Arrests as performance: Opening the practice of early modern English state authority to scrutiny with practice-as-research

This article offers a new reading of state authority in early modern England by using a performance-centric method to break down what constituted the ‘performance’ of an arrest. It draws upon insights and questions drawn from practice-as-research workshops to highlight heretofore unseen challenges for carrying out an arrest, arguing that state authority was far more fragile than has been recognized. This fragility, moreover, was a contemporary concern for both local and national authorities. The article thus provides both a challenge to established narratives of pacified state formation in early modern England, and a methodological provocation for historians to use PAR.