Shakespeare, Architecture, and the Chorographic Imagination

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis essay begins by examining the relative paucity of Early Modern architectural meta-language in Shakespeare’s work. Moving on, it considers a number of instances (including Othello and Julius Caesar) in which Shakespeare steers his drama away from the more “realistic” forms of architectural representation increasingly favoured by masque-makers like Jonson and his peers. An interim finding here is that by contrast with the increased “fixing” of space brought about by new scenographic developments in the period, Shakespeare tends to opt for a more flexible “metamorphic” style of architectural staging which maximises the affordances of the limited resources available within Elizabethan and early Jacobean popular theatres. Shakespeare’s basic modus operandi, it is contended, is to exploit consensus with the audience about what is being viewed to in order to “thicken” the sense of architectural space. Taking its cue from Anne Myers, the following section then turns to examine Shakespeare’s engagement with chorography, as exemplified by the rich constellation of relevant images from Macbeth which have sustained much of the atmosphere of the play as it has travelled through the centuries. Finally – having looked in more detail at the reciprocal relationship between the development of chorography and architecture in early modern Britain – the essay closes by considering ways in which “architecturalised” versions of Shakespeare’s text may have contributed to the perpetuation of the chorological aesthetic in the Gothic novel and the chronotope of the castle.