This impressive monograph, part of the Early Modern Literary Geographies series by Oxford University Press, opens up new perspectives on early modern theater by engaging with air as a key dramatic resource in the playhouse. With its focus on aerial spaces, Aerial Environments complements studies of place and space in early modern drama, such as Garrett A. Sullivan's The Drama of Landscape (1998) and Julie Sanders's The Cultural Geography of Early Modern Drama, 1620–1650 (2011). The author seeks to expand the field of literary and dramatic geography by bringing into focus the centrality of air and atmosphere for our understanding of early modern theater. The monograph argues that Elizabethan and Jacobean theater sees the development of an “open-air dramaturgy” that engages with the “specific atmospheric and spatial conditions of London's purpose-designated playhouses” (34). The work developed out of a research project at the University of Exeter, Atmospheric Theatre: Open-Air Performance and the Environment (2018–21), which sought to provide some urgent responses to the growing global impact of air pollution. Thus, the author here offers an insightful study of sixteenth and seventeenth-century drama and performance while simultaneously sharing fascinating insights into debates about pollution and resource management in early modern England.
The monograph covers the “aerographic” (110) poetics of a large group of playwrights, including William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Middleton, Thomas Dekker, Robert Greene, and Thomas Heywood. The introduction, aptly titled “Remembering the Air,” brings into focus various early modern conceptions of air as spatial, religious, and medical matter before moving to a discussion of aerial space in the playhouse. Chapter 1 addresses the role of air for mediating fictional worlds and characters: the discussion correlates ideas about the body and aerial transmission—or contamination—with the imaginative worlds created in the playhouse. The reading of Macbeth as a play that intersects with contemporary fears and concerns surrounding “foul air” (71–78) is particularly engaging.
The second chapter considers verbal and formal strategies that invoke air and atmospheric phenomena, including meteorological conditions. The author argues that “aerial environments complemented the geographic staging of fictional place” (135) in dramatic works by, for instance, Marlowe, Greene, and Heywood. The chapter shows how these playwrights connected the aerial spaces of their fictional worlds with the shared aerial space of the playhouse. Here, the monograph also segues nicely into the early modern fascination with “propulsive technologies” (148), which are discussed in chapter 3. The discussion is especially thought provoking on “The Dream of Flight” (172–95) and the theater's affective and performative capacities to dramatize such dreams of taking to the air and ideas concerning “wind-powered” technologies (138). Indeed, the author convincingly argues that plays by Thomas Dekker and Robert Greene, among many of their contemporaries, explore and stage “fantasies of aerial control” (196) while repeatedly underscoring the hazards of trying to attain mastery over an element as ephemeral and uncontrollable as air.
Chapter 4 moves to an analysis of further staging practices, this time in relation to smell. The author addresses the ways in which early modern drama could have “discursively and perhaps perceptibly altered atmospheric conditions” (35) in the process of live performance. This includes, for instance, an examination of the possibilities of using perfumes or incense and the “olfactory effects” (200) encountered in the playhouse. The chapter offers a particularly evocative discussion of the potential uses of gunpowder during stage performance and covers an interesting selection of plays that focus on battle and conquest: Marlowe's Tamburlaine, Shakespeare's Henry V, and Peele's The Battle of Alcazar. The chapter provides further nuance to its reading of gunpowder and military violence by also considering the perceptual links between gunpowder and pollution of both the body and mind, as expressed, for instance, in Hamlet, Macbeth, and Volpone.
The conclusion examines the evolving relationship between outdoor and indoor staging practices and aerial spaces from 1608 onwards. Shakespeare's The Tempest offers a welcome opportunity to draw together the various strands of argument developed throughout the monograph: “Shakespeare considers the relationship between elemental air and the imaginative transmission of his airy fictions; evokes the meteorological and atmospheric conditions of his imagined island; and alludes to open-air staging effects that might perceptibly transform a playhouse's aerial environment” (268).
Overall, this monograph offers an excellent range of readings that show how air itself acts as a crucial “theatrical signifier” (33). Written with admirable clarity and coherence, the book brings to our attention the many ways in which playwrights, actors, and audiences engaged with aerial spaces and early modern discourses surrounding the element of air. As such, this monograph forms a key contribution both to the cultural history of air and to the study of early modern drama and performance. With its combined focus on aerial environments and theater, it would also make a compelling read for anyone interested in ecocriticism and environmental humanities.
