Shakespeare, Space : Contemporary Readings in Spatiality, Culture and Drama

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.

Isabel Karremann is Professor for Early Modern Literature at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. She is the author of The Drama of Memory in Shakespeare's History Plays (2015) and has co-edited essay collections on Shakespeare and early modern drama, among them Shakespeare in Cold War Europe: Conflict, Celebration, Commemoration (2016), Forms of Faith: Literary Form and Religious Conflict in Shakespeare's England (2017) and Memory and Affect in Shakespeare's England (2022).

Lucy Munro is Professor of Shakespeare and Early Modern Literature at King's College London, UK. She is the author of Children of the Queen's Revels: A Jacobean Theatre Repertory (2005), Archaic Style in English Literature, 1590-1674 (2013) and Shakespeare in the Theatre: The King's Men (2020), and the editor of plays including Fletcher's The Tamer Tamed and Dekker, Ford and Rowley's The Witch of Edmonton.

Sonia Massai is Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Sapienza, University of Rome, Italy, and Visiting Professor of Shakespeare Studies at King's College London, UK. With Amy Lidster, she is co-editor of Shakespeare at War: A Material History (2023) and co-curator of the Shakespeare and War exhibition at the National Army Museum (October 2023 – April 2024). Her other publications include her books on Shakespeare's Accents: Voicing Identity in Performance (2020) and Shakespeare and the Rise of the Editor (2007), her collections of essays on Hamlet for the Arden Shakespeare 'State of Play' series (The Arden Shakespeare, 2021), on Ivo van Hove (Methuen Drama, 2018), Shakespeare and Textual Studies (2015) and on World-Wide Shakespeares (2005), and critical editions of The Paratexts in English Printed Drama to 1642 (2014) and John Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore for Arden Early Modern Drama (The Arden Shakespeare, 2011).

Farah Karim-Cooper is Head of Higher Education & Research, Shakespeare's Globe and Professor of Shakespeare Studies, King's College London, UK.

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Gordon McMullan is a professor of English at King's College London, UK.