ABSTRACT
The production of cultural goods and services in the sixteenth century unfolds in a political context of ‘representative publicness’ (Habermas 1992:5-14). Power and authority are represented in public space by the body of the monarch, and also by various figures in a complex hierarchy of lesser sovereignties and lordships, both secular and ecclesiastical. The political authority so represented was itself derived from something incomparably greater and more excellent than the ruler’s contingent historical person. Rulers, however, were enjoined to manifest this power through the public display of magnificence. Private individuals of ordinary or common social position take no active role in this representation of publicness. They are simply called upon to witness the public display of higher excellence made visible in the sovereign body of the ruler. Sovereign authority in this context is less concerned with obtaining the consent of the governed than with securing the obedience of its subjects, with or without their consent. Shakespeare’s plays were initially produced against a background in which political authority is manifested through public representation and spectacle. The letters patent granted to The King’s Men authorizes Shakespeare and his fellows to perform for the solace of the King and the recreation of his ‘loving subjects’. Limited royal authority is thus delegated to Shakespeare’s company and in a de jure sense performances of plays were an extension of the spectacles of the court. Unlike the official spectacles of royal power such as progresses and processions, however, the ‘recreation’ of the King’s subjects is made available in the public theaters as a commodity. The existence of a commercial trade in such an elusive and ambiguous commodity, however, fundamentally alters the character of the representative publicness of which it is the expression. The theatrical representation of power tends to reveal the tenuous theatricality of power
itself. One of the unintended consequences of the licensing of profit-making theatrical enterprises is that the theater becomes a space of alternatives in which cultural consumers may come to redefine their own public standing.
