Hi, I'm Julia, I'll be liveblogging Tiffany Stern's Keynote from 10:30-11:15 today.
Tiffany Stern - University College
Dr Stern gave a talk in three parts about fairs in England and their relationship to theater of the period. First, she discussed some of the differences and similarities between Early Modern theater and fairs. Fairs were highly sanctioned, approved by both the local government and the private aristocracy, and they had their own internal legal system including courts, and juries made up of booth-holders. Theaters of the time could only wish to be as legitimized as the fairs. On the other hand, both theaters and fairs were places of entertainment and commerce, and they tended to attract a certain low-life stratus in the form of pickpockets, and prostitutes. The second part of her talk covered several references to fairground activities within Early Modern plays, including trained monkeys who played dead and came back to life if certain names were evoked, (as Romeo is conjured by the name Rosaline), a performer called an "interpreter" who narrated puppet shows (Hamlet could interpret if he could see the puppets dallying), as well as several references to shadow puppets ("life's but a walking shadow, a poor player.."). The third part of her talk went further into Early Modern puppetry, as puppetry was the one form of theater allowed to remain open during the Interregnum in England. Stern also showed how certain of Shakespeare's characters developed a new life as puppets in future hodgepodge works.
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