"What World ls This?": Constructions of Space and Place in Shakespeare's Pericles, Antony and Cleopatra and Twelfth Night

This paper looks at constructions of space and place in Shakespeare’s works. As a significant number of his plays are set in the Mediterranean world, Pericles, Antony and Cleopatra and Twelfth Night serve as representative examples for Shakespeare’s geographical focus, combining the contrasting settings of land and sea. However, the coexistence and the blending of differences characterise the three plays not only with regard to topography. In Pericles, Antony and Cleopatra and Twelfth Night, Shakespeare establishes a culturally, religiously, temporally and generically hybrid topology of the Mediterranean world that is reflected in the sea which functions as a liminal in-between space that both connects and segregates characters and places. In other words, this paper shows how Shakespeare consciously uses particular settings to combine within one play several cultures, times and genres with the sea as their volatile meeting point. The analysis of the three plays occurs mainly through close readings of relevant passages but also through historical contextualisation and the application of literary and cultural theories.