The Medieval Prompter: A Reinterpretation

Abstract

During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, on the stages of England and France, there appeared a figure whose presence gives to the period a certain uniqueness. The prompter, usually functioning in other capacities and holding additional names, would seem to have been established in the theatre at this time; for the scholarship on the Greek and Roman theatre has, as yet, revealed no such person. Nor is there any suggestion of the presence of the prompter in liturgical drama. None of this, of course, rules out the possibility of the use of such a person; however, even if used in Athens, Rome, or the cathedral, he undoubtedly never held the prominence he enjoyed in that brief period of what we have been told was onstage glory.