“The Wished Aire”: Biblical Plagues and the Early Modern Playhouse

Abstract

At a time when the outbreak of plague was frequently attributed to divine providence, and associated with poor air quality, Elizabethan playhouses were identified by their detractors as sites of contagion. Contemporary playwrights responded to such charges in their drama. In Thomas Lodge and Robert Greene’s A Looking-Glass for London and England (c. 1589), a late Elizabethan play that dramatizes the story of the Biblical plagues sent against ancient Nineveh, Lodge (a physician and dramatist) and his co-author Greene explore their theatre’s capacity to evoke the threat of plague through expansive imagery and sensory effects, before transforming this noxious atmosphere into the “wished aire” of redemption.