Introduction

Amy Cook’s foundational book Shakespearean Neuroplay explored how cognitive science illuminates the ways in which theatre makes its meanings; how theatre makes believe. One technique that Cook explores is Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner’s conceptual blending theory (CBT): the concept that cognitive inputs from multiple spaces combine to create new mental spaces, ‘a complicated network evoked and integrated to create a new idea’. The sole props-based essay in Embodied Cognition and Shakespeare’s Theatre, Jennifer Rae McDermott’s study of the handkerchief in Othello, is fascinating on touching and feeling in the Renaissance. For theatre historians, CBT reifies and extends the ‘double consciousness’ posited during nineteenth-century debates on acting to define the emotional experience of performance. ‘Double consciousness’, or in fact the ‘multiple consciousness’ of CBT is no less important to audiences. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.