to why those audiences attended. Such generalisations don't acknowledge differences within the socio-economic caste of expectations, values and tastes.
             Clearly, Gurr's article leaves little to be desired when it fails to recognise that an audience of any performance come to a play with a multitude of varying life experiences. Just because someone comes from the same social background does not mean that they will react or interpret the play the same way. Some researchers have chosen an empirical approach and limited their research to social make-up of audiences, their behaviour at the playhouse and changes in spectator tastes over time but did not look at reactions to plays or genres, ethnic mix or gender minorities. The play and the audience are mutually exclusive in terms of what one can document adequately. The question is how are we as historians expected to truly understand the change in attitude and audience tastes if we merely generalise the playgoer according to their socio-economic group? Also, we must recognise the performance as an ephemeral experience that even through the most arduous amount of documentation we cannot hope to re-create that performance through the written word. So, is there any value in trying to find evidence about the audience through historiography?
             Gurr's article also raises the fundamental ideological debate raised by playwrights and theatre historians of the role of the audience as either 'spectator' or 'audience'. For too long much theatre history has disregarded the value of the audience response as they were viewed as passive spectators. According to poets of the period, in particular Jonson believed that there were two kinds of playgoers divided according to the priority of the ear or the
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