This study seeks to revisit relations of writing and performance in the Elizabethan theatre at a time when in our own cultural and critical discourses the authority of the printed text is undergoing far-reaching reassessments. While both the institution of authorship and the stability of the text have become controversial issues, ‘performance’ and ‘performativity’ are dominating critical discussion almost, as one provocative critic believes, “to the point of stupefaction” (Diamond, Performance, Introduction 2). ‘Performance’ has advanced to something like an ubiquitous concept which we use either to sound, or intercept our discontent with, the epistemology of representation. But even though ‘performance’ and the ‘performative’ have come close to constituting a new paradigm bridging several disciplines, the study of theatrical performance has, somehow, remained in the doldrums.

As Richard Schechner declared in a Tulane Drama Review editorial (1992): “The new paradigm is ‘performance,’ not theatre” (Schechner, “New Paradigm” 7).