ABSTRACT
"Performance" as the active term in the title, the editors of the engaging collection invite their contributors to use one of the most powerful words in the current critical lexicon. Sean Lawrence, analyzing The Merchant of Venice in terms of "performing exchanges," takes advantage of the invitation and also points to the sources of the term's power. This extraordinary critical power presumably derives from the close fit between performance studies and the antifoundationalist assumptions dominating work. Like "performance," "culture" opens up apparently limitless vistas of experience for us to subdue to our apparently limitless interpretive will. In some ways, academic Shakespeareans are like actors. Teaching involves performance and sometimes stage fright. It defined as stakeholders in the global enterprise of knowledge production, find ourselves increasingly dependent on corporate sponsors in the public and private sector who seem to think our products are not worth much.
