A World of (No) Wonder, or No Wonder-wounded Hearers Here: Toward a Theory on the Vanishing Mediation of “No Wonder” in Shakespeare’s Theater

Abstract

It is no wonder that so many scholars are fascinated by the wonders and marvels of the early modern stage, for assuredly Shakespeare was as well. He peoples his worlds with a plethora of marvelous characters: fairies, sprites, monsters, magicians, fools, apothecaries, witches, ghosts, kings, queens, actors, and so on. He elevates and devastates them with love, betrayal, confusion, war, prophecy, shipwrecks, and poisons. He births, kills, and resurrects them at will. The wonder-cabinet of Shakespeare’s collected work resonates with the preciousness, rarity, and profundity of both the worlds he creates and his own virtuosity as a conjurer and craftsman of wonder. To be sure, for centuries, scholars have invested a remarkable amount of time and energy into their attempts to understand wonder, often referred to in early modern texts by the similarly used words “wonder” and “marvel” and their derivatives, as it is experienced and imagined not just in Shakespeare, but also in the early modern English society of which Shakespeare was both a part and a product. Given Shakespeare’s eminence as an enabler and affecter of wonderment, it is no marvel that, in this research, theater has emerged as a primary object for the desire to make sense of the phenomena of wonder.¹ Alternatively seen as a surrogate for the religious wonder that was suppressed under Queen Elizabeth, a bulwark for theological wonder in spite of doctrinal change, an exploratory site for the possibilities and limitations of theological and theatrical wonder alike, or as a champion for the supernatural and the improbable, as various scholars have argued, the theater was a central locus for the production and experience of wonderment.²