Shakespeare and the Low Countries

Like most European nations, the Low Countries - a geographical term referring jointly to the present-day Netherlands and to Flanders, the Dutch-speaking provinces of Belgium - are significant to our efforts to read Shakespeare and English Renaissance drama in at least two distinct ways. They played an active role in the cultural context that generated his plays, and have since become recipients of the culture that they themselves helped to produce; they are, in quite a number of respects, the subject of Shakespeare's poetry and plays, and have since the early seventeenth century, like so many other countries worldwide, made Shakespeare the object of their veneration. The seventeen essays dedicated to this issue's theme explore the multiplex intersections between Shakespeare and the Dutch from a range of perspectives, including book history, source studies, gender studies, art history, legal history, reception history, and performance history. This is the first book-length treatment of the subject in English.