To creep in at mine eyes: theatre and secret contagion in Twelfth Night

Abstract

I seek to demonstrate in this chapter that the recurrent connection between theatre and contagion in antitheatrical discourse, and in plays like Twelfth Night, can be explained through an examination of the emerging understanding of both plague's aetiology and other forms of contagion, such as lovesickness. While other critics have noted the disease-laden rhetoric of antitheatrical documentation, there has been almost no consideration of the implications of the way in which playwrights recognise and seem to consciously address this peculiar indictment. It is my contention that Twelfth Night presents one of several examples of Shakespearean plays deliberately and self-consciously citing and responding directly to antitheatrical sentiment, and that this is most acutely apparent in the repetitive metaphorisation of theatre as a contagion in antitheatrical treatises.