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Dear all,

I’m happy to announce that my essay collection Games and Theatre in Shakespeare’s England (co-edited with Tom Bishop and Gina Bloom) has just been published by Amsterdam University Press!

Games and Theatre in Shakespeare’s England brings together theories of play and game with theatre and performance to produce new understandings of the history and design of early modern English drama. Through literary analysis and embodied practice, an international team of distinguished scholars examines a wide range of games—from dicing to bowling to role-playing to videogames—to uncover their fascinating ramifications for the stage in Shakespeare’s era and our own. Foregrounding ludic elements challenges the traditional view of drama as principally mimesis, or imitation, revealing stageplays to be improvisational experiments and participatory explorations into the motive, means, and value of recreation. Delving into both canonical masterpieces and hidden gems, this innovative volume stakes a claim for play as the crucial link between games and early modern theatre, and for the early modern theatre as a critical site for unraveling the continued cultural significance and performative efficacy of gameplay today.

The book was supported in part by the American Society for Theatre Research, which awarded us a 2020 Research Fellowship.

I am attaching a flyer with more information as well as a preview excerpt of the Introduction. If you are interested in ordering, please go to:

https://www.aup.nl/en/book/9789463723251/games-and-theatre-in-shakespeare-s-england

For a 20% discount, use code “Pub_GTSE” at checkout (valid until 23rd October 2021 on both eBook and hardback versions).

We are very excited about this collection and hope you will consider recommending it to your libraries. Please feel free to share this email and discount code with colleagues, students, and friends.

Best,
Erika