UC Davis

This study leverages three separate yet overlapping polemical debates over the licentiousness ofpublic drama in early modern Europe to demonstrate patterns of productive interplay between antitheatricalists and the theater industries that arose during the 16th and 17th centuries in England France, and Spain. Previous studies have demonstrated how early modern debates over the existence of public theater spaces deeply impacted contemporary drama, both because dramatists often participated in heated arguments over theater’s illicit qualities and because anti-theatrical logic eventually worked its way into the plots and characters of all three regions. As will be shown, however, the impact of these disputes was rarely one-sided. Despite the logic of antagonism inherent to its polarizing viewpoints on performance, early modern anti-theatricalism often displays a variety of rhetorical, stylistic, and generic patterns driven by trends in contemporary drama. Some anti-theatricalists co-opt the theatrical concentration on visual and aural stimulation, attempting to captivate audiences through imaginative descriptions and fictional scenarios that approximate the sensory experience of spectatorship. Others pull tension on contemporary dramatic practice, balancing out the writing of popular dramatists through complementary strategies that demonstrate both a deep sense of conversance and a complex understanding of debate. Tracing the complex maneuvers from writers on both sides as a result of their productive polemical interplay reveals the common ground between writers of all kinds of calibers and styles, creating an analytical lens that allows us to see how arguments over drama informed the futures of both performance and polemics, as well as how such controversies helped form the unique attributes that helped characterize the early modern period.