Using early modern maps in literary studies

In William Haughton’s 1598 play, Englishmen for My Money, the moneylender’s three daughters are courted by three unsuitable foreigners. The suitors are diverted from the moneylender’s house in the fog by Frisco, a servant who gives them a spurious tour that supposedly takes them past London Stone in the heart of the city, Ivy Bridge Lane far west of the city, and Shoreditch, a neighborhood north of the city. ¹ On the bare, unlocalized amphitheater stages of early modern London, dialogic mapping was necessary to establish place. Riffing on this dramatic habit, Frisco verbally maps out an absurd landscape. To the playgoer in 1598, the foreigners’ urban ineptitude would have been a hilarious marker of their unsuitability as husbands for London maids. Readers now, however, like the three foreign suitors, are unlikely to know that London Stone, Ivy Bridge Lane, and Shoreditch are not proximate. The joke is lost on most of us unless we consult a map.