The Spectacle of the Scaffolding: Rape and the Violent Foundations of Medieval Theatre Studies

This essay takes as its point of departure one of the earliest extant records of the French medieval stage which has nonetheless been effaced from most histories: the gang-rape of a woman in 1395 on the eve of some theatrical festivities. Arguing for a more complete context, Enders interrogates the numerous historiographical intersections of theatre, law, performativity, and intentionality as she revises certain politically correct pieties which tend to dismiss the very real dangers of theatre. In this case, those dangers speak to a troubling shared space of premeditation for theatre and rape, both of which follow analogous paths from imagination to enactment, virtuality to actuality.