The metaphor, or the idea, of the world as stage, or Shakespeare's theatrum mundi, is as old as the theatre itself, figuring prominently in Shakespeare's seventeenth-century England and Tang Xianzu's seventeenth-century China as the two nations experienced a renaissance of the self and its crisis and disillusionment. While the theatrum mundi motif in the works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries has been thoroughly explored, Volpp's is among the few studies that deal with – and the first that investigates thoroughly from a broad historical, social, cultural and theatrical perspective – the idea of theatrum mundi in seventeenth-century Chinese drama and performance.

Volpp describes ‘the emotional topography occupied by the idea of the worldly stage in seventeenth-century China’ (p. 7), centred on the essential argument that ‘theatrical modes of spectatorship furnished models for modes of social spectatorship’ (p. 258), and examines the ways theatricals and theatricality exerted a powerful and deep influence on social and cultural relations in seventeenth-century China. Thus Worldly Stages is not so much ‘a study of meta-theatricality’ – as is usually the case – but rather a consideration of the preoccupations of seventeenth-century Chinese writers and theatre artists regarding the relation between the world and stage that permeated all aspects of their literary and artistic life and culture.

Volpp delineates ‘two modes of thinking about the relation between world and stage during the seventeenth century’ (p. 8). The first ‘anti-theatricalist’ mode ties social roles to theatrical roles and exposes ‘the disjunction of appearance and actuality’ and ‘social imposture and inauthenticity’ (p. 8). The second mode, of empathy or identification, underlines the affinity between the world and stage, characterized by the spectator's sympathetic participation or absorption in the illusion of the stage spectacle that stimulates his/her understanding of the illusory nature of all forms of worldly existence. Volpp elucidates the two modes, advancing and illuminating her essential argument, not only by her close reading of plays by Tang Xianzu, Wang Jide, and Kong Shangren, but also by her investigation of the social and cultural relations between spectators (especially those from the literati) and actors (the Chinese tradition characterized as ‘the literary consumption of actors’).

By investigating seventeenth-century Chinese conceptions of theatricality, Volpp offers ‘an extended refutation’ of the Brechtian perception that the classical Chinese theatre ‘cultivates alienation in the spectator’ (pp. 249–50). Brecht, who saw Mei Lanfang's demonstration of his acting techniques, was introduced to China too late to have any influence on Mei, but since the 1980s Brecht's interpretation of Mei's art has influenced interpretations of Mei's art and its tradition. Volpp's significant contribution to the study of Chinese theatre, especially seventeenth-century Chinese theatre, helps readers understand, from a historical perspective, traditional Chinese drama (kunqu, in particular) as performed in the twentieth century and today, as it must be contextualized and understood in the history of Chinese theatre.