"I'll draw it nearer by a perspective"

This article examines the significance of prognostic mirrors in early modern drama after 1603.Drawing on John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi (1613-1614) and Thomas Tomkis's Albumazar (1615) as case studies, it demonstrates how staging them as props is connected to how playwrights and theatregoers potentially felt about their own futures.Individuals living and writing in England during the first decades of the 17 th century experienced social transformations that affected scientific progress and gender roles.These and other developments were addressed by the seismographic medium of the playhouse.Due to their relevance for various spheres of life influenced by changing attitudes, mirrors offered themselves as vehicles for negotiating anxieties about what the future might look like.While in The Duchess of Malfi optical tools pervade both language and action to negotiate divergent views on (and of) women and assist acts of protofeminist agency, the fraudulent employment of mirrors in Albumazar is related to concerns about unstable social boundaries threatened by upward mobility and sexual transgression.Brought onto the stage for speculating on the future, the mirrors in these two plays also become instruments for reflecting upon as well as effectively challenging the status quo of the 1610s.They produce reverberating effects by anticipating movements that would soon become manifest beyond the playhouses.