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In the summer of 2010, the Museum of London reported resuming its in-progress excavation of the recently discovered site of a famous Elizabethan playhouse. The Theatre is believed to have been the first permanent structure in England built specifically for the purpose of producing plays. And, if that claim to fame were not already enough to arouse the interest of theatre enthusiasts and researchers the world over, the playhouse was host to the most famous theatrical figure in our culture. Before Shakespeare's company of players moved to the Globe in 1599, the Theatre was their home. The recovery of the Theatre was met with enthusiastic response-one local theatre company even announced that it would build its own playhouse on the historical site. Declan Donnellan, cofounder of the theatre company Cheek by Jowl, commented on the significance of the plans: "Preserving the site is not important for sentiment or nostalgia but because we need to be reminded where we come from, and where we end up."1 Although the theatre's building project was subsequently abandoned, the affect inspired by the discovery, and the initial response it elicited, remains significant for several reasons.
In many ways, the exhumation of the Theatre-and the anticipated birth of a new theatre in its place-resonates with the historical trajectory of Shakespeare's plays, produced for the first time in Elizabethan England, but since recreated in every way by actors, directors, audiences, writers, artists, scholars, and students. Such an exciting discovery also energizes the claim for the primacy of performance, an argument relentlessly rehearsed by workshop leaders and theatre practitioners everywhere: "Shakespeare's plays were not written to be studied in an English classroom" (typically preceded by something along the lines of "no offense to English teachers, but . . ."). While there may be English professors out there laboring under the illusion that William Shakespeare envisioned dynamic lectures on iambic pentameter and gender construction when he penned his plays, I have not met any of them.
Even more troubling than the obvious flaw in the logic of such a statement-are any pieces of literature written for the purpose of being studied in an English classroom?-is its insinuation that performance and pedagogy must be mutually exclusive approaches to Shakespeare. Recent scholarship in performance studies has...