02215nam a22003378a 4500 CR9781139567794 UkCbUP 20180107143409.0 m|||||o||d|||||||| cr|||||||||||| 120809s2014||||enk s ||1 0|eng|d 9781139567794 (ebook) 9781107036574 (hardback) UkCbUP UkCbUP rda PR658.F7 P75 2014 822/.309353 23 Preiss, Richard, author. Clowning and Authorship in Early Modern Theatre / [electronic resource] Richard Preiss. Clowning & Authorship in Early Modern Theatre Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2014. 1 online resource (295 pages) : digital, PDF file(s). text txt rdacontent computer c rdamedia online resource cr rdacarrier Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 09 Oct 2015). To early modern audiences, the 'clown' was much more than a minor play character. A celebrity performer, he was a one-man sideshow whose interactive entertainments - face-pulling, farce interludes, jigs, rhyming contests with the crowd - were the main event. Clowning epitomized a theatre that was heterogeneous, improvised, participatory, and irreducible to dramatic texts. How, then, did those texts emerge? Why did playgoers buy books that deleted not only the clown, but them as well? Challenging the narrative that clowns were 'banished' by playwrights like Shakespeare and Jonson, Richard Preiss argues that clowns such as Richard Tarlton, Will Kemp, and Robert Armin actually made playwrights possible - bridging, through the publication of their routines, the experience of 'live' and scripted performance. Clowning and Authorship tells the story of how, as the clown's presence decayed into print, he bequeathed the new categories around which theatre would organize: the author, and the actor. Fools and jesters in literature Clowns in literature Print version: 9781107036574 http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139567794 Cambridge Books Online 236332 236332