ABSTRACT
Imaginary lines over oceans and seas were regularly traversed between the islands of the “Indies” and were very real even before their representation on European maps, of course. This essay explores some of those traversals, specically Shakespearean, not so much to recreate or express them in vivid historical detail as to explore the questions raised by the historical trafc in Shakespeare in one particular place in the Indies-the archipelagoes of Southeast Asia-on the conceptual practices and discourse of Asian Shakespeare. How can the simultaneous boundedness and connectivities of these archipelagic spaces expand current notions of Asian and maybe even Global Shakespeare more commonly articulated in the grammars of national or continental boundaries? What happens when we shift the focus from the limits of the land to the connections of the seas?
