PERSECUTION, PLAGUE, AND FIRE: FUGITIVE HISTORIES OF THE STAGE IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND

Ellen MacKay's Persecution, Plague, and Fire: Fugitive Histories of the Stage in Early Modern England offers an important history of non-Aristotelian dramatic theory as it appears embedded in the scripts, stage practices, anti-theatrical tracts, and performance anecdotes of early modern theatre. MacKay's acrobatic prose style is not for the faint of heart; it requires attention, but rewards readers with revelatory lines, such as her haunting closing description of the period's struggle to come to terms with a stage that traffics in anything but harmless illusion: "to stand on that groundless ground . . . between performance's nonevent (none of this is really happening) and its most totalizing mode of disappearance (all this will consume us and leave not a rack behind)" (192).