I have argued that there was always a potential conflict of interests between the comedian who played ‘clown’ or ‘Vice’ and the Elizabethan dramatist who wanted scope and recognition for his own talents as a writer. Marlowe's case is typical. He claimed in his prologue to Tatnburlaine that he was leading his audience away

Yet the printer informs us that in performance the play was contaminated by ‘some fond and frivolous jestures, digressing and … far unmeet for the matter’, which had to be omitted if the text was to be rendered suitable for a ‘wise’ readership. We do not know whether Marlowe was responsible for this clownage. What we can discern clearly is tension between a neo-classical aesthetic which could not accommodate the clown and a performing tradition in which the clown was central.

This tension resolved itself in the 1590s. Within the authorial script, the clown was generally given a self-contained sub-plot and a smaller proportion of available stage time than the Vice used to receive. But after the scripted play was over, the clown was allowed the freedom of the stage, freedom for improvisation, rhyming and dancing. The old balance between order and carnivalesque inversion was maintained, but in a new way. As plays grew increasingly orderly, in respect of their writing, performance and reception, the traditional enactment of misrule was displaced onto the postlude.