Introduction: Dramatic Geographies of the Self

Abstract

In the first scene of Thomas Heywood’s The English Traveller (1633), two intellectuals in early manhood, Géraldine and Dalavill, compare experience acquired through the active life of travel with the knowledge gained merely by reading. Dalavill, although effortlessly conversant with the most recent developments in cartography and geography, claims to value practice over theory and flatters his travelled companion accordingly. Dalavill envies his friend’s experience of foreign countries and presents his own knowledge according to the organization of a geography book compiled by a scholar in his study, starting from the cosmographical description of the universe, the relation between the seas and land, and the pilot’s navigational understanding, which helps him direct his course. Dalavill, who obtained geographical information from books, explains how he ‘read Jerusalem’ and ‘studied Rome’, while Géraldine has seen both. In Dalavill’s opinion, a ‘compleat Gentleman’¹ is one who has attained knowledge through travel, not one who could calculate the distance from one place to another according to the scale of the map and ‘recite’ the monuments of every city. As Géraldine speaks at length of the voyage he has just concluded, one may think he is the English traveller of the title. Ultimately, however, at the end of the play it is Géraldine who remains in England, while Dalavill becomes a traveller.