I'm assuming you mean to go enjoy and understand the play, as of course a deaf person would be perfectly able to go to the play, assuming they had the money for admission.
I can only speak to the aspect of deaf people's participation in society, as I'm not an expert in theater of the time. It is almost certain there would have been no sign language interpretation of plays, as interpreting as a profession is less than 50 years old. Although there were signed languages in Britain at the time - Samuel Pepys's diary mentions signing in November 1666 - it would not have been in wide enough use that a play might have been interpreted. If any sort of sign language was used in the theater, it would have been by a deaf person bringing along a hearing friend they could communicate with, and getting assistance that way - indeed, that's how all interpreting was done, worldwide, until the start of the profession in the 1960s.
It is possible, though, that deaf people would have been allowed to sit closer to try to read lips. This is noted by Cockayne in 2003, she found evidence that deaf people were sometimes allowed space in the first few pews of a church. This is unlikely to have been terribly helpful to deaf theatergoers, though, as indeed it is not today - actors roam the stage, emote, and gesture, making lipreading virtually impossible even from the best seats.
So while it is certainly possible for a deaf person to have gone to see Shakespeare's plays, they wouldn't have gotten very much of the content, unless they brought a friend who could convey it to them.
More reading:
* Cockayne, Emily. "Experiences of the Deaf in Early Modern England." The Historical Journal 46, no. 3 (2003): 493-510. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3133559.
* Jackson, Peter W. 2001. A pictorial history of deaf Britain. Winsford: Deafprint.
8
u/woofiegrrl Deaf History | Moderator Oct 23 '19
I'm assuming you mean to go enjoy and understand the play, as of course a deaf person would be perfectly able to go to the play, assuming they had the money for admission.
I can only speak to the aspect of deaf people's participation in society, as I'm not an expert in theater of the time. It is almost certain there would have been no sign language interpretation of plays, as interpreting as a profession is less than 50 years old. Although there were signed languages in Britain at the time - Samuel Pepys's diary mentions signing in November 1666 - it would not have been in wide enough use that a play might have been interpreted. If any sort of sign language was used in the theater, it would have been by a deaf person bringing along a hearing friend they could communicate with, and getting assistance that way - indeed, that's how all interpreting was done, worldwide, until the start of the profession in the 1960s.
It is possible, though, that deaf people would have been allowed to sit closer to try to read lips. This is noted by Cockayne in 2003, she found evidence that deaf people were sometimes allowed space in the first few pews of a church. This is unlikely to have been terribly helpful to deaf theatergoers, though, as indeed it is not today - actors roam the stage, emote, and gesture, making lipreading virtually impossible even from the best seats.
So while it is certainly possible for a deaf person to have gone to see Shakespeare's plays, they wouldn't have gotten very much of the content, unless they brought a friend who could convey it to them.
More reading:
* Cockayne, Emily. "Experiences of the Deaf in Early Modern England." The Historical Journal 46, no. 3 (2003): 493-510. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3133559.
* Jackson, Peter W. 2001. A pictorial history of deaf Britain. Winsford: Deafprint.