‘Pretie conveyance’: Jack Juggler and the Idea of Play

Abstract

This essay addresses the controversy around the antitheatrical epilogue to the anonymous Tudor play Jack Juggler. Based on a close reading of heterogenous voices in the prologue combined with analysis of diverse traditions of playing invoked by the drama, it argues that the audience’s communal authority, centred in a shared experience of watching this comedy, threatens the epilogue’s pedantic, single-voice authority.