Shakespeare Jahrbuch
Call For Papers
2014 Volume: “Money and Power”
Karl Marx thought that “Shakespeare excellently depicted the real nature of money”. Indeed, money plays a central role in Shakespeare´s works. Monetary transactions and the exchange of goods, bonds and loans, greed and expenditure, wealth and debt are themes of hisplays and poems and provide the sources for their imagery. The language of money permeates the language of love, and merchants and moneylenders shape the plots of the plays. “To be or not to be” is determined by assets and economic transactions. The shepherd Corin in As You Like It is well aware that “he that wants money, means and content is without three good friends”, and yet wealth is not always a blessing in Shakespeare. His plays react to the economic upheavals in early modern times and they interrogate the inherent moral, religious and political implications of these changes. At the same time, early modern poetry and drama are bound up with economic networks, the underlying power relations of patronage and the corporate structure of London´s theaters. Analyzing the relationship between “money and power” in Shakespeare is particularly pertinent at a time when debt crises, the influence of financial markets and the divide between rich and poor dominate world politics.
The editorial board of Shakespeare Jahrbuch invites essays on the following topics:
- Money and power in Shakespear’s plays
- Representations of poverty and wealth
- The circulation of money and goods on the early modern stage
- Shakespeare and the debate on usury
- Money and love – monetary and affective economies
- Shakespeare´s negotiation of early modern economic discourses
- Shakespeare´s theatre as big business
- Shakespeare in Political Economy
- Shakespeare and the financial crisis
Shakespeare Jahrbuch, the Yearbook of the German Shakespeare Society, is a peer-reviewed journal. It offers contributions in German and English, scholarly articles, an extensive section of book reviews, and reports on Shakespeare productions in the German-speaking world. It also documents the activities of the Shakespeare Society. Papers to be published in the Shakespeare Jahrbuch should be formatted according to our style sheet. Please see our website for more information. Please send your manuscripts (of about 6,000 words) to the editor of the Shakespeare Jahrbuch, Prof. Dr. Sabine Schülting (email: sabine.schuelting@fu-berlin.de), by 31 March 2013.