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Making the Monster

This chapter discusses the “monstrous” body, the other term (along with “deformity”) through which critics have most often wanted to historicize early modern disability. It begins by noting that the monster is apparently recognizable at first glance yet unable to be pinned down in any stable description. The chapter works from the insight that this spectacle of freakishness is always produced for spectators. Rather than charting a direct line from the early modern monster to modernity's sideshow exhibitions, the chapter takes up the monster through the practices of theatrical form, which unsettles the very concept of the monster by implicating spectators in the process of making and witnessing monstrosity. After considering how plays such as The City Match and The Birth of Merlin designate the monstrous character through theatrical properties and manage the speech that may challenge a monstrous spectacle, the chapter then turns back to The Tempest, to consider how the monster is made up wholesale. It finds that the early modern theater contests the very concept of monstrosity it evokes, and it argues that theatrical form tacks across the official discourse to scramble the discursive fervor that monstrosity is supposed to incite.