The Uses of this World : Thinking Space in Shakespeare, Marlowe, Cary and Jonson

The Uses of this World examines how early modern theatre texts dramatize the ways in which cultural space is produced.

It demonstrates that the theatre engaged fully with the fundamental change in the social and philosophical organization of space which took place in this period. Andrew Hiscock argues that Renaissance drama interrogates models of social organization and spatial boundaries defined by property relations, economic hierarchies, historical custom and kinship ties, and stresses that space is not a neutral, fixed and passive container, but emerges instead as a socially constructed process.

Plays considered include Hamlet, The Jew of Malta, Antony and Cleopatra, Tragedie of Mariam (Elizabeth Cary), Volpone and The Alchemist.