Henk Gras

For over a hundred years a wildly held assumption has ruled the debate on the social composition of theatre audiences. This assumption states that in the period from the late eighteenth century to the Great War (1773 -1914) theatre audience was largely elite, till the French Revolution chased them to opera. The drama performances were sought by petty bourgeois and unskilled labour force, till, in 1870, the re-conquest of the stage by the upper bourgeoisie set in. In this study for the first time a large empirical research is presented to test this ‘master narrative’. Based on thorough archival research from the past twenty years, combined with robust statistical analysis, the conclusion with respect to this still dominant narrative can be short: it is to be fully rejected.

The aim of this volume is to give an analytic description of how Elizabethan Spectators in documentary evidence responded to the theatre performances they watched or knew to be about. It also considers why they responded in that way. Opposing dual consciousness to the reification of the character (its 'ideal presence'), the author concludes that Elizabethan spectators were predominantly interested in the characters' 'ideal presence'. Why they were, is explained by relating their statements to the Renaissance theory of visual perception, (demonic) transformation, and ideas on acting.