It tends to be assumed that Shakespeare was enthusiastically mobilized as a patriotic figurehead during the First World War. Evidence of this practice can be found throughout the conflict, most often by individuals who had a prior vested interest in Shakespeare; but Chapter 4 exposes the dramatist’s contested position by examining four kinds of fragmentation that clarify his presence on wartime stages: fragmented users, fragmented texts, fragmented appeal, and fragmented evidence. It builds on Chapter 3’s discussion of patriotism, a concept that seems to indicate confidence and unity, but often reveals division. Chapter 4 evaluates the work of passionate theatre practitioners such as Frank Benson and Lena Ashwell who saw the performance of Shakespeare as a national service that could boost morale, raise funds, and educate both civilians and troops. It shows how the memoirs, public statements, and articles authored by these individuals have had an outsized influence in mediating our understanding of Shakespeare’s appeal. This chapter considers Benson’s performances within Britain; Ashwell’s work with the YMCA on the frontline and the provision of entertainment to troops; and, finally, the use of Shakespeare as part of theatre in Ruhleben, a civilian internment camp in Germany.

The Nazis could not ignore or suppress Shakespeare without alienating members of the educated middle classes. But to present him on stage involved directors and actors, many of whom were not friendly to the regime. Shakespeare posed a more fundamental conundrum because he encourages audiences to look beyond and above the divisions between protagonists and resist unalloyed support for either side. Through an exploration of the staging of The Merchant of Venice in Venice in 1943, this essay explores this conundrum and Nazi efforts to cope with it.

This interview with Julia Pascal reveals the philosophy behind the concept and creation of her 2007 production of The Merchant of Venice/The Shylock Play at the Arcola Theatre, London. The Ghetto-on-Ghetto framing device is explored as a central motif. Vital to this re-vision of the text is the living presence of Polish Ghetto escapee, the actor Ruth Posner. Posner challenges the representation of the malevolent, male Jewish figure of Shylock that has historically dominated the image of Jews in the European imagination. The staging of the script, through Posner’s gaze, is explained as a provocative act to spotlight neglected female Shoah experience and to interrogate the view of the creation of Shylock as an example of Shakespeare’s humanism and philosemitism. Pascal discusses her reasons for heightening the experience of Black and Jewish characters to hint at a critical reading of the role of the Outsider figure at the birth of the British Empire. The interview reveals the decision to confront a text from rehearsal to critical reception. Included are questions surrounding the context of daring to add to and investigate the play within a climate of growing antisemitism in Britain.

Focuses on Shakespeare’s Interregnum reception in print and wider culture, arguing he was more popular in theory than in practice because, although much was (mis)attributed to him, few of his plays were reprinted during the 1640s and 1650s. Systematically examines the stationers who together held the rights to the thirty-eight plays in the modern Shakespeare canon but who, for various reasons, did not publish them. Describes the importance of dramatic novelty for the Interregnum playbook market, and the consequent neglect of "old" Shakespeare, whose texts were frequently printed and reprinted before the Interregnum. Argues that stationers’ interest in new plays ensured the survival of many plays in the early modern dramatic corpus. Also explains the timing and appearance of full-length Interregnum Shakespeare editions (The Merchant of Venice, Othello, King Lear, Lucrece), and the significance of Shakespeare’s continued circulation in the abbreviated forms of commonplace books, drolls, book list catalogues, and other printed allusions to Shakespeare’s name, his characters and play titles. Demonstrates Shakespeare’s elastic cultural associations in this period, and how "Shakespeare" came to be a dramatic category in its own right.

Prudence is the ability to determine the right course of action for a given situation. The virtue is fundamentally concerned with what we should do to achieve a desired objective, rather than what we should believe. Prudence is also a translation of Aristotle’s concept of phronesis (practical reason), which the Nicomachean Ethics defines as an “excellence of deliberation” (VI.9.9). In his formulation, Aristotle emphasizes the rightness of the ends being pursued, unlike several premodern and modern theories focusing only on the ability to attain desired ends, and which develop a somewhat uneasy relationship between prudence and virtue. Shakespeare makes the ethical challenges of prudence integral to The Merchant of Venice, a play featuring many deliberations over the means to such ends as happiness, wealth, friendship, and love. Throughout the play, Shakespeare takes a largely Aristotelian approach to prudence: characters who “hazard all” to gain noble ends are depicted as the most prudent, while the “shrewd,” who deliberate well but for immoral objectives, inevitably fail. Still, Shakespeare adds a final constraint to the virtue, suggesting that prudence is not a static trait but a dynamic effort to uncover one’s blind spots – and thus a virtue that few can hope to master.

Turns to the metaphorical usefulness of the box, which may be troubling because its contents are unknown, unexpected or dangerous, as epitomised by Portia’s caskets in The Merchant of Venice. Bassanio is the only suitor to realise that ‘the outward shows be least themselves’. These familiar theatrical boxes signal Hamlet’s anxiety that people, things, and words might have ‘that within which passes show’.

Two such boxes are pervasive in early modern writing: Plato’s Silenus, and the proverbial apothecary’s painted box. Repeatedly invoked from Erasmus to the King James Bible, these are favourite images for the challenges of interpretation. The Silenus requires the reader to get beyond its outside to locate hidden truths. The painted box necessitates a more cautious negotiation of its exterior. Both illustrate how the crisis of hermeneutics inherent in a box – the processes required to open it, and how to discern what might be inside – materialises assumptions about the superiority of hidden things. The chapter reveals how, in its renaissance as a persistent and versatile image in early modern writing, the box itself becomes as significant as what it might or might not contain.