This book seeks to elaborate a theory of 'troping' that expands thepurview of linguistic work and agency, parsing its transformative work beyond the limits usually set by theories of language. It registers a sea-change in the theorization of theatrical art from representation to intervention. The book thereby seeks to lay bare the activity of language as a heterotropology. It focuses on early modern theatre from Shakespeare (Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Troilus and Cressida) and other theatrical forms of the same era (the Court Masque, dramas by Ford or Johnson) through to the Restoration; it also reads a number of contemporary avatars of Shakespearean texts from Stoppard to Jones, and of early modern and postmodern performance spaces such as the New Globe Theatre. In a dozen readings of early modern theatre it asks how the remarkable energy and social purchase ascribed to theatrical language by contemporary commentators can be reconceptualized, mobilized anew and thus harnessed for our own turbulent times.