"What Country, Friends, is This?" Shakespeare and the Staging of Exile

An exploration of displacement and exile in Shakespeare’s plays and our world today.

This compelling collection of fourteen essays explores the enduring theme of exile in Shakespeare’s works and their global afterlives, offering a timely and thought-provoking response to the modern age of displacement. Building on Edward Said’s observation that exile today is marked by its unprecedented scale—driven by war, imperialism, totalitarianism, climate change, and systemic injustice—this volume traces the ideological and cultural forces that shape experiences of exile across time and geography.

Shakespeare’s plays, deeply haunted by exile in its many guises—political, religious, cultural, and gendered—serve as a rich site for interrogating identity, belonging, and otherness.

Vanessa I. Corredera is a professor of English at Baylor University. She is a trustee of the Shakespeare Association of America and a general editor of Shakespeare Quarterly.

Stephanie E. Chamberlain is professor emerita at Southeast Missouri State University.

James M. Sutton is associate professor of English and assistant director of the Exile Studies Program at Florida International University.