Women and Performance in Medieval and Early Modern Suffolk

Abstract

This article describes the documentary evidences that survive showing participation by women (as actors, sponsors, and producers) in local performance in Suffolk during the Middle Ages and Early Modern periods. The records show that venues ranged, without controversy, from private households to parishes and guilds to religious houses before the culturally contested decades from the late-sixteenth through the mid-seventeenth centuries. During that later period, the documents more often show a shift from festive performance to ideological spectacle, together with the merging of performance with forms of punishment, both legal and societal.