Publisher's Synopsis
In this issue of The Shakespearean International Yearbook, the special section focuses on 'Shakespeare and the Bonds of Service.' The guest editor for the section is Michael Neill, Professor of English at the University of Auckland and author of Issues of Death: Mortality and Identity in English Renaissance Tragedy. The essays in this section consider the resonance of both the theory and practice of 'service' in early modern English society and drama. - - The Shakespearean International Yearbook continues to provide an annual survey of important issues and developments in contemporary Shakespeare studies. Representing international perspectives on Shakespeare studies, contributors to this issue come from the US, Canada and the UK, Japan, India, New Zealand and South Africa. They appraise or reappraise current thinking about such matters as scepticism, psychoanalysis, appropriation and adaptation, textual traditions and performance practices (including a Production Diary for The Merchant of Venice, contributed by Barrie Rutter of Northern Broadsides). Essays on the plays and poems tend to focus on 'where we are now', and what has changed, is changing, or ought to change.
