Ben Jonson staged a masque at court called The Fortunate Isles which begins with a spirit descending onto the audience, featuring a floating island so elaborately constructed that England’s premiere architectural professional, Inigo Jones, who is the designer behind Whitehall Palace, Banqueting House, and Covent Garden square, was hired to construct an apparatus specifically for this performance. While records do not detail the construction of this magical floating island, we know from various accounts it was impressive in its scope and execution. So, What does this mean about William Shakespeare? We know from Shakespeare’s plays that the bard includes very similar items in his plays as well. From magical floating islands and gods riding on dolphins in plays like Twelfth Night to Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, where there is a stage direction that almost mirrors what we know happened in Jonson’s masque, when the text says “Jupiter descends in thunder and lightning, sitting upon an eagle” When these fantastic elements are used in the text, does that mean Shakespeare could have had an architectural designer build an elaborate floating island, or a descending eagle befitted with thunder and lighting inside The Globe theater?

Traditional theater research into Elizabethan staging suggests that the set and scenery for this play would have been so sparse that the production relied on the strength of the dialogue to convey the elaborate and fantastic parts of the story, but if that is the case, why did Shakespeare map out Jupiter’s descent in the stage directions with such precision? Could Shakespeare have used elaborate props and circus-like movable scenery? Our guest, Dr. Michael Hirrel believes, the answer is yes.