ABSTRACT
This chapter examines broken props of all kinds. Some props arrive onstage broken or are broken between onstage appearances, such as Hortensio’s lute in The Taming of the Shrew. Others are broken centre stage, their destruction an iconoclastic, climactic moment of stagecraft, as in Robert Greene’s Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay or Shakespeare’s Richard II. Writing about broken props is difficult. The general principle that props with celebrity provenance outlast those without quite literally breaks down when props become broken: the torn and restitched ‘bond’ surviving from Henry Irving’s 1879 The Merchant of Venice is a rare exception. Archive and anecdotes are central to determining how props are broken because playtexts themselves are often inconclusive. There are exceptions throughout the period, often involving paper props. If plays and their paratexts obscure moments of onstage prop-breaking, the varied nature of brokenness complicates its discussion.
