No one can accuse Shakespeare: Staging the World of lacking in atmosphere. The journey to the first exhibit – an immaculate edition of the first folio of 1623 – follows the circumference of the Reading Room in the museum’s Great Court. Dimly lit, and accompanied by the raucous roar of a recent Globe audience, this introduction places what follows into a firmly theatrical context. We could easily imagine ourselves fumbling for a seat in the circle or gallery; we may even catch a line or two emanating from one of the numerous sound installations found deeper inside.

Likewise, the articles on display – though almost exclusively drawn from the real (as opposed to dramatic) world – are nonetheless imbued with a certain dramatic content. The daggers, loose change and clay pipes that were hauled here from the South Bank mud strike us at first as recovered props, evoking the stage; only gradually does it dawn that these were once someone’s possessions, carried in pockets along narrow Tudor streets. This is no moot point. Whilst the show undertakes to explore the representations of the past, it also serves to represent our cultural heritage, then and now, to thousands of visitors to London over the summer. What we are dealing with here is performance in every sense of the word.

By delineating what was then seen as desirable or exotic, Staging the World seeks to demonstrate how Tudor and Stewart society saw itself – and how London, as an ascendant city with open ports, was interpreting the world. Most interestingly of all, and what this show does so well, is exploring how these interpretations were shaped and put to work.

The key to this understanding lay with the many maps adorning the exhibition. Their scale and proportions are clumsy, reminding us that cartography was then a fledgling art. The globes on display suggest little appreciation of the bulk of the continents of Africa or the Americas – such an appreciation being, of course, inaccessible at the time. The Shakespearian world approaches us as tabula rasa – its ultimate meaning pliable, subject to power politics and vested interests.

But such ignorance extended for most to their own locality, with few understanding how clusters of towns related to one another or to the other English counties. Commissioning a map was thus an act of control, of authority – a ‘pinning down’ of something fluid and difficult to comprehend. A stunning example is Ralph Sheldon’s tapestry of Warwickshire (c.1590), one of a series of four. Intricately woven from wool and silk, these once provided a handsome panorama in the dignitary’s drawing room, symbolising his mastery of knowledge and parameters of influence.

For the rest of us, ‘otherness’ was quite elastic – something playwrights and artists found particularly useful. By shifting textual sensitivities abroad, these could be explored whilst avoiding the considerable wrath of the state. This need is well illustrated by a handwritten manuscript for Thomas More (1601-1604), the only remaining in the Baird’s script. Its survival is best explained by the very fact it was banned – had it been printed, the original would have certainly been destroyed. What we see is an ambivalent rendering of a race riot; we find similar issues considered in his work set elsewhere that escaped the censors. The Merchant of Venice or Othello, we learn, was commonly understood as surrogate-London: multicultural, liberal, teeming with potential conflict.

Moving on, a portrait of Richard III (Unknown Artist, c.1523-1555) reminds us that the past too is another country, and open to the manipulative violence of the present. The king’s disfigured hand – stories of which only circulated after his death – is portrayed as evidence of his warped and malign nature; his broken sword speaks of dishonour and the impotence of evil. Shakespeare’s plays, amongst others, are complicit in the spin –providing further support for the legitimacy of Richard’s successors (who were, of course, his patrons.)

But of all the maps on display here, the most contested refer to the order of succession. We find James I’s family tree in the penultimate room, alongside provisional but unfamiliar sketches for the Union Flag. This is statecraft in action: the work of an auteur building his scene. Highly partisan, the chart is nonetheless remarkable for its elegant presentation and breadth of scholarship. The king’s appreciation for the feat is reflected by his gift to its creator, Thomas Lyte, found next-door.

This is a rare opportunity to see the work of Nicholas Hilliard – and his protégé, Isaac Oliver – take its place in a keynote exhibition. These Renaissance goldsmiths and miniaturists won acclaim at home and abroad; Hilliard was compared favourably with the Italian masters of the time. The Lyte Jewel (1610) encloses a portrait of the king in an intricate gold locket, set with diamonds and rubies whose hues are developed within the painting. Other examples of the pair’s work can be found elsewhere in the gallery and reward a pause.

Nearby sits an altogether more macabre locket. Containing the right eye of gunpowder-conspirator Edward Oldcorne (d.1606), this grizzly relic – which lived to see its gizzards burnt when its owner was hung and drawn – gives inarticulate but earnest testimony to the barbarism of the age. It is no longer recognisable as a human organ. Instead, this grey-black bolus gives its casket a pupil.

This is one of the few moments when the exhibition loses focus. No number of references to the blinding in Lear could reconcile the eye with the master narrative. There are other curiosities too – instruments of torture; the lamp Fawkes was carrying when apprehended – but for all the digression, at least there is gravitas.

 Exhibition runs until November 25th. Click here for more information.