ABSTRACT

Unruly Audiences and the Theater of Control in Early Modern London explores the effects of audience riots on the dramaturgy of early modern playwrights, arguing that playwrights from Marlowe to Brome often used their plays to control the physical reactions of their audience.

This study analyses how, out of anxiety that unruly audiences would destroy the nascent industry of professional drama in England, playwrights sought to limit the effect that their plays could have on the audience. They tried to construct playgoing through their drama in the hopes of creating a less-reactive, more pensive, and controlled playgoer. The result was the radical experimentation in dramaturgy that, in part, defines Renaissance drama.

Written for scholars of Early Modern and Renaissance Drama and Theatre, Theatre History, and Early Modern and Renaissance History, this book calls for a new focus on the local economic concerns of the theatre companies as a way to understand the motivation behind the drama of early modern London.

chapter |8 pages

Introduction

The alterity of early modern audiences

chapter 1|45 pages

Audience response to performance

Fear of riots, closures and unruly playgoers

chapter 2|57 pages

Performance’s response to audience

The relationship between audience, performance and reality

chapter 3|29 pages

Fictional audiences’ responses to fictional performances

The didactic role of metadrama

chapter 5|38 pages

Anti-mimetic drama

Performance’s relationship to reality and the playgoer’s interpretive agency

chapter |14 pages

Coda

Return to Malfi: the secrecy of performance and the consequences of constructing playgoing