Synopses & Reviews
These previously unpublished journals of Englands first voyage to India illuminate a fascinating cultural achievement: the first performances of Shakespeare outside Europe. The journals of the London East India Company voice the ambitions, divisions, and traumas of a pivotal moment in the emergence of global capitalism, as Londons merchants strived for distant markets and cultivated relationships with non-Europeans. Barbours commentary situates the voyage historically, describes the key personnel and writing community, examines the culture of performance at sea, and consolidates the evidence for the shipboard productions of Hamlet and Richard II.
Review
“Barbours volume makes available essential documentation for the history of the East India Company in the critical opening years of its existence. The journals of the first English voyage to reach the Indian subcontinent are here fully edited and described for the first time; they are essential for an understanding of the beginnings of the British colonial enterprise, but they also relate in surprising ways to the mercantile enterprise that constituted the Shakespearean stage. Barbour is a gifted expositor and an excellent editor. This is an exciting and important book.”--Stephen Orgel, J. E. Reynolds Professor in the Humanities, Stanford University
“Barbours extensive and thorough introduction shows some of the riches here: ethnography, commerce, literacy, sailing, grievous danger, performance in a variety of forms, including, it seems, Shakespeares Hamlet and Richard II performed aboard General Keelings Dragon. Combined, the journals mesmerize and surprise as English merchants and sailors risk unknown seas and interact with the skilled sailors and sophisticated merchants of East and Southeast Asia.”--A. R. Braunmuller, Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature, UCLA
Synopsis
This volume publishes for the first time the collected journals of the East India Company's Third Voyage (1607-10), England's first to reach India, which proved pivotal to England's emergence as a global player.
About the Author
Richmond Barbour is Associate Professor of English at Oregon State University. He is the author of Before Orientalism: Londons Theatre of the East, 1576-1626 and his articles have appeared in Criticism, Publications of the Modern Language Association (PMLA), Journal of English and Germanic Philology (JEGP), and The Huntington Library Quarterly.
Table of Contents
Introduction * The Anonymous Hector Journal * The Hector Journal of Anthony Marlowe * The Hector Papers of Francis Bucke * The Red Dragon Journal of John Hearne and William Finch * Summary of William Keelings Journal on the Red Dragon and the Hector * Appendix: The Extracts on Hamlet & Richard II