Introduction

Abstract

Abstract Through a brief reading of Doctor Faustus, the introduction first suggests how characters think through their surroundings on the early modern English stage and how, in turn, playgoers relied upon the same process to orient themselves within the dramatic fiction. Drawing upon the concepts of situated cognition and cognitive ecology, the introduction defines this process of thinking through place as “ecological thinking.” After establishing that characters typically engage in ecological thinking to orient themselves within place, the introduction concludes by suggesting how this emphasis upon embodied and extended thought reframes our understanding of the relationship between space and place on the early modern stage.