The drama of cartography

Abstract

This project explores why the combination of cartography and drama is so explosive on the English Renaissance stage in the age of the "new geography." Using poststructuralist theories that conceptualize maps as performances rather than inert representations, I argue for a more dynamic understanding of mapmaking and maps as they are represented in the following plays: Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great, Parts I and II, Shakespeare's King Lear, and Thomas Middleton's city comedy The Puritan Widow. I contend that characters attempt to "map" their immediate surroundings by leading influential social actors in a series of ritualized performances. In so doing, they aim to reduce the complexities of their lived experiences to a cartographic canvas that reflects their authority. My argument subscribes to the notion that maps can alter perceptions of power and space. I suggest that by staging mapmaking as a performative process subject to the whims of influential social actors, these plays challenge the verisimilitude that was increasingly attributed to the new geography in the early modern period. Each chapter links a particular genre to an emergent cartographic tradition at three different scales. This allows me to interrogate both generic inflections of maps and their corresponding spaces as well as the emergent cartographic traditions themselves. In Chapter 1, I argue that Christopher Marlowe's histories Tamburlaine the Great, Parts I and II pompously take on the world of Ortelius' Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, the first so-called modern atlas. I posit that Tamburlaine carries out his imperialist project by "mapping" the territories he seeks to conquer in a series of toponymically infused performances. Given that maps were inextricably linked with history in the early modern period, I argue that Tamburlaine invokes toponyms, which Marlowe lifted from Ortelius's atlas, to summon forth new histories that he hopes will forever lionize his legacy. Ultimately this legacy is tarnished by the finality of his death and the unyielding passage of time, which the play suggests will inevitably give rise to new histories. In Chapter 2, I assert that Shakespeare's King Lear tragically manages at a remove the pastoral landscapes portrayed in the county maps that comprise Christopher Saxton's 1579 Atlas of the Counties of England and Wales, the world's first national atlas. I argue that Lear attempts to "map" his kingdom by performing the love test, which he hopes will transform his royal holdings into a pastoral paradise that will forever reflect his sovereignty. Bewitched by the Saxtonian map he clutches like a lifeline throughout the test, which depicts seemingly timeless depictions of "shadowy forests" and "plenteous rivers with wide-skirted meads," I posit that the play lays bare Lear's pathetic attempts to perform a map that subsumes his daughters and supporters into a Saxtonian landscape. Ultimately Lear's failure is assured by the performativity of mapmaking itself, as maps are always only temporarily naturalized as fixed in their meaning. In Chapter 3, I demonstrate that Thomas Middleton's city comedy The Puritan Widow uses the London maps in Braun and Hogenberg's iconic city atlas, the Civitates Orbis Terrarum, to portray private citizens humorously seizing the power of cartographic performativity to advance themselves socially. I contend that Pieboard, the scheming scholar modeled after playwright George Peele, "maps" the London cityscape by performing a series of phony conjuring ceremonies to hoodwink the hapless civic authorities and secure his place as a member of the nobility. Far from condemning Pieboard's cunning performances, I argue the play celebrates his mapping/conjuring as acts of opportunistic invention he must perform lest he fall to the bottom rung of the city's social ladder. In so doing, the play exposes the elasticity of such iconic city maps as Braun and Hogenberg's map of London, which both reflected and influenced how Londoners understood their social status.--Author's abstract