William West has taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Stanford University, and the University of Nevada, Reno, and is currently assistant Professor of English at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He has published on encyclopedism, the arts of memory, symbolic economies, and the epistemology of early modern performance in journals such as English Literary Renaissance, Renaissance Drama, and Comparative Literature. He is currently at work on a book on the significance of confusion and misunderstanding in early modern drama.

• List of illustrations; Acknowledgements; Note on texts; Introduction: circles of learning; 1. The space of the encyclopedia; 2. The idea of a theatre; 3. Tricks of vision, truths of discourse: illustration, ars combinatoria, and authority; 4. Holding the mirror up to nature?: the humanist theatre beside itself; 5. The show of learning and the performance of knowledge: humors, Epigrams, and 'an universal store'; 6. Francis Bacon's theatre of Orpheus: 'literate experience' and experimental science; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

''… At the heart of every encyclopaedic effort is the desire to marvel,' West comments, and this sense of awe is mirrored in his own engaging explication of the processes of wonder construction. It comes out through the densely argued examples and the splendid illustrations of fantastic beasts and performances spaces. Curiositas, 'the lust of the eyes', which links passion for knowledge to the watching of 'shows', works its dangerous magic through the majority of this fascinating book.' Journal of New Theatre Quarterly