ABSTRACT
In 1968, Jerzy Grotowski wrote, ‘At least one spectator is needed to make it a performance’. How do we define a dramatic audience? Students of early drama have always known that the stage/audience relationships encountered in the medieval and Tudor periods do not always easily match the models offered by twentieth-century theatre. The social roles occupied by early theatre were different, and reception models were more various. One area of early theatre practice where this can be seen particularly sharply is in the court entertainments of Henry VIII. These entertainments attracted little traditional dramatic study, since scripted drama generally played a relatively minor part in the shows, which consisted largely of dancing and spectacular display. This chapter considers the complex role(s) of the audience in one specific evening of entertainment: the shows mounted in Henry VIII’s specially constructed ‘disguysing house’ on 5 May 1527.
