Cartographical Consciousness and the Meanings of the East in Chapman, Jonson and Marston's Eastward Ho (1605)

ABSTRACT This article examines Eastward Ho (1605) within the cartographical context of England's maritime exploration. While critics have noted the play's debt to Richard Hakluyt's Principal Navigations (1589; 1598–1600), its engagement with the era's cartographical imagination and the shifting meanings of the East remains unexplored. Situating Eastward Ho at the cartographical turn when directional thinking began to shape literary expression, I argue that ‘the East’ is not a fixed compass point but a historically contingent concept. By appropriating the title of its rival play, Eastward Ho critiques the westward discourse advanced by John Dee and Hakluyt, translating the era's watchwords—navigation, direction, discovery, gold and silver, destiny and providence—into performative tropes. Through the lens of cartographical consciousness—an awareness that maps orient meaning and turns direction into faith and identity—the play reveals the moral confusion of an age whose compass points to the imperial west until a providential tempest redirects adventurers home to the City of London, where faith, hope and charity quietly reassert themselves. It stages not merely a contest of maps and directions but a reorientation of providence, charting return, repentance and the rediscovery of the spiritual East.