Editor’s Note

Since 2020, The Shakespeare Newsletter has served individuals and institutions as a digital publication. In the face of disruptions that are too obvious to name, plans to showcase this publication as a digital hub for Shakespeare studies have been delayed but remain true. I wish to thank our subscribers as well as the editorial board for their unwavering commitment to and support of this publication. While it does not have the backing of an internationally renowned academic press, The Shakespeare Newsletter continues to offer impressive content.

In celebration of our longevity and steadfast commitment to Shakespeare and early modern English scholarship, plans are underway to publish two double issues in the 2024/2025 academic year. Volumes 73 and 74 will offer engaging theater reviews, timely book reviews, and important scholarly pieces, even as they hark back to key contributions published between the first printing of The Shakespeare Newsletter at Iona in 1991 and our digital transformation in 2020.

I end this note, though, with bittersweet news. Grace Tiffany, our regular contributor for the “Review of Periodicals” column since 1994, has decided it is time, as it were, to pass the leek to another scholar “for a memorable honor” (Henry V 4.7.103). Indeed, reading Grace Tiffany’s Review of Periodicals since my start as editor has been revelatory. Each column has offered a unique combination of cogent summary and incisive commentary. For the past thirty years, burgeoning and well-established scholars alike have benefited; her Review of Periodicals has kept track of prevailing trends in scholarship, even as her column has revealed the possibilities and the shortcomings of those trends. So, bitter that she is stepping away, though sweet what gifts she has bestowed for so many over the years.

To prepare this note, I retrieved and reprint in this issue her first Review of Periodicals: Volume 44, Issue 1, Spring 1994. There, she reviewed articles by Neil York, Judith Mossman, Joel B. Altman, and Jonathan Hart. She deftly balanced summary and summation, even as she situated each article within the larger contexts of scholarly trends (new historicism and cultural materialism) and current events (Henry Kissinger’s eulogy at Richard Nixon’s funeral). Reading each of her Review of Periodicals would give any early modern scholar a welcome and succinct masterclass on our field and its various directions. We would also do well to take heed of her regular call for clarity and concision in our academic contributions. I expect I represent all who have any connection to The Shakespeare Newsletter when I write the following: Grace, like that little candle in Belmont, has shined many “a good deed in our naughty world” (Merchant of Venice 5.1.98). Or, perhaps it would be better to write that Grace has given every reader a chance to, like Perdita, “grow in grace / Equal in wond’ring” (The Winter’s Tale 4.1.24-25).