Introduction

Abstract

This is a book about the discursive practices associated with what I will call ‘self-speaking’ on the English stage, from that stage’s Medieval origins to the closing of the theatres in 1642. More particularly, my concern is with the representation of subjectivity, and this means, to some extent, talking about subjectivity itself. For in the course of tracing across several centuries those dramatic techniques whose raison d’être is the production of a fictional interiority — besides what are generally called ‘soliloquies’,¹ they include various kinds of monologues, asides, and even silences — one can hardly help engaging a question of daunting scope and current scholarly controversy: the nature of the Early Modern (and earlier) subject. Yet I am also concerned to keep my distance from this question. Quixotically, no doubt, I plan to analyse theatrical effects in the light of current subject theory, but without treating them as a conduit to the more elusive sectors of lived experience.