To write an academic monograph on the Elizabethan clown is, on the face of it, to offer a contribution to our stock of objective historical knowledge. It is also, implicitly, to argue for a shift in academic priorities. It is to argue for the importance of studying the actor as much as the writer, for studying performance simultaneously with text, for studying popular culture as much as (to give but some of the antonyms) high/official/elite/aesthetic/canonical culture. More specifically, it is to argue for a different approach towards reading an Elizabethan dramatic text. I shall set out in this chapter some of the theoretical conclusions to which my research into Kemp has led me.

The locus classicus for the ahistorical literary perspective on the clown is surely Coleridge's commentary on the Porter scene in Macbeth:

The elitist essentialism is unabashed. Because the play is essentially a tragedy, comedy is inadmissible. Through the characters, Coleridge can probe the mind of the author, the ultimate object of enquiry. For Coleridge, the physical circumstances of performance are an unfortunate constraint upon the writer, and he echoes Hamlet's viewpoint when he laments the influence of the ‘mob’.