| Popis: |
The themes of presence and absence that I investigated in the previous chapter in relation to the legible materiality of the practices are also an ideological concern about play-making and a means of exercising (self-) reflexivity. Early modern writers employed disguise motifs in representing barbers and surgeons in the theatre. But this produced a binary effect: while barbery often functioned as a disguise for something else — and as such was disclosed referentially on the stage — surgery is frequently a covered-up process in dramatic action, often remaining an offstage phenomenon. Both, however, reveal something inherent about constructions of performance and modes of representation, as well as stylistic features of drama. If, as Gary Taylor argues, ‘meta-theatricality relieves the audience of any burden of belief’, then the barber in particular is at the very heart of routines that expose pretence and sham for what they are.1 |
