Shakespeare's Liminal Spaces

Contesting Authority on the Early Modern Stage

Ben Haworth

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Paperback

Forthcoming
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English

Manchester University Press
29 April 2026

Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800; Shakespeare studies & criticism

This engaging study appreciably advances recent critical developments in the way the playwright created his worlds to reflect concurrent cartographic, geopolitical and social anxieties.

In seeking to expose the dynamics and fluctuations of power on the stage, Liminal Shakespeare provides a unique set of perspectives through which Shakespeare's forests, battlefields, shores and gardens are revealed as deliberate dramatic devices with the capacity to destabilise social structures. Haworth's nuanced consideration of these spaces reveals that they were ideally suited to the staging of social frictions as he traces the shifting balance of power between opposing ideological standpoints and the internal struggles between an emergent subjectivity and conformity with the centralised authorities of Church and Court.

By: Ben Haworth
Imprint: Manchester University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 216mm, Width: 140mm, Spine: 13mm
Weight: 284g
ISBN: 9781526195531
ISBN 10: 1526195534
Pages: 240
Publication Date: 29 April 2026
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Ben Haworth is a Lecturer in Early Modern Literature at Nottingham Trent University.

Reviews for Shakespeare's Liminal Spaces: Contesting Authority on the Early Modern Stage

'Haworth explores Shakespeare’s use of liminal settings to subvert social structures and promote dissident narratives... The book will especially appeal to those with an interest in theory.' Choice Reprinted with permission from Choice Reviews. All rights reserved. Copyright by the American Library Association -- .