Shakespeare in the North

'In Charlotte Bronte's Shirley, the ruthless mill owner learns his disastrous industrial strategy from Coriolanus. The excellent contributors to Shakespeare in the North expand this fruitfully antagonistic relationship, placing England's national poet to the north of traditional centres of culture and replacing Stratford, London, Arden and Windsor with Blackpool, Edinburgh, Northumberland and Tyneside.'
Emma Smith, University of Oxford

Presents fresh perspectives on Shakespeare's representations of and in the 'North', past and present

This exciting collection of original essays critically assesses the significance of locality in Shakespearean plays. Considering how Shakespeare and his contemporaries understood the 'North', it brings together diverse voices to define what the 'North' meant and means in relation to Shakespeare. The book also situates Shakespeare's works alongside less canonical texts and media, as well as detailed case studies of new material from rich but rarely-used local, municipal and performance archives. It provides an opportunity to critically reflect on links and differences between the past and present, England and Scotland, the local and the global.

Adam Hansen is Senior Lecturer in English at Northumbria University.


Cover image: © Adam Hansen

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ISBN 978-1-4744-3592-5
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AcknowledgementsNotes on ContributorsIntroduction, Adam Hansen

I: Shakespeare and the Early Modern North

1. Shakespeare's Northern Blood: Transfusing Gorboduc into Macbeth and Cymbeline, Paul Frazer


2. 'Here are strangers near at hand': Anglo-Scottish Border Crossings Pre- and Post-Union, Steve Veerapen
3. Shakespeare, King James and the Northern Yorkists, Richard Stacey
4. North by North-West: Shakespeare's Shifting Frontier, Lisa Hopkins

II: Performing Shakespeare in the North

5. The People's Shakespeare: Place, Politics, and Performance in a Northern Amateur Theatre, Adam Hansen
6. Only Northerners need apply? Northern Broadsides and 'no-nonsense' Shakespeare, Caroline Heaton
7. Shakespeare and Blackpool: The RSC A Midsummer Night's Dream (2016): A Play for the Nation?, Janice Wardle
8. William the Conqueror: The Only Shakescene in a Country, Richard Wilson

III: Appropriating Shakespeare in the North

9. 'What is Shakespeare to Manchester'?: Shakespearean Engagement in The North at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, Monika Smialkowska
10. A Road by Any Other Name: Heaton History Group, a North East suburb, and Shakespeare, Chris Jackson
11. Lancastrian Shakespeares: Hamlet and King Lear in North West England (2005-2014), Liz Oakley-Brown
12. Shakespeare's Cheek: Macbeth, Dunsinane and the Jacobean Condition, James Loxley

Postscript: News from the North, Willy Maley