Imagining the Audience in Early Modern Drama, 1558 1642
Imagining the Audience in Early Modern Drama, 1558 1642 Edited by Jennifer A. Low and Nova Myhill palgrave macmillan
imagining the audience in early modern drama, 1558-1642 Copyright Jennifer A. Low and Nova Myhill, 2011. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2011 978-0-230-11064-9 All rights reserved. First published in 2011 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN in the United States a division of St. Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe, and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-29310-0 DOI 10.1057/9780230118393 ISBN 978-0-230-11839-3 (ebook) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Imagining the audience in early modern drama, 1558 1642 / edited by Jennifer A. Low, Nova Myhill. p. cm. 1. English drama Early modern and Elizabethan, 1500 1600 History and criticism. 2. Theater audiences England History 16th century. 3. English drama 17th century History and criticism. 4. Theater audiences England History 17th century. 5. Theater England History. I. Low, Jennifer A., 1962 II. Myhill, Nova, 1970 PR658.A88I43 2011 822'.045'09031 dc22 2010039889 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Scribe Inc. First edition: March 2011 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Transferred to Digital Printing in 2012
For Philippa and Daphne, Ursula and Helena
Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Audience and Audiences 1 Nova Myhill and Jennifer A. Low 1 Crowd Control 19 Paul Menzer 2 Taking the Stage: Spectators as Spectacle in the Caroline Private Theaters 37 Nova Myhill 3 The Curious Case of the Two Audiences: Thomas Dekker s Match Me in London 55 Mark Bayer 4 Door Number Three: Time, Space, and Audience Experience in The Menaechmi and The Comedy of Errors 71 Jennifer A. Low 5 Audience as Witness in Edward II 93 Meg F. Pearson 6 Lord of thy presence : Bodies, Performance, and Audience Interpretation in Shakespeare s King John 113 Erika T. Lin 7 Charismatic Audience: A 1559 Pageant 135 David M. Bergeron 8 Audience, Actors, and Taking Part in the Revels 151 Emma K. Rhatigan 9 Bleared Vision in The Taming of the Shrew 171 James Wells
viii Contents 10 Fitzgrave s Jewel: Audience and Anticlimax in Middleton and Shakespeare 189 Jeremy Lopez List of Contributors 205 Index 209
Acknowledgments First we wish to acknowledge the support and collegiality of the members of the 2009 Shakespeare Association seminar Audience and Audiences. The fine work presented there inspired us to develop this collection; those members whose essays are not included here offered papers that we expect to see in print elsewhere. Warm thanks are due to Diana Henderson and Lena Cowen Orlin, who permitted the late submission of the seminar topic. Without their flexibility, this project might not have been engendered. More generally, we d like to thank the Shakespeare Association of America, whose annual conference is such a wonderful forum for the free exchange of ideas. Katharine Eisaman Maus and Gail Kern Paster recommended scholars working on the topic who had not joined the seminar; their thoughtfulness resulted in the recruitment of several splendid contributors. Paul Yachnin and Steven Mullaney provided support and encouragement through crucial conversations and the example of their own fine work on the subject of audiences. Thanks to Carrie Beneš for her timely help with image permissions. We would like to thank our editors, Brigitte Shull and Samantha Hasey, and the anonymous reader of our manuscript. More generally, we would like to thank Palgrave Macmillan, whose support of scholarship, particularly of early modern literature, has been a boon to the academic community for some time. Perhaps most importantly, we would like to thank our contributors, whose alacrity and professionalism have made this project a pleasure. Both our husbands deserve credit for their support, particularly in the time they took when our planning sessions by telephone coincided with the witching hour. Finally, this project would not have come to birth without two editors. We would like to acknowledge one another s style, savvy, intellectual liveliness, and humor, which made this project both a success and a pleasure to assemble.