“[H]urt in that service”: The Norwich Affray and Early Modern Reactions to Injuries during Dramatic Performances

Abstract

The extravagant pageantry and sheer mass of bodies involved in Early Modern processional drama frequently caused physical and economic damage to property and people. The normalisation of such violence, along with the processions' employment of professional actors, ordinary workers and members of the audience as part of the drama, obscured the boundaries of stage and real action. This led to cases such as the Norwich affray, in which a few actors and a spectator, Henry Brown, chased down and murdered a gatecrasher. This essay focuses on the complex agency of injured workers and audience-actors in processions, especially examining Brown at the affray, arguing that violent movement had competing interpretations by contemporaries during and after the procession - meanings that, depending on how they defined acceptable violence, they rewarded or misinterpreted and punished.