Literature and Mapping in Early Modern England, 1520–1688

The English usage of the term “map” in its modern technical sense as a two-dimensional graphic representation of the earth’s surface dates at least to 1527, although this primary meaning appears infrequently in poetry and drama throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, despite the fact that, as of 1600, maps, globes, and atlases had become commonplace; geographical knowledge occupied a central place in the intellectual life of the gentleman, statesman, or man of letters; and the mathematical principles necessary to mapping in its geographic, hydrographic, and astronomical forms were rapidly coalescing into a recognizably modern scientific pursuit.1 For the Elizabethan poet, the “map” functioned as a conceit in a variety of figurative senses, all of which aligned it with the epitome, emblem, portrait, mirror, or digest: it evoked a visual image that encapsulated, in condensed form, emotional states, abstract qualities, or metaphysical ideas. As was the case with these other terms, the figurative use of “map” implied the spatial dimensions inherent in a diagram or other framed visual image, but this spatial sense remained secondary to the primary mimetic or communicative function of the term. Thus for Nicholas Breton, “Religion is sacred pure diuine . . . a heauenly map, a heauenly sign”;2 to Francis Sabie’s Adam in his postlapsarian verse Adam’s Complaint (1596), Eve is a “certaine type, true figure, perfect map / Of future euilles t’all mankind to fall,”3 while Michael Drayton’s Matilda, in contrast, is “Natures fayre Ensigne, roiallie displai’d, / Map of Elisium, Eden without night.”4 The term is also typical of the verse exemplum: not only does Alexander Garden, in his versification of Breton’s moral characters, describe “An Honest Poore Man” as a “Proofe and Map of Miserie, / In patient porting of his Penurie,” but he compares all the portraits to “Maps” such as those that “Hondius hand” had drawn, which the reader should study closely for moral instruction.5 Elizabeth Grymeston’s “sorie wight the obiect of disgrace,” one of several verse portraits and meditations written to her son, is a bleak “monument of feare, the map of shame, / The mirror of mishap, the staine of place, / The scorne of time, the infamie of fame.”6 Similar fixed expressions—“map of beauty,” “map of vertue,” “map of honor,” “map of sorrow,” “map of shame”—survived well into the seventeenth century, in both poetry and drama: Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe, George Chapman, and John Fletcher all use the conceit in its conventional emblematic senses, although both Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare included maps as actual technical instruments in several ways (as I discuss later). In the sonnet, the elegy, and the ode, the map conceit acts as an index to the interior emotional or moral state of the speaker; again the idea of a visual or graphic sign expresses an intangible idea, quality, or spiritual condition. Thomas Rogers of Bryanston, for instance, draws on the modern cartographic meaning of the term but sub-