Chapter 1 - Chests of the Mind in Early Modern England

Summary

Reveals the profusion of boxes in early modern England, valued for practical and aesthetic reasons. While boxes are often very mundane, they might also be associated with events such as marriage, and are frequently bequeathed as items of intrinsic value. Wills and inventories demonstrate the ready slippage between boxes as furnishings for rooms, and furnishings for the mind – one author stores up his faith in ‘my Breste, the Cheste of my mynde’. His words illustrate the blurring of the material and the metaphorical that can happen inside boxes. Considering Elizabeth I’s bedchamber, hiding places in The Merry Wives of Windsor, and moments of enclosure in John Donne, this chapter interweaves close readings of wills and prayer manuals with objects such as velvet boxes and parish chests. It establishes a key quality of the box: although it is one of the most physically solid and constraining kinds of object, it offers flexible imaginative possibilities.