Framing the stage and staging the frame: Man's desire and fleeting beauty

Frames, such as prologues and epilogues, are a common feature of early European drama. The rich variety of early theatre, its diversity of players, purpose and place, requires a nuanced investigation of its dramatic frames, but studies so far have tended to offer oversimplified accounts assuming merely practical and/or narrowly didactic functions. This scholarship is also generally based on read experiences of play scripts whereas, in fact, performance research and audience research are essential to an investigation of the effect of frames on audiences. By staging an early play with and without its frame and analysing audience feedback, we shed further light on the multifaceted effect of framing material for the performance and its reception and thus also on the didactic role of early drama.