ABSTRACT
This state-of-the-field essay surveys a variety of monographs, edited collections, and digital research, teaching, and theatrical resources published in 2020 and 2021. The volumes examined center around prominent themes, including race, multilingualism, queer theory, disability studies, animal studies, and the representation of non-humans and material objects. Moreover, the essay places these timely scholarly arguments within the landscape of a world profoundly altered by the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown, drawing connections with early modern bouts of plague and virulent illness that took lives and closed theaters and other public meeting spaces. What emerges is a study of how teachers, scholars, directors, and performers continued to advance new and innovative projects on Shakespeare that were attuned to the social and political upheavals of the global pandemic.
