Davies, Callan (2023) Playing apples and the playhouse archive. In, Richardson, Catherine, Lilley, Hannah and Davies, Callan (eds.) Practices of Ephemera in Early Modern England. 1 ed. Routledge, pp. 191-209. (doi:10.4324/9781003058588).
Abstract
This chapter asks what happens if theatre history takes an ephemeral and consumable item to be the starting point for a history of Elizabethan playing spaces? It explores the relationship between ephemeral entertainments in playhouses and bearbaiting arenas (one-off shows, playlets, skits, and clowning) and their archival and archaeological traces by focusing on the apple—an object commentators repeatedly refer to as a feature of audience experience and as a prop (or prompt) for performance. In exploring the apple in early modern playing spaces, the chapter considers how surviving descriptions of ephemeral entertainments centre on objects that are used up or consumed in the event but that nonetheless have some afterlife in the archive: as post-performance accounts, in early modern images, or as artefacts or excavated material. By considering how and why fruit is central to play-going experiences, I will contemplate what it means to reimagine the elements of playhouse culture that were literally consumed and explore the relationship of playing spaces to environmental factors—from seasonal change to floods. A study of the “playing apple” underscores how ephemerality is a fundamental feature of the early modern playing industry: its performance events, its objects, and its buildings.
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