ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the thingyness of plays – their material form as books – but also how certain material features, specifically the prefatory paratexts found in playbooks, construct the play as thing. It aims to refute the point that early printed plays contain no prefatory materials; in fact, there is one piece of front matter that is almost ubiquitous: the character list. That character lists are found at all in the texts of early printed closet dramas complicates the idea that such lists need always function to facilitate real, physical performance. The chapter provides a comparative approach, and examines early printed plays alongside other texts with minimal front matter; it also takes a closer look at plays that do feature these more 'literary' paratexts, including those that occur in printed collections. It suggests the printed preliminaries in pre-playhouse playbooks point to the fact that plays were often framed both as pieces of drama and designed for leisure-time reading.
