ABSTRACT
Travel in Shakespeare can mean a quest, a displacement, an exile and much else, and the exotic and the other can take many forms in Shakespeare. The Europeans set out for Asia in the fourteenth century by western and eastern routes because the traditional route that supplied Venice was something Portugal, Spain and others wanted to challenge. There are representations or traces of Asia, travel and otherness in Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great, Parts I and II and Shakespeare’s plays like The Merchant of Venice, Othello and The Tempest. The chapter also considers other texts and contexts from the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
