ABSTRACT
This stage-conscious induction disrupts whatever preconceptions the audience may have by pointing out what Jonson has not intended or included in the play: it is not a rehash of twenty-or thirty-year-old sex-and-violence melodramas, circus acts, or Inns of Court pranks. The disappointment expressed by the old stage-keeper, who wanted to re-experience those old-fashioned entertainments, is echoed by the disdainful bookholder (the custodian of the full prompt copy of the script - actors would simply be given their own lines and cues), who thinks Jonson has written just such a low comedy aimed at viewers in the pit. To prevent the audience in the theatre from behaving as riotously as the fair-going crowd in the play, the scrivener (or professional scribe) reads out the contract which Jonson proposes as the conditions of performance. The articles demand that the spectators watch the whole play patiently; that they criticise only in proportion to what they paid for their tickets; that they use their own judgments instead of aping their neighbours'; that they not anticipate fantastic action, except among the puppets; and that they not particularise the satire nor complain about the earthiness of the milieu. The contract as the official prelude to the play corresponds to the proclamations uttered during the Lord Mayor's procession which formally opened the fair. See the Introduction to BF, pp. 537-8. The legal metaphor, a favourite of Jonson's, also appears in the epilogues of Volp and Alch.
