Staging Vice and Acting Evil: Theatre and Anti-Theatre in Early Modern England

Abstract

This article revisits the relationship between dramatic production and religious change in the sixteenth century, specifically by examining the allegorical Vice figure - a dramatic embodiment of evil forces - that came to particular prominence during this period. It suggests that the professional actor became increasingly associated with this figure of moral evil. I propose also that understanding the moral ambivalence of the actor’s presence can inform our understanding of many plays in which no obviously coherent Vice figure is present, but in which possibilities of such an allegory are important. It would be impractical to present this argument across the range of dramatic examples it deserves, particularly since substantial contextual argument will be necessary if the article’s conclusions are to have any weight. It is partly for this reason that an examination of Shakespeare’s Hamlet concludes the paper, a play needing no introduction. It will be suggested that the play’s issue of conscience was mediated in important ways by the actor’s potentially Vice-like presence, defined as such by Tudor legislation as well as by a variety of anti-theatrical religious writings.