‘Wherefore to Dover?’ (King Lear)

Following the editors’ previous collaborations, Reading the Road from Shakespeare's Crossways to Bunyan’s Highways (EUP, 2020) and Reading the River in Shakespeare’s Britain (EUP, 2024), this edited collection aims to pull together new research on perceptions and representations of ports and harbours in early modern English drama.

The main reasons for being in a port or harbour in early modern England were of course to leave the country or to arrive in it, or perhaps to meet or take leave of someone else who was doing so, but the fear that lies behind Regan’s question ‘Wherefore to Dover?’ is that ports were also potential sites of invasion; this was a fear felt particularly about Dover, which the French dauphin Louis had captured in the reign of King John, but also about Milford Haven where Henry VII had successfully landed his army before the Battle of Bosworth.  Metaphorical mouths, ports and harbours were obvious points of vulnerablity, and their subjection to forces of wind, wave and tide also made them emblematic of instability, especially in the cases of once-thriving harbours which had either silted up (Winchelsea) or coastal settlements which had been claimed by the sea (Dunwich).  They were also places where customs duties were levied (or evaded) and where disease could enter (as witnessed by lazarets such as the still-surviving one in Weymouth), and where questions of jurisdiction might arise, especially about the legal status of ships.  It is not surprising then that ports and harbours figure not only in King Lear but also in a number of other early modern plays, which take us not only to locations in Britain (Southampton and Harfleur in Henry V, Scarborough and Bristol in Edward II, Harlech in Richard II) but also further afield, to Tunis, Alexandria, Algiers, Malta and other sites where cultures clashed, slaves were traded, and people of different faiths met and mingled.   

We invite chapters which consider early modern English plays set in such places and raise any of these or other related topics and questions.   

 Please send proposals of 400 words and a brief biographical statement to Lisa Hopkins (L.M.Hopkins@shu.ac.uk) and Bill Angus (w.j.angus@massey.ac.nz) by 8 April, 2024.