ABSTRACT
Because early modern reading culture (highly influenced by Protestant and humanist rhetorical theory) insisted that readers should actively interpret texts and then act on that interpretation, the playhouse tried to distance themselves from reading culture in order to create a less active audience. This chapter traces how plays such as George Chapman, Ben Jonson and John Marston’s Eastward Ho!, Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair, John Middleton, William Rowley and Thomas Heywood’s The Old Law, and Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice stage texts (letters, legal documents, books, etc.) in opposition to performance, showing how texts affect the audience and how performance fails to move the audience. This chapter also shows how the economic structure of the playhouses (advertising, repertory system, etc.) organized itself in opposition to the structure of the early modern book trade. This too was done to distance the plays from print in an effort to limit the reactions of the playgoing crowds.
