The article focuses on the adaptation strategies used by Lope de Vega in his play El Gran Duque de Moscovia y emperador perseguido (1617). This tragedy, built on material acquired from travelogues, represents the first depiction of the Russian Time of Troubles in fiction. In it, one can follow Lope de Vega’s shift from preserving the factual d…[Read more]

In this essay I argue that the portrait of Arruntius as a passive Stoic is injudicious, and then I develop a new reading of Jonson’s depiction of Arruntius based on the textual evidence from both the quarto and folio editions of the play. The essay proceeds in three sections. In the first section, I question the commonly held view regarding A…[Read more]

In the late sixteenth century, the common law experienced a phenomenal growth, both in the number of practitioners and jurisdictional power. A comparison of popular and professional literature on legal administration or judicature reveals the complex and ambivalent cultural response to the “rise” of the common law. Despite the usual praise for the…[Read more]

In the late sixteenth century, the common law experienced a phenomenal growth, both in the number of practitioners and jurisdictional power. A comparison of popular and professional literature on legal administration or judicature reveals the complex and ambivalent cultural response to the “rise” of the common law. Despite the usual praise for the…[Read more]

This article argues that King Learn can help re-shape ecocriticism. The play’s focus on human dis-harmony with the nonhuman environment resonates with the “post-equilibrium shift” in ecological thinking. The play’s emphasis on the way natural systems such as the weather disrupt human meaning-making generates an alternative to dualistic notions of…[Read more]

The Shakespeare User explores uses of Shakespeare in a wide variety of 21st century contexts, including business manuals, non-literary scholarship, database aggregation, social media, gaming, and creative criticism. Essays in this volume demonstrate that users’ critical and creative uses of the dramatist’s works position contemporary issues of rac…[Read more]

The Shakespeare User explores uses of Shakespeare in a wide variety of 21st century contexts, including business manuals, non-literary scholarship, database aggregation, social media, gaming, and creative criticism. Essays in this volume demonstrate that users’ critical and creative uses of the dramatist’s works position contemporary issues of rac…[Read more]

Shakespeare is a local force to be reckoned with in the global marketplace and in digital and analog archives of collective memory. With the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth in 2014 and quatercentenary in 2016, there are several high-profile instances of global Shakespeare being tapped for its market value. The exchange value of…[Read more]

Research on global Shakespeare has focused on the ways in which the plays have been adapted for indigenous languages and customs. Less attention has been paid to the ways in which non-British directors have treated the Elizabethan drama. Yet there are a number of works that create direct musical dialogues between Elizabethan drama, history, and…[Read more]

In _King Lear_ the power Goneril and Regan desire and the violence in which they participate defy orthodox notions of appropriate feminine conduct. Because power as a feminine attribute is rejected as a violation of nature, they become “evil.” Rather than assuming that real women, or good women, will not defend their own power or the sov…[Read more]

Early Modern English historiography had a multi-layered bipolar constitution. Providentialism, which had dominated Medieval English thought, maintained that historical events processed according to God’s divine plan. However, with the revival and reinterpretation of Classical texts, a new and quite opposite way of thinking emerged, which was d…[Read more]

Early Modern English historiography had a multi-layered bipolar constitution. Providentialism, which had dominated Medieval English thought, maintained that historical events processed according to God’s divine plan. However, with the revival and reinterpretation of Classical texts, a new and quite opposite way of thinking emerged, which was d…[Read more]

Building on Elizabethan dramatic conventions and religious debates about ghosts, Hamlet employs linguistic and dramatic means to chill its audience. Audio-visual means, along with the manner of entrances and exits, are used in order to horrify the audience. These create a fluctuation between belief and disbelief towards the macabre elements in the…[Read more]

Building on Elizabethan dramatic conventions and religious debates about ghosts, Hamlet employs linguistic and dramatic means to chill its audience. Audio-visual means, along with the manner of entrances and exits, are used in order to horrify the audience. These create a fluctuation between belief and disbelief towards the macabre elements in the…[Read more]