Chapter 1 - Dead Theatre, Printed Relics

Summary

Explores the pervasive contemporary discourse that described playbooks as the “remains” or “relics” of the dead theatrical past. Argues that this metaphor captures English printed drama’s cultural elevation in the wake of the theatre closures. Shows how the marketing of printed plays that flopped onstage (consumed exclusively by literate audiences) prefigured the marketing of plays after the theatre closures, with similar consequences for drama’s perceived value. Describes the royalist analogy between the regicide and the theatrical prohibition, where King Charles I and English theatre were both murdered by the same political opponent. Much like the martyrdom of the late Charles I, the fact and threat of dramatic destruction similarly accorded new status to both dramatic texts and the absent theatre. The playbook staved off further loss and acquired new respectability through its ties with a longed-for medium. Theatre’s absence added to the cultural cachet of English drama: the playbook was physically separated from the absent theatre but drew ever closer to the idealized theatre of the nostalgic imagination. As the living fragments of a dead practice, printed relics perpetuate the essence of the theatre for eternity, producing an English literary drama equally rooted in the theatrical and the material.