Shakespeare and the Irish Writer

Triaging Shakespeare

Dear Ben, I just got the reviews back on my grant proposal for Hamlet, the new play I was telling you about. I applied to the National Institutes of Health in America this time—the RFA said they’re interested in creative new ideas and all that rot but they’re just as conservative as here in England. It wasn’t even discussed! I’ll wager it was those scoundrels Beaumont and Fletcher that sank it....

Shakespeare, Text and Paratext

The early modern dramatic paratext is a rich and varied repository of tributes to patrons and readers, where dramatists negotiated or parodied their attitudes towards dramatic publication and their reliance on the medium of print as a source of income and literary reputation. However, the lack of signed dedications or addresses to the reader in the early editions of Shakespeare’s plays has defl...

Shakespeare in the Weimar Republic

Medicine and Shakespeare in the English Renaissance

his skills as an artist: Hunter had need of facile draughtsmen to produce representations of specimens in his collections. In return for Clift's services, Hunter was to bring the young man up as a surgeon. Although Clift lived in the extensive establishment in Leicester Square and regularly acted as Hunter's amanuensis, there is tantalizing little about his master in these letters. In a rare re...

Shakespeare and the Ethics of Appropriation

The 2012 London Olympics ushered in a new era of global Shakespearean appropriation. The Globe-to-Globe festival, held in conjunction with the Olympics, brought theater companies from many parts of the world to the United Kingdom to perform Shakespeare in their own languages (“37 plays in 37 languages”). Globe-to-Globe suggested the ethical aspirations of such ambitious Shakespearean events as ...