Shakespeare / Space

Shakespeare/Space opens up a contact zone in which the concept of ‘space’ intersects with other critical categories to produce new approaches to Shakespeare’s plays and early modern culture.

Shakespeare / Space explores new approaches to the enactment of ‘space’ in and through Shakespeare’s plays, as well as to the material, cognitive and virtual spaces in which they are enacted.

With contributions from 14 leading and emergent experts in their fields, the collection forges innovative connections between spatial studies and cultural geography, cognitive studies, memory studies, phenomenology and the history of the emotions, gender and race studies, rhetoric and language, translation studies, theatre history and performance studies.

Each chapter offers methodological reflections on intersections such as space/mobility, space/emotion, space/supernatural, space/language, space/race and space/digital, whose critical purchase is demonstrated in close readings of plays like King Lear, The Comedy of Errors, Othello and Shakespeare’s history plays. They testify to the importance of space for our understanding of Shakespeare’s creative and theatrical practice, and at the same time enlarge our understanding of space as a critical concept in the humanities. It will prove useful to students, scholars, teachers and theatre practitioners of Shakespeare and early modern studies.