Shakespeare in the early modern global world

Shakespeare's plays were written at a time of global exchange and religious confrontation between a divided European Christianity and the eastern religious of the book. From his early plays like 'Merchant of Venice', through to late plays like 'The Tempest', Shakespeare conintually responded to England's religious and commercial exchanges with other cultures, particularly Islam, and produced a range of multiple, contradictory characters and places that have become intimately associated with the ways in which we think about race, ethnicity, nationhood and immigration today. This project analyses Shakespeare's ambivalence towards cultural encounter through a range of previously neglected historical sources.