ABSTRACT
Assessing audiences is a tricky business. Ancient critics crudely divided audiences into two opposed groups, while modern studies have tended to assimilate audiences with publics, or to eschew analysis given that audiences are comprised of individual spectators, each different in some respect. Whatever we say about audiences could (or will) be false in some sense, but the historical constitution of audiences should not be avoided (Kennedy 2009). Our knowledge of the theater, our interpretation of what theatrical signs could mean, is only possible “if it is based on the investigation of the meanings created by the respective cultural systems” (Fischer-Lichte 1982: 52). The crucial role of audiences was duly recognized in antiquity, and audience expectations were incorporated into dramatic production. The composition of plays, the selection of plays for performance by civic officials, and the physical performances by actors and musicians were all carried out with some idea of the desires, interests, and thoughts of the audience. Our understanding of the constitution of audiences not only shapes our sense of the possible reception of the plays themselves; it is also intimately connected with ancient and modern conceptions of the public (cf. Livingstone 2005). Audiences and publics in antiquity have often been reconstituted to suit the demands of the modern state that emerged in the Enlightenment.
