General Introduction

In Shakespearean Negotiations, Stephen Greenblatt reconsiders the early English modern world and shows how space, time and boundaries were then gradually transformed into fruitful abstractions as much by outsiders and innovative ideas as by ‘a powerful ideology of inwardness’ (1988, 85) associated with Protestantism. He contends that Shakespeare’s vulnerable England was shaped by such modes of exchange as ‘appropriation’, ‘purchase’ and ‘symbolic acquisition’ (9–10) and that, broadly speaking, its fluctuating identity was refashioned by the circulation, the translation and the constant recycling of literature as well as by changing organizations of knowledge, faith and power.