It may also be a highly fantastic world,
quite unrelated to ours, like that of A Midsummer
Night's Dream. No matter which it is, a good play
and a skilful production can make us believe that
what we see on the stage is an integral world with
a reality of its own, self-contained, independent of