ABSTRACT
In his early work on the popular tradition, Robert Weimann encouraged critics to do what now seems so natural: to read extant plays as written for, and performed in, a theatrical and social context. The habitual conception of theatre history in terms of binaries, including Alfred Harbage's notion of a rivalry between two traditions, has been replaced by a new focus on the emulative nature of the company repertory and the business of playing. The tradition of popular performance derived from preliterary rites, children had for many decades, and indeed centuries, performed from playtexts, and many extant plays, particularly the two plays, Skelton's Magnificence and Medwall's Fulgens and Lucres. As Weimann suggests, to practices imported from the children's tradition along with the text, such as the idea of a master-director, an authoritative playwright, the demand for expert performance and rote memorization of the text that may have encouraged a conception of the actor as a puppet-like child.
