‘To Behold the Scene Full’: Seeing and Judging in Every Man Out of His Humour

Abstract

Those of you who know the Paul’s Walk sequence in Every Man Out of His Humour only from the first Folio, or from Herford and Simpson’s Folio-based text, know it as the first six scenes of Act III: several fragments of apparently discontinuous action broken into convenient vaudeville turns. Those of you familiar with Holme’s quartos of 1600, however, think of Paul’s Walk as one long well-balanced scene with a carefully choreographed stroll that forms the physical centre and emblematic hub of the play. The genius of the scene lies in its representation of a famous topographical site, with all its accumulated cultural associations, within the context created by the ambivalently fictionalized site of the new Globe theatre. St Paul’s, represented as a kind of theatre within the theatre, is a familiar space transformed for the stage. Observing how the St Paul’s promenade of strolling hucksters and show-offs coordinate their bustle into a stylized dance, the audiences can recognize the authenticity of the place in the comic reduction of the dancers, their steps, their skill at changing partners and courtesies to other couples, and can judge their social performance at an aesthetic remove.