ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 focused primarily on the religious and socio-cultural contexts within which early forms of drama and theatre originated and were performed. In this chapter, we consider the aesthetics of performance, that is, the ways in which dramatic performances deliver particular kinds of pleasure(s) for particular audiences through dramatic and theatrical means. Any discussion of aesthetics necessarily involves an analysis of the cultural context, so we also consider the relations of certain kinds of social formations to certain theatrical pleasures. Different kinds of theatre were produced for an “elite” audience at court in fourteenth-century Japan and for the general public who gathered in the second century B.C.E. for a play in the marketplace adjacent to a Roman arena. Specific kinds of pleasures are enjoyed today by the devotees who participate in a public commemorative devotional drama in northern India, and by those who gather in a temple to witness a performance considered pleasing to a deity.
