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Freedom and the Sea
Read more: Freedom and the SeaWhat is the point of the connection between sea power and liberty?

Shakespeare’s Instability
by Jeffrey Knapp The first speaker in one of Shakespeare’s earliest plays is not a prince, like Hamlet, or a lover, like Juliet, or a warrior, like Macbeth. He’s a drunken beggar. And he’s incensed that the hostess of the tavern…

The Ecology of Dress in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries: Q&A
by Sophie Chiari and Anne-Marie Miller-Blaise In the following quiz, each answer is related to a particular chapter of The Ecology of Dress in Shakespeare and his Contemporaries. We hope, as a result, that this fun test will enable you…

Shakespeare Teachers Strike Back: Three strategies for engaging in politically responsive pedagogy in the age of (another) DEI backlash
by Marissa Greenberg and Elizabeth Williamson Perhaps the greatest challenge facing US institutions of higher education is the tension between an increasingly diverse student body and an inherently (and inherited) homogenous curriculum. “Meeting today’s students where they are” is a…

How to be a Jacobean courtier – the ambitious man’s guide
The author of Epistolary Courtiership and Dramatic Letters explains what the story of Thomas Overbury reveals about success at the court of James VI and I.

Arlecchino or Harlequin? Decision making in Literary Translation
by Naomi Mottram Fans of Commedia dell’Arte know that wherever Arlecchino appears, he causes trouble. So perhaps I should have known that he would cause trouble for me… While creating my translation of Sofia Sinitskaia’s tale, Mitrofanushka Durasov, which features…

Astrophil and Stella: The Sidney-Jonson Connection
by Bob Evans In 2023, the Ben Jonson Journal celebrated its thirtieth anniversary with a special issue devoted to detailed explications of all 108 sonnets in the important Astrophil and Stella sonnet sequence composed by Sir Philip Sidney. Edinburgh University…

Shakespeare, the Reformation and the Interpreting Self: Q&A with the author
by Roberta Kwan Tell us a bit about your book. My book is about human knowing, or more precisely, humans as knowers. How can we know and be known? What prevents us from knowing? How should we know? The book…

Sexual Desire and Romantic Love in Shakespeare – Q&A with the author
by Joan Lord Hall What inspired you to research eros in Shakespeare’s work? Knowing that I had taught Shakespeare for about 40 years and had authored several guides to his play, a friend provocatively asked me “Why don’t you write…

Why You Should Read Allan Ramsay’s ‘The Gentle Shepherd’
What Scottish play, published in 1725, reached over 100 printings by 1800, was called ‘the noblest pastoral’ by Robert Burns, inspired more than forty paintings, more than ‘from the entire works of Chaucer, Defoe, Swift, Richardson, or Fielding’ (R. Altick, Paintings from Books), and was performed by amateur companies throughout Scotland as late as the end of the 19th century?