“The cause of plagues are playes”. La peste, il teatro e l’altrove proibito

Abstract

The metaphor of the theatre as plague was one of the most effective tools for antitheatrical discourse in early modern Europe. Whereas much research has been conducted with regard to the content of this analogy (both the theatre and the plague lead the social body to physical and ethical consumption), this essay aims at investigating the structural similarity between spectacle and epidemic as alluded to by the enemies of the theatre: it is an analogy mainly based on the ability of both to establish a “competing reality” in the world. This assumption is tested by the close-reading of an antitheatrical sermon (preached in London in 1577 by Thomas White), in which a pestilent theatre emerges as the cause of an ontological rather than ethical scourge.