Series: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies

A scandal in its time and a revelation today, this fearless satire blends courtly decadence with political rebellion in an imagined world of unchecked power. A scandalous and subversive satire, The Island of Hermaphrodites skewers the decadence and corruption of early seventeenth-century French society with razor-sharp wit. Published anonymously in 1605, this daring Menippean satire created an uproar for its...

Actor and director David Ivers presents As You Like It, as you’d like to hear it today. Presenting a new translation of Shakespeare into contemporary English, Ivers reimagines Shakespeare’s comedy from an actor’s point of view. Analysing the play line by line to uncover the meaning of every joke, pun, and witty aside, Ivers repurposes Shakespeare’s language while maintaining an...

In Migdalia Cruz’s Macbeth, the Witches run the world. The Macbeths live out a dark cautionary tale of love, greed, and power, falling from glory into calamity as the Witches spin their fate. Translating Shakespeare’s language for a modern audience, Nuyorican playwright Migdalia Cruz rewrites Macbeth with all the passion of the Bronx. This translation of Macbeth was presented in...

A new addition to an ongoing project to publish the early-modern Exchequer manuscript law reports. Reports of Cases in the Court of Exchequer from 1685 to 1714 by W. H. Bryson includes all of the Exchequer reports, both in print and in manuscript, known to date from this period. These consolidated reports are presented chronologically according to the modern method...

Considered by most scholars to be the last play that Shakespeare wrote, The Tempest is a stormy tale of betrayal and forgiveness. After being banished by his brother Antonio, Prospero harnesses the magic of an otherworldly island full of monsters and spirits to seek revenge. In reworking this play for a twenty-first-century audience, Kenneth Cavander focuses on the humor and...

From reproductions of Dürer copperplates to twenty-first-century apparel, this exhibition explores the history of images printed on fabric. Printing images and texts on luxurious fabrics instead of paper once took portraits, devotional images, and other artworks to the next level, brokering powerful relationships and memorialising important events on resplendent broadsides and serviceable handkerchiefs alike. However, whether fancy or functional, these...