Can we imagine a world that is more hospitable than hostile?

 

This book examines how representations of Persia present models of intercultural hospitality for early modern English and Shakespearean drama. English playwrights depict Persia and its legendary monarchs, such as Cyrus the Great, as alternative spaces and figures of cosmopolitanism in the period. By focusing on an archive of Persian themed plays staged between 1561-1696 in conversation with Shakespeare’s works, European peace proposals, and contemporary theories and practices of hospitality, this project reconstructs the capacities called upon to imagine hospitable constellations of global relationships in the early modern period.