Material Reflections: Early Modern Magicians' Mirrors in Performance Documents

Abstract: The "performance-as-mirror" was a popular metaphor of the early modern period, and occasionally mirrors were also used as theatrical props. This article examines three plays which incorporated a physical mirror in their staging: Robert Greene's Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (c. 1589), Anthony Munday's John a Kent and John a Cumber (c. 1590), and the "lost" play The Dead Man's Fortune (c. 1591). I argue that the props in these plays were scrying, or divination, mirrors, and I consider what these mirrors looked like and how they were used. I suggest that close attention to the material qualities of these scrying mirrors refines how the performance-as-mirror metaphor functions in these three plays. Finally, I extend the metaphor to performance documentation, suggesting that the documents in which these plays are preserved might also be interpreted as functioning like early modern scrying mirrors.