Intended for the stage: Performance criticism in Richard Brome’s The Antipodes

This note focuses on the troubled relation between Richard Brome’s The Antipodes (1638) and its theatrical realisations, as mentioned in the author’s address to the reader in the Quarto of 1640 as well as has been the case in more recent revivals of the play. Criticism of early modern drama has tended to consider such plays as determined by their being written for performance, an emphasis which has sometimes entailed a dismissal of more textual approaches. However, in The Antipodes there seems to have existed (and continues to exist) some disconnectedness between the text of the play and its life in the theatre. I therefore propose looking at specific aspects of The Antipodes in relation to the challenges it poses in performance and to performance criticism, by continuously shifting between the Caroline theatrical context and the contemporary critical and theatrical context.