ABSTRACT
A case can probably be made that the family is an inherent feature of both public and private entertainment. Even a cursory examination of publicly performed plays reveals a long list in which the family and/or family relationships played a significant part, including Shakespeare’s King Lear, The Taming of the Shrew, and Henry IV (parts I and II). Similarly, in the Victorian home, where entertainment was routinely created and enacted by family members, performances often depicted family life and family relations in self-reflexive and self-conscious ways (Spigel, 1992).
