Virginia Mason Vaughan, Professor Emerita at Clark University,
“To my home I will no more return”: Shakespeare and Early Modern Immigration

19 May, 3 pm

Palazzo di Lingue

Room Co-Working

In three different plays, written early and late in his career, Shakespeare included a passage to highlight England’s topographical qualities – its rocky cliffs and rough seas – that kept the homeland free from foreign influences and migration. Yet, in those same plays, the ensuing action demonstrates that the ideal of a pristine nation state is an illusion. During Shakespeare’s lifetime, foreign influence was endemic as thousands of “strangers” migrated to England, and — by the end of Shakespeare’s writing career, English men and women were migrating to the Virginia colony.  Not surprisingly, Shakespeare’s comedies, tragedies and romances all depict characters moving away from their homes, whether to escape some sort of oppression, to locate a lost family member, or to seek their fortune. The most extensive exploration of what happens to people when they are far from home in a new environment is The Tempest, where characters who are detained on Prospero’s island yearn to return to their home in Italy.

For attendance via Zoom write to:
skene@ateneo.univr.it