ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the emotional experience of wonder in medieval and early modern English drama from the perspective of the philosopher Jane Bennett’s useful distinction between awe and fascination. Wonder is discernible in the dramatic action of plays even when the word itself is absent from their texts. The semantic field occupied by wonder in drama is broadly consistent with C. W. Bynum’s findings that wonder appears in proximity to words exhorting the beholder to favour passive responses: the beholder should be amazed, should marvel, should have faith; should not seek to investigate, imitate, or pry into; should not exhibit curiosity. In early modern Spain and France, the main issue affecting the dramatization of wonder was not secularization but neoclassicism. William Shakespeare’s Romances frame wonder in highly staged – and stagey – ways, and convey unusually precise instructions to the actors and to the audience.
