Travelling Characters in Early Modern Drama

Abstract

The early modern theatre excelled at imaginary travel, providing a vicarious experience of exotic climes for mind-travelling playwrights and playgoers in London. Fantasies of whimsical voyaging have been under-appreciated by critics of early modern drama, but appear in plays of the period as a deliberate and informed desire that knowingly runs counter to the prescriptions for profitable travel advocated by popular ars apodemica treatises. This chapter focuses on lesser-studied examples of travelling characters, beginning with travellers who read in Thomas Dekker’s Old Fortunatus (1599), before thinking about whether playgoers’ experiences of such stage-travellers as Mirabell in John Fletcher..