ABSTRACT
Some of the co-ordinates for the project come from the current flourishing of historicised performance studies in all forms. In recent years, much scholarly work has been done reconstructing the early modern theatre in greater detail than before. London’s Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre is the most obvious flagship of this initiative, but the activity has not been limited to recovering the physical environment of the playhouse. An interest in the cultural environment of early modern theatre can also be seen in recent scholarly attention to the reconstruction of the economics of theatres; of acting styles; of rehearsal practices; of the social composition of theatre audiences; and in a shift towards studies of sets of plays based not on a single common authorship but on the repertories of particular theatrical companies. What Tiffany Stern has termed the “stage-to-page” field within this area has developed a better picture of the relationship between printed text and performance.3 This study aims to contribute to that field by historicising the equivalent norms around both stage convention and audience behaviour concerning laughing and weeping in the best detail possible.
