ABSTRACT
In dealing with The Whore of Babylon and Much Ado About Nothing I have focused primarily on the representational level of each play and on the political implications of how each depicts particular kinds of theatrical practice. But, of course, as I suggested at the end of the last chapter, theater involves a very particular scene of representation, and that scene not only affects the ideological import of the narratives enacted on the stage; it also creates the possibility of a politics of the playhouse as a supplement and/or alternative to the politics of the playscript. In the Renaissance public amphitheaters playgoing involved much more than being the witness to an enacted narrative. It also involved paying money to enter the playhouse, and it involved mingling with, observing, and being observed by playgoers of at least two sexes and several social classes. The political implications of these interactions and activities clearly worried enemies of the theater as much as did the possible seditious or lascivious nature of the representations enacted on the stage proper. And I am going to argue that the antitheatricalists were in this instance onto something. For some subjects, playgoing itself could be as disruptive of established social relations as watching the most iconoclastic drama.
