Erika T. Lin

This book traces the birth of the art form known as “theatre,” a peculiar kind of mimetic playing that is now our default but which this study argues arose only in Shakespeare’s era. Whereas past scholars and the general public alike have treated early modern plays mainly as stories, this project contends that they were gatherings that served a ritual function. Acting out tales was but one among many performance practices in service of that larger goal. Drawing on legal records, parish accounts, pamphlets, ballads, and other archival sources, this book reveals how May Games, Robin Hood gatherings, morris dances, and other holiday customs crucially shaped the performance dynamics of the London playhouses. The stage repeatedly heightened its own artifice, rather than naturalizing the imaginary world of the play; and it did so precisely in order to turn audience affect into efficacious holiday ritual. At the same time, the innovative strategies through which it incorporated festive practices also inadvertently separated dramatic fiction from embodied enactment. When repeated over time, this process eventually transformed performance from a ubiquitous mode of sociality that permeated communal life into the ontologically distinct aesthetic object that is our modern notion of theatre.