Staging Subversion William Kemp and the Lord Chamberlain's Men

Abstract

Subversive energies abounded in early modern English theater. This was partly due to evolving political and economic systems as England moved toward a capitalist society. As commercial enterprises, the early modern theaters became sites wherein the emerging conflicts of political and socioeconomic changes both pressured the theatrical venture and were dramatized by it. Nowhere are these conflicts more manifest than in the clown characters. The theatrical clown may have functioned as a means of controlling the audience’s (or specific audience members’) subversive energies. By controlling audience responses, and encouraging audience interaction when, and only when, it served the drama, the clown may have been upholding the political and socio-economic status quo by encouraging textual veneration and ensuring a well-ordered and controlled theatrical event.¹ However, examining the careers of the actors who played the clown characters–their improvisations which resisted government censorship, the connections they forged with what we would today call working-class audience members, and their subversion of the play-text itself–suggests that early modern theatrical clowns could not be so simply categorized.