From the Editor

In the summer of 2023, Shakespeare Quarterly put out a call for short close-reading essays. Due to the unprecedented demands made upon scholarship and pedagogy during the pandemic, I wrote, “many of us have on hand unfinished research projects that have begun slowly to evolve in new directions, sharply focused conference papers that were never delivered or further developed, and exciting text-based interpretations intended for the classroom but not connected to a larger theoretical or archival framework.” I suggested that SQ might provide a venue for such work, and invited readers to submit short (1000–5000 word) pieces: a reading of a single passage, an illumination of a crux, a narrowly focused but richly suggestive interpretation of a play or performance, and so forth. The dozen or sixteen submissions we received were read and commented upon by members of the journal’s editorial board, and I selected five for publication. Two—Gillian Knoll’s piece on dominant-submissive sexual dynamics in As You Like It and Katherine Bootle Attie’s on sonic and social harmony in A Midsummer Night’s Dream—appear in this issue. Three more will appear in the Spring issue of the 2025 volume. We hope that you find these short pieces a stimulating complement to the more traditional long-form essays.

Some of the short pieces we received seemed like they would work better as long-form essays, and, making use of the peer review reports, I provided the authors with suggestions for development in this direction. While the journal is not issuing a formal call for more short pieces at this time, we always welcome queries about the suitability of work in progress; both editorial collaboration and the peer review process are important to cultivating a healthy publication backlog. Please be in touch!