to be excused, because the whole world is become a Hodge-podge" (Pro-
logue to Midas 3: 115 ). The texts of premodern popular plays were often
composed by a casual (sometimes even ironic) mixing of heterogeneous
materials, using inherited traditional structures in a sort of theatrical bri-
colage. Such prefigurations of the postmodern (if we can call them that)
are far more common in premodern popular comic theatre than in serious,
textualist dramatic performance. The latter, however, has attracted most
of the attention of traditional dramatic criticism, which, since Aristotle, has
been interested almost exclusively in structural analysis and textual exe-
gesis. As a result, we have tended to lose sight of the strong thread of
performance tradition that still connects us to premodern popular theatre.

Through examining the relationships between text and performance (and
character and actor) in premodern popular plays, we can formulate a struc-
tural prehistory of modern theatre that helps us to see more clearly the
basic functions which occur in all theatrical performance, even when they
have been obscured by the modern preoccupation with mimetic illusion.
Such a prehistory is bound to be a partly speculative construction, of
course, but I agree with Clare Sponsler's assertion (made in the context of
medieval theatre) that even in the absence of much direct evidence "we can
nevertheless theorize . . . in such a way as to open up useful interpretive
horizons" (16). That is my intention here.

It may be useful to begin by stating the obvious: a play text is a written
description not only of a fictional (dramatic) action, but at the same time
of a past or possible future stage action. It is therefore both a dramatic text
and a performance text; it is a description not only of what characters do,
but also of what actors do. These two actions do not always complement
each other in obvious ways, however. With the same line of dialogue, for
example, the actor and the character may be saying quite different things.
A single example may be helpful. In As You Like It, a moment after arriv-
ing in the Forest of Arden, Rosalind says:

I could find it in my heart to disgrace my man's apparel and to cry like a woman.
( II.iv.4-5)

The fictional character, a female newly disguised as a male, is saying that
she is so tired and frightened that she may fail to act like a man. The boy
actor playing the part, however, is making a joke to the audience about
his new disguise and whether he should play man, woman or boy. These
two messages (and in actual performance, there are often more than two)
are addressed to the audience at the same time by the actor as character
and as actor. In other words, the actor is simultaneously performing two

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