In Dramatic Geography, Laurence Publicover explores how sixteenth- and seventeenth-century plays in London engaged the genre of romance to depict geographic space—particularly, the Mediterranean—and how it was mutable, charged with symbolic values, and intertheatrical. Crediting theater historian Jacky Bratton with the term intertheatricality, Publicover briefly recapitulates Bratton's argument that nineteenth-century British repertories formed networks of players, audiences, stage practices, languages, and genres and that playgoers interpreted performances through other contemporary performances (89). According to Publicover, the concept of intertheatricality may be even more useful for scholars of early modern drama: there were fewer theaters—and with much sparser scenery—in early modern London, so “we can make reasonably confident assumptions” about what avid playgoers would have seen (90). Distinguishing his perspective on intertheatricality from others, Publicover asserts that to comprehend fully how theatrical networks materialized, we must “acknowledge authorial agency” (16). Publicover's chief purpose, however, is to examine how early modern romance-inflected plays set in the Mediterranean informed and reformed each other's geographies—or ways of understanding space and those in it—precisely because those plays were staged where they were (4).

Publicover divides his study into two parts. Part 1 details romance conventions that contoured early modern English performances’ emergent geographies. (He explains that he does not, unlike others, discuss the historical Mediterranean because his primary interest is how literary and theatrical networks shaped dramatic geography.) The romances Publicover describes as Hellenistic tend to present geographic space that facilitates productive encounters and cultural exchanges. Chivalric romances typically locate civility in a geographic center and monstrosity in the margins (42). But insofar as chivalric romances demonstrate sympathy with those at the margins, they may complicate definitive distinctions between the Hellenistic and chivalric (59). Focusing on Clyomon and Clamydes (ca. 1580) and Guy of Warwick (ca. 1590), Publicover shows how chivalric romance conventions fundamentally inform the plays’ geographies and related social values, while clowns—moving between locus and platea—question the values the plays seemingly take for granted. Both plays, he argues, present a form of geography that fundamentally influences the plays he examines in part 2.

Part 2 turns to how five plays set in the Mediterranean “appropriated, reconfigured, and reflected upon one another's dramatic geography” (91). Thomas Kyd's Soliman and Perseda (1588–91) is fairly straightforward in presenting a “world codified through [characters’] mutual respect for chivalry” (99). Christopher Marlowe in Jew of Malta (ca. 1591), William Shakespeare in Merchant of Venice (1596–98), and Thomas Heywood in Fair Maid of the West (1597–1601) critically explore the romance values of Kyd's play world. Marlowe's Jew of Malta exposes the mercenary self-interest that may motivate chivalric discourse (109). Shakespeare suggests the relationship between chivalry and commerce may not be antithetical, as characters in Merchant of Venice pursue romance and commerce together. Heywood “challenges the fundamental value-systems of chivalric literature” by featuring a female tapstress as its protagonist, highlighting class politics (136). The Travels of Three English Brothers (1607) by John Day, William Rowley, and George Wilkins further illuminates the uneasy relationship between romance and commerce in early modern drama. Describing the play as a public relations effort to redeem the infamous Shirley brothers’ reputation, Publicover shows how it obfuscates their activities’ “commercial dimensions” while celebrating the brothers as “knights-errant” (144). He finds the play notable in its clear reliance on romance and theatrical conventions to alter political opinion in “the world beyond the playhouse walls” (161).

Overall, Publicover's analysis of how romance-inflected plays depict cultural encounters is nuanced. Greater attention to audience members’ diverse social identities and the indeterminacies and multivalencies of the plays they saw would enrich Dramatic Geography. The study's attention to authorial agency often seems unnecessary. Publicover might also strengthen his claims about how playgoers experienced performances by citing accounts of or by the period's well-known playgoers (e.g., Simon Forman). His discussion of lesser-known plays in addition to canonical ones, however, provides critical insight into England's theatrical networks. Part 2's examination of how drama negotiated relationships between chivalric ideals and commerce is another especially valuable contribution to early modern scholarship. Those pursuing early modern genre, maritime, and theater studies will likely find Dramatic Geography sophisticated, informative, and thought provoking.