Abstract
The Lewes Bonfire Festival is an important piece of popular theatre, which has largely resisted attempts by higher authority to control and redefine it. Annually some 2,000 costumed participants, watched by up to 80,000 spectators, take over the streets of the usually staid county town of East Sussex, and effigies of contemporary politicians and of the Pope are burnt during six hours of carnivalesque rule. Here, David Wiles analyzes the history and organizational structure of the festival, and examines the ideology of Englishness upon which the event turns. David Wiles is Reader in Drama at Royal Holloway College, University of London. His interest in popular theatre has principally been historical, and he has published books on the Robin Hood play and on the Elizabethan clown. Most recently, in Shakespeare's Almanac (D. S. Brewer, 1993) he has explored the structural logic of the festive calendar.
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