ABSTRACT
Given the special strangeness of the early modern English grotesque, there are three conceptual pairs that one should keep in mind when exploring this collection: the word forms and meanings of “grottesco/grotesque/crotesque” and “antica/antick/antique”; generic locations and authorial predilections; and the domains of theatricality and visual arts. The amount of grotesque visual art surviving from 1500 to 1700 is almost infinite. European art is the crucible of the grotesque and art historical scholarship relating to it abounds. If we set aside all Continental (and American) examples of grotesque art and focus on early modern English examples alone, the extant body of grotesque visual art remains extraordinary. Just about everybody—from monarchs and merchants to madman, from cardinals to charlatans, from scholars and artisans to the unskilled poor—had opportunity to encounter the visual or theatrical grotesque and respond. The English arrival of the theatrical grotesque is more difficult to appraise than its manifestation in visual arts.
