ABSTRACT
Any disguise device is in essence metatheatrical. What the disguiser does is what the stage player does: he or she dresses up and pretends to be someone else. This must have the case in the private theatres when they were the home of children's companies; part of the interest of heatrical experience was the challenge to a suspension of disbelief that child actors demanded. With the men's companies the familiarity of the audiences with the players and their styles meant that the player was always visible behind his role, and close physical proximity of at least some of the spectators to the actors must have encouraged a sense of intimacy bordering on participation. Part of the audience's pleasure must have generated by the experience of seeing, say, Edward Alleyn or Robert Armin or Dick Robinson in a new role. There was probably always some level of dual consciousness in the spectator's reception of what they saw, distinguishing actor from role.
