Playgoers on the Outdoor Stages of Early Modern London

The presence of playgoers on the indoor or "private" theatre stages is indicated in numerous contemporary anecdotes and generally accepted (although rarely considered in discussions of early modern staging), but the less plentiful evidence of playgoers sitting on the outdoor stages has, I believe, been largely neglected. (1) In particular, there are three main sources of evidence about playgoers sitting on outdoor stages: plays, non-dramatic works, and legal documents. The legal evidence is rarely cited and nowhere have all three kinds been brought together. The aim of this study is to present that evidence, some of it oblique and inferential, but some quite explicit in referring to playgoers on the stages of "public" playhouses. References to playgoers sitting on the stage are typically found in contemporary texts critical of their disruptive behaviour. The earliest of these occurs in Sir John Davies's Epigrammes and Elegies, written as early as 1594-5 (2):