This article explores the change in dynamics between matter and style in Shakespeare’s way of depicting distress on the early modern stage. During his early years as a dramatist, Shakespeare wrote plays filled with violence and death, but language did not lose its composure at the sight of blood and destruction; it kept on marching to the beat o…[Read more]

This article explores the change in dynamics between matter and style in Shakespeare’s way of depicting distress on the early modern stage. During his early years as a dramatist, Shakespeare wrote plays filled with violence and death, but language did not lose its composure at the sight of blood and destruction; it kept on marching to the beat o…[Read more]

One of the major differences between the otherwise very similar commercial theatrical cultures of early modern Spain and England was that, whereas in England female roles were performed by young, cross-dressed boys, in Spain female performers were prominent in their industry. indeed, actresses in Spain played an active role in the creative process…[Read more]

One of the major differences between the otherwise very similar commercial theatrical cultures of early modern Spain and England was that, whereas in England female roles were performed by young, cross-dressed boys, in Spain female performers were prominent in their industry. indeed, actresses in Spain played an active role in the creative process…[Read more]

Mary Stuart’s Bouncing Head
Execution scenes reveal the links between the spectacular and the punitive (Michel Foucault), but they are difficult to stage, even more so when the topic is the decapitation of Mary Stuart, whose execution divided Catholics and Protestants, forcing playwrights to adopt several mediation strategies. Taking plays by J…[Read more]

“Shamanistic Shakespeare: Korea’s Colonization of Hamlet” offers a timely reminder about the dangers of imposing a reformulated national myth on international Shakespeare productions. Focusing on a London performance of Korea’s Yohangza Theatre Company’s shamanized Hamlet, this case study invites far broader consideration of the readability of glo…[Read more]

Global studies enable us to examine deceivingly harmonious images of Shakespeare. This chapter focuses on the modern period and introduces readers to a number of key concepts in Shakespeare and global studies, namely censorship and redaction, genre, gender, race, and politics of reception. Performing Shakespeare not only creates channels between…[Read more]

Jean de la Taille’s “Saül le furieux” (1562) has been described as “the most dramatic play produced by the French Renaissance,” and the author’s preface to the play in the printed edition of 1572, “De l’Art de la Tragedie,” as “certainly the best theoretical essay on the theatre written in France before the classical period.” These estimates by…[Read more]

Preliminary data set of measures from Michiel Coignet’s “reigle platte” and comparison of the weights of substances with data in Kepler’s table of specific gravities in MesseKunst Archimedis. Michiel Coignet, Usus duodecim diuisionum geometricarum, Brussels, KBR, II 769, folio 40r. Data associated with a forthcoming article in Early Science and…[Read more]

This article is an examination of the preliminary material of Shakespeare’s First Folio. With the correct order of the preliminary leaves unknown, the sequence of the first 18 pages has long puzzled scholars. Over the last 400 years, binders have assembled the gathering differently, spawning a variety of order types. Using several data sources, i…[Read more]

En este trabajo analizamos Los empeños de una casa de Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, una versión de la comedia de capa y espada en la que los valores patriarcales se critican y subvierten, mientras que los personajes femeninos adquieren complejidad y un inusitado protagonismo, pues en ellos se refleja cómo las mujeres de la época encaran los obst…[Read more]

This chapter, “Owning Chinese Shakespeares,” pursues the critical concept of localization and critiques the fidelity-derived discourse about cultural ownership. How were Chinese Shakespeares used as a kind of staged utopia of modernity?

Underlying this study are three related lines of inquiry united by what might be called locality criticism, t…[Read more]

Interview with Martha Hennessy, the granddaughter of Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker, on her life, her anti-nuclear and peace activism, and ongoing trial as part of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7.

In the summer of 2018, I visited Nancy Fraser at her home to conduct an interview on the various social, economic, and political struggles of our day. From the fight against neoliberalism to the movements challenging the far-right, Fraser analyzes our contemporary situation, remaining firmly rooted in the Marxist tradition. Central to Fraser’s…[Read more]

Thanks to Karl Marx’s references in his political treatises, Shakespeare held a significant place in a number of communist and other left-authoritarian countries, including China and the USSR. And although there were themes in Shakespeare that turned out to be inconvenient for communist ideology, other Shakespearean plays were put into service. I…[Read more]

In the year 1397 in the parish of Tuttington (Norfolk), a woman whose name is lost to history, frantic to rid herself of the evil spirit that possessed her, turned to suicide. She attempted first to hang herself, but her husband discovered her while life remained in her body, cut down the rope, and comforted her. A few weeks later she tried once…[Read more]

An examination of three cases of judicial separation from the late medieval court of York.