Travelling the World in Shakespeare's Time

Shakespeare's plays tell us a great deal about how the world was understood in the Renaissance. The Tempest is a story about the New World and in Othello, we meet an African general employed in Venice, who has much to say about his experience of witnessing exotic wonders. In this lecture Daniel Carey will describe some major scenes of exploration and travel in the period for reasons of trade and colonialism, with illustrations from contemporary maps and published works. Shakespeare's contemporary, Richard Hakluyt, opened up a global vista by printing a vast array of accounts from 1589-1600 showing just how important the expansion of world had become.

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