Stuart Civic Pageants and Textual Performance

Abstract

Playwrights increasingly intend the pageant texts for readers; these texts become commemorative books that both capture the event and add to it. They assume an expository and narrative function that sets them apart from the typical dramatic text. By examining the extant printed texts of Jacobean and Caroline Lord Mayor's Shows, I argue that these publications do not obliterate theatrical performance or displace it so much as they complete it. Dramatists and printers come to recognize the lasting value of textual performance in civic pageants.

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