Tarrinzeau Field is the fairground where the Green Box troupe’s performance turns Gwynplaine’s disfigurement into a public spectacle, and where royal authority later ends the troupe’s presence in London. The field brings together two sharply different responses to him: a crowd’s contagious laughter and Dea’s intimate recognition of the person she loves.

Fairground and Performance

The Green Box troupe performs before a crowd gathered around its wagon. Ursus has written an interlude for Gwynplaine, his most carefully polished work, in which Gwynplaine, Ursus, and a wolf represent man struggling against the brutal forces of nature. The scene begins in darkness, with the figures difficult to distinguish; Gwynplaine is overwhelmed, and the action falls silent before a ray of light reveals his face.

The sudden change turns the scene’s apparent tragedy into laughter. Spectators around the field laugh, applaud, and stamp their feet, and Gwynplaine is called back to the stage. The response spreads beyond those who can see the performance: passers-by in the streets laugh on hearing the crowd. The troupe’s success, however, remains popular rather than fashionable. Admission costs a penny, a price that keeps fashionable people away.

Dea and the Audience

Dea’s presence beside Gwynplaine deepens the contrast between what the audience sees and what she understands. Blind, she knows the crowd only as a murmur and feels isolated within it. Seeking reassurance, she reaches out and places her hand on Gwynplaine’s head; touch restores her sense of safety, and she responds to him with love.

The spectators read the pair differently, imagining that Dea is the one who saves and loves the grotesque figure. In Dea’s experience, Gwynplaine is her protector. The same performance therefore holds together public amusement and private tenderness: the crowd laughs at the face that Dea accepts without seeing, while her love gives the scene a meaning unavailable to the spectators.

Ursus’s Return and the Field’s Closure

After Gwynplaine is taken away for imprisonment, Ursus waits near the prison entrance and watches the door through which he disappeared. As the day declines, he leaves his post and retraces his way toward Tarrinzeau Field, walking with his head lowered through the lanes near the fairground. He eventually stops, expresses a sense that matters are for the best, and strikes his head and thigh with his fists. His return brings the troupe’s anxious vigil back to the place where its public life had been centered.

The field is soon cleared by order of the authorities. The justice of the quorum says the sheriff has acted after Southwark parish clergy complained about disorder at Tarrinzeau Field. A circus proprietor seeks to buy the troupe’s caravan and horses, anticipating that he will need them when he departs as well. Barkilphedro has arrived from Windsor carrying the Queen’s command that the fairground be swept away. By night, not a single juggler’s booth is to remain.

Narrative Significance

Tarrinzeau Field first represents the troupe’s precarious means of livelihood: a temporary stage, a penny admission, and a crowd whose response makes Gwynplaine famous among ordinary spectators. Its later clearance turns that popular success into a vulnerable existence subject to decisions made elsewhere. The abrupt removal of the booths and sale of the troupe’s means of travel mark the end of its London performances and help set the troupe on its forced departure.

The field’s theatrical exposure also stands in contrast to Gwynplaine’s later appearance before the House of Lords. There, candlelight again makes his face visible to an audience, but his effort to suppress its fixed grin lasts only briefly; when emotion overtakes him, his laughter prompts the lords to mock him. The change of venue alters the audience and the stakes, not the divide between Gwynplaine’s experience and what others make of his face.