Gordon McMullan

How does prejudice grow and mutate? What does intolerance, when transferred from human beings onto animals, do to those creatures? And what, in return, does it do to us? Cormorant is the gripping story of a 'greedy' bird hated across the world, the object of global conflict between the fishing industry on the one hand and environmental science on the other. Gordon McMullan's book reveals that cormorants have been loathed for centuries, a detestation that has metamorphosed over time. Drawing on fields which include literature, art history and zoology, and ranging from America to China and from Britain to Peru, Cormorant explores racism, xenophobia and capitalism through the remarkable story of a bird. McMullan argues that if in the present we are to recognize prejudicial attitudes towards animals and our fellow human beings, then we need to look to the past to understand how those viewpoints have taken hold.

More than half a century ago Clifford Leech published a useful essay called 'On editing one's first play', intended to 'save newly commissioned editors from a sense of frustration and an expense of time' by providing 'some guiding-lines'. The intervening years have seen massive changes in attitudes towards editing and in the technical expertise required. Neither editor nor reader can any longer be assumed to be white, male and Christian, or trained in the classics and the Bible. Editing is now recognized as a crucial intersection between critical and textual theory. Yet the skills required are not usually taught in graduate schools, and many competent scholars are uncomfortable answering such questions as 'what do editors actually do when they edit an early modern play?' This Element focuses both on the practical steps of editing (e.g. choosing a base text, modernizing, emending, etc.) and the theoretical premises underlying editorial decisions.

Despite a recent surge of critical interest in the Shakespeare Tercentenary, a great deal has been forgotten about this key moment in the history of the place of Shakespeare in national and global culture – much more than has been remembered. This book offers new archival discoveries about, and new interpretations of, the Tercentenary celebrations in Britain, Australia and New Zealand and reflects on the long legacy of those celebrations. This collection gathers together five scholars from Britain, Australia and New Zealand to reflect on the modes of commemoration of Shakespeare across the hemispheres in and after the Tercentenary year, 1916. It was at this moment of remembering in 1916 that ‘global Shakespeare’ first emerged in recognizable form. Each contributor performs their own ‘antipodal’ reading, assessing in parallel events across two hemispheres, geographically opposite but politically and culturally connected in the wake of empire.

Despite a recent surge of critical interest in the Shakespeare Tercentenary, a great deal has been forgotten about this key moment in the history of the place of Shakespeare in national and global culture – much more than has been remembered. This book offers new archival discoveries about, and new interpretations of, the Tercentenary celebrations in Britain, Australia and New Zealand and reflects on the long legacy of those celebrations. This collection gathers together five scholars from Britain, Australia and New Zealand to reflect on the modes of commemoration of Shakespeare across the hemispheres in and after the Tercentenary year, 1916. It was at this moment of remembering in 1916 that ‘global Shakespeare’ first emerged in recognizable form. Each contributor performs their own ‘antipodal’ reading, assessing in parallel events across two hemispheres, geographically opposite but politically and culturally connected in the wake of empire.

What do we mean when we speak of the 'late style' of a given writer, artist or composer? And what exactly do we mean by 'late Shakespeare'? Gordon McMullan argues that, far from being a natural phenomenon common to a handful of geniuses in old age or in proximity to death, late style is in fact a critical construct. Taking Shakespeare as his exemplar, he maps the development of the 'discourse of lateness' from the eighteenth century to the present, noting not only the mismatch between that discourse and the actual conditions for authorship in early modern theatre but also its generativity for subsequent projections of creative selfhood. He thus offers the first critique of the idea of late style, which will be of interest not only to literature specialists but also to art historians, musicologists and anyone curious about the relationship of creativity to old age and to death.