Bowling Alone, or The Whole Point of No Return

Abstract

The anonymous Look About You of 1600 calls for a game of bowls that dilates upon the sport’s propensity to run away with itself. In the midst of a game at bowls played in prison, one character excuses himself for a moment. At that point the other borrows his clothes and escapes in his guise, leaving his competitor “bowling alone,” a victim of social isolation. This chapter argues that bowling offers early modern theatre a theory of isolation but also proximity, velocity, and writing. Indeed, bowling materializes theatre’s sense of its proxemics and ultimately theatricalizes the relationship between dramatic fiction and space, and even offers a plangent metaphor for the role of the writer and his hopes for a return.