ABSTRACT
The audience in Shakespeare’s time was a stridently segregated group. The strategic separation of Elizabethan audiences was based upon class, with the upper-class patrons of The Rose theater adorning the balconies, seated in their ornate dress. A sharp contrast were the poorer audience members standing on the bare floor in front of the stage-both their positioning and dress denoting their place. And while it may seem that the lower-class patrons were unusually honored with the best seats in the house, this actually increased the societal perception of lowliness-theater, and particularly the work of Shakespeare, was seen as an entertainment venue for the peasants, a low-minded frivolity meant to evoke the basest of emotions. Therefore, those who engaged fully from the ground level-laughing, crying, shouting, stamping their feetbetrayed their inferiority when juxtaposed with the removed (both emotionally and physically) and composed upper-level patrons. There remains today a sense of a binding, even branding, relationship between audiences and their choice of pop cultural “poison.” And while our perceptions of the work of Shakespeare in terms of its place within culture may have changed since that time period, the complexity of the relationship between audiences and their popular culture has only increased since the advent of the televisual audience.
