Reading the Coastline in Shakespeare’s Britain

Examines early modern English literary representations of ports, shorelines and littorals at home and abroad.

When Regan in King Lear asks ‘Wherefore to Dover?’ she mobilises a number of early modern anxieties. Shores and coastlines are liminal spaces, subject to erosion, invasion and tidal flux. With their metaphorical mouths and their subjection to wind, wave and tide, ports were emblematic of instability, especially in the cases of once-thriving harbours which had silted up (Winchelsea) or coastal settlements claimed by the sea (Dunwich). Early modern plays and poems are drawn to such areas both within Britain (Southampton and Harfleur in Henry V, Scarborough and Bristol in Edward II, Harlech in Richard II) and further afield in Tunis, Alexandria, Algiers, Malta and other sites where cultures clashed, slaves were traded, and people of different faiths mingled. This edited collection draws together new research on early modern British representations of the lived environment of the coast at home and abroad.