Shakespeare and Diasporic Book History in Spain and Portugal, 1592-1820

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Description of Research Project

This is a collaborative, international, SSHRC-funded research project with John Stone of the University of Barcelona. We are producing a database of pre-1820 volumes of Shakespeare and early modern English plays in Spanish and Portuguese libraries and archives. Previously, the history of reading Shakespeare in Spain began with the French translations of Shakespeare that were, in turn, translated into Spanish in the early nineteenth century. Our project reveals a much older history and tradition of Shakespeare’s circulation and reception in Spain: beginning as early as the 1630s, when a copy of Shakespeare and Fletcher’s The Two Noble Kinsmen made its way to Madrid in the trunk of a young Scottish seminarian. It uncovers a population of speakers and readers of English, living in Spain, who acquired volumes of Shakespeare and other early modern English dramatic texts as part of their anglophone cultural identity, at the same time that they were cultivating a Spanish one.

This database will allow us to explore and map Shakespeare’s early readerships beyond the domain of English speaking countries, charting how and why Shakespearean texts moved in seventeenth and eighteenth century Europe. The database will include notes on each volume's provenance, inscriptions, illustrations, and binding, and will map the current locations of each volume, along with its demonstrated or likely locations in the past. The map will also feature popups explicating in which city the volume was printed, where it was bound, who owned the book, and the library, archive, or private collection in which it was found. Locating Shakespearean texts within English-speaking diasporic communities on the Iberian peninsula, as well as among their host populations, this project will also generate new knowledge about the reception of Shakespeare in Europe, and contribute to a wider understanding of Spain and Portugal’s diasporic and native readerships of English literature from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century.

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Undergraduate Student Responsibilities

The title pages of early printed books can list up to 50 printers, publishers and booksellers! The undergraduate student will be responsible for locating the full publication information about the Shakespeare editions that we have found, using online resources such as the ESTC (English Short Catalogue), Early English Books Online (EEBO), and EEB (Early European Books), as well as noting illustrations, engravings, and other graphic images on title pages and throughout the volumes. This is a great opportunity for a student interested in publishing and book history and there will be many possibilities for the student to generate their own poster project in the digital humanities through their work with these editions of Shakespeare.

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Qualifications Required

The student will need to have some knowledge of Shakespeare and/or eighteenth century literature and/or the history of the printed book, as well as experience working with online databases and excel spreadsheets. Ideally the student will have previous experience in website and database creation, and have a working knowledge of Spanish.