Critical interest in Shakespeare and virtual reality (VR) has grown steadily in recent years, inspired in part by the proliferation of newly available VR productions or adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays. Peter Otto has helpfully observed that ‘by tying virtual reality to specific technologies’, scholars ‘preclude attempts to compare digital virtual realities with those constructed in other eras and with other media’.1 My interest, in this article, lies in extending Otto’s more capacious understanding of virtual reality to a consideration of sensory manipulation in a metaphorical sense in relation to the constructed, controlled or otherwise limited perspectives that I argue have become ingrained in the way we, as Shakespeare scholars, apprehend the field of early modern drama.