This volume explores the transnationality and interculturality of early modern performance in multiple languages, cultures, countries and genres. Its twelve essays compose a complex image of theatre connections as a socially, economically, politically and culturally rich tissue of networks and influences. With particular attention to itinerant performers, court festival, and the Black, Muslim and Jewish impact, they combine disciplines and methods to place Shakespeare and his contemporaries in the wider context of performance culture in English, Spanish, French, Dutch, German, Czech and Italian speaking Europe. The authors examine transnational connections by offering multidisciplinary perspectives on the theatrical significance of concrete historical facts: archaeological findings, archival records, visual artefacts, and textual evidence.

M. A. Katritzky is Barbara Wilkes Research Fellow in Theatre Studies and Director, The Centre for Research into Gender and Otherness in the Humanities, at The Open University Pavel Drábek is Professor of Drama and Theatre Practice in the School of the Arts at the University of Hull

List of illustrationsAcknowledgementsIntroduction PavelDrábek and M. A. KatritzkyPart I: West1 If the shoe fits, or the truth in pinking Natasha Korda2 Freedom and constraint in transnational comedy: The 'jest unseen' of love letters inTwo Gentlemen of Verona andEl perro del hortelano Susanne L. Wofford3 'La voluntad jamás permite señor': Transnational versions of cross-class desire inCardenio andMujeres y criados Barbara Fuchs4 The African ambassador's travels: Playing black in late seventeenth-century France and Spain Noémie NdiayePart II: North5 Migration and drama: Amsterdam 1617 Nigel Smith6 London and The Hague, 1638: Performing quacks at court M. A. Katritzky7 'Why, sir, are there other heauens in other countries?': The English Comedy as a transnational style Pavel Drábek8The Re-Inspired and Revived Bernardon: Metamorphoses of early modern comedy in eighteenth-century bourgeois theatre Friedemann KreuderPart III: South9 Northern lights and shadows: Transcultural encounters in early modern Italian theatreEric Nicholson10 Representations of female power: Musical spectacle at the Paris court of Maria de Medici, the Italian Minerva of France Janie Cole11 Ebrei andTurchi performing in early modern Venice and Mantua ErithJaffe-Berg12 Ragozines beheading: Dramatic and civil logics of the European state-form Jacques LezraAfterword Robert HenkeBibliographyIndex