Early Modern Performance Beyond the Public Stage: Extra-Theatrical Forms and Spaces

The first major work to explore and analyse the popular ’extra-theatrical’ performances in late medieval and Renaissance England.

This wider heterogeneous category of early modern performance included puppetry, fireworks shows, rope dancing, minstrelsy, performing animals, games, civic drama, court masques, university drama, morris dances, and ceremonial rituals, all taking place in a variety of venues.

The volume reveals how these extra-theatrical productions shaped urban and rural life and conveyed a sense of spectacular excess, of exceeding traditional genres, conventional modes of performance and the typical bounds of theatrical space. The spaces where medieval and early modern drama flourished include pageant carts, convents, private homes, universities, waterways, and the streets of both urban and rural communities. Much like public theatres, these performance spaces also played a pivotal role in articulating individual, communal, and national aspirations.

Spanning the medieval period to the late 17th century, this volume engages with questions of spatiality, gender, religion, transcontinental exchanges, and colonialism, presenting the latest research from scholars across the globe.

Amrita Sen is Associate Professor of English at the University of Calcutta, India. She is co-editor of Civic Performance: Pageantry and Entertainments in Early Modern London (2020), and a special issue of the Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies on ＂Alternative Histories of the East India Company＂ (2017).

Jennifer Linhart Wood is Assistant Professor of English at George Mason University, USA. She is the author of Sounding Otherness in Early Modern Drama and Travel: Uncanny Vibrations in the English Archive (2019), winner of the 2021 MRDS David Bevington Award for Best New Book.