ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the importance of props in Early Modern drama, and their catalytic role in theatrical explorations of cognition and memory. In the Early Modern period, cognition-changing theatre props are part of a discourse of a wider cultural fascination with and fear of things – objects and substances alike – that could change people’s minds, from ‘cunning’ love-tokens ‘of strong prevailment’ to political gifts and magical potions. Props have a paradoxical position in theatre history, simultaneously integral to most productions while the subject of long-standing aversion by some. Martello-White implies an inverse correlation between numbers of props and theatrical ‘purity’. An obvious pleasure of writing about props is handling them, whether that means attempting to ‘play’ glasses that have been tuned to individual frequencies, being disturbed by a stacking-box filled with ‘babies’, or involuntarily gagging at the sight of papier mache rotting fish.
