Art forms begin in a collaboration of stillness and motion, and throughout history the categories of the still and the moving gain value according to the cultural weight given to the permanent, the stable and the elapsing, the ephemeral. In the seventeenth century, emerging practices such as print, collecting and performance, influence early modern discussions of stillness and motion. Stillness in Motion in the Seventeenth Century Theatre provides a comprehensive examination of this aesthetic theory. The author investigates this aesthetic history as a form of artistic creation, as a form of philosophical investigation, as a way of representing and manipulating ideas about gender and also as a way of acknowledging, reinforcing and making a critique of social values for the still and moving, the permanent and elapsing. Creating an experimental argument for scholarly attention to performance, this book suggests that without knowing how performance creates meaning in reception, our understanding of a century where much of the political, theatrical and social action occurred between audiences and in public spaces is blunted. The focus on performance and reception offers theories on the practice of reading and the frequent use of theatrical techniques employed by authors to evoke the sensations of live performance. The author also examines the practice of collecting and the give and take of reception in the context of theories of gift exchange. The book's analysis covers the entire seventeenth-century with chapters on the work of Ben Jonson, John Milton, the pamphletheatre, Aphra Behn, John Vanbrugh and Jeremy Collier and will be of interest to scholars in the areas of literary and performance studies.