Alice Mustian, Playwright

Abstract

This article provides the first full account of Alice Mustian, a Salisbury woman who in 1614 built a theatre in her backyard and charged an audience admission to watch a group of children perform a play that she had written about some salacious neighbourhood gossip. While the fact that this remarkable incident occurred is not unknown to scholars, the primary historical evidence about the event itself has remained largely unexamined. Drawing on unexplored ecclesiastical court records in the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre, we offer a more complete picture of the performance, its complex social context, and the motivations of the parties involved. We locate it within the field of study of lost plays; we consider how it relates to other forms of theatre and performance culture in the period; and we discuss Mustian as a female dramatist whose play offers a tantalizing glimpse of the kinds of voices whose dramatic works may not have survived into the present.