'A time to play, a time to work': Concepts of recreation and the early modern English stage, 1567--1625

In this study I explore how different concepts of play informed the ways in which theatrical culture was perceived by a range of individuals and institutions in Elizabethan and Jacobean London. Given that various components of the culture---such as players and playhouses---were often defined in terms of the ludic sphere, I investigate the extent to which notions of theatre were conditioned by competing ideas of recreation. While critics have done much to reveal links between drama and playing, they have largely failed to address this fundamental question, examining instead the thematic and formal impact of games, sports, and related phenomena on the dramatic process. I attempt to fill this gap through analysis of four distinct perceptions of play and their influence on the early modern understanding of the stage.; Following most academic analyses of ludic activity, which contrast this activity to what is conventionally spoken of as the sphere of work or seriousness, I plot my own study along the play-work axis. Throughout the dissertation, I map the relationships between theatre and play within the framework of this traditionally held conceptual split. Specifically, I identify four basic views of recreation: (1) as play, not work, (2) as work, not play, (3) as neither play nor work, and (4) as play and work. While each chapter revolves around one such paradigm as reflected in discrete conceptions of theatre, each at the same time illuminates a facet of the cultural politics of drama at this point in English history. In particular, the four sections examine the above-mentioned paradigms in relation to issues of: (1) jigs and mimesis, (2) the question of authorship, (3) playgoing and the church, and (4) the mechanics of censorship. Through such analysis, I endeavour to illustrate how questions concerning the ontology or "status" of the world of playing figured prominently in a number of debates related to dramatic spectacle.