Seeing and Overseeing the Stage as Map in Early Modern Drama

“Treasure Maps: Cartography in the Hands of the Virginia Company and the East India Company, 1600-1625”

“…266 To use Ladan Niayesh's words, both the cartographer and the company displayed an ability to "see beyond the current appearance and limits of the world he plans to change" -that is, beyond perceptions of wilderness and cartographic blanks. 267 Using a telling metaphor, she also contends that company discourse was charting "not a geographical, but above all a mental and textual territory" which "[aimed] less at establishing geographical facts than at planting an idea and a purpose". 268 99 The increasingly common keyword found in promotional discourse and subsequently materialised onto the map was the term "plantation" or "planting".…”

“…As demonstrated by Ladan Niayesh, "reducing" spaces "involves both subjecting them as a conqueror and drawing them to scale". 397 In that sense, "maps furnished monarchs and merchants the very materials out of which distant empires could be fashioned". 398 Considering the absence of imperial state structure at the beginning of the 17 th century, it may seem excessive -if not anachronistic -to use the term "imperialism" here.…”

“…In a chapter entitled "Seeing and Overseeing the Stage as Map in Early Modern Drama", for example, Ladan Niayesh examines the fruitful interconnectedness at play between theatre and cartography in early modern Britain, a dialogue which "[broke] down the barriers between the categories of text, map, painting, and even of the theatrical dialogue". 560 While geographical fantasies were being played out on the early modern stage, theatricality was being infused in a number of geographical representations. 561 Promotional discourse too revealed writers' propensity to discuss company business and its geographical applications in theatrical terms.…”