“Circle Worcke”: Atmospheres on the Early Modern Stage

Abstract

At the beginning of “The Body and Its Passions,” Gail Kern Paster observes that “passions operated upon the body very much as strong movements of wind or water operate upon the natural world.”1 To Shigehisa Kuriyama’s claim that the “history of the body is ultimately a history of ways of inhabiting the world,” Paster adds “the chiastic corollary that this history is also about how the world inhabits the body.”2 Early modern actors were experts in forms of bodily inhabitation, aware of the permeability of their bodies, yet also adept at managing the flow of spirits between body and world. Joseph Roach has argued that the actor’s skill allows him to manipulate rather than be overwhelmed by external and internal forces: “A passion, once unleashed, cannot be suppressed, but it can be shaped into outwardly expressive forms. An oratorical gesture, a prescribed pattern of action, serves as a pre-existing mold into which this molten passion can be poured.”3 Passions are powerful forces, but actors are trained to manage, control, and unleash them; this training is not simply an individual undertaking but also involves the creation and manipulation of what we might call the theatrical atmosphere.