Laurence Publicover, Lecturer in English, University of Bristol

Laurence Publicover studied at the University of Oxford and the University of Bristol, receiving his PhD in 2010. He worked for two years at the University of Leeds before returning to Bristol, where he is now Lecturer in English. His research and teaching focus on early modern drama and on the sea in literature and culture from the classical period to the present day. He has published articles in several major journals, including Essays in Criticism and Renaissance Studies, and has coedited a special edition of Cahiers Elisabethains entitled 'Space on the Early Modern Stage'.

Received an Honourable Mention at the European Society for the Study of English (ESSE) Awards for a First Book

"In chapter 6, 'Re-enchanting the Mediterranean: Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice', Publicover stresses the interplay between this comedy, Marlowe's The Jew of Malta, and Kyd's Soliman and Perseda in a manner which suggests that Shakespeare engaged with his fellow playwrights in a cultural dialogue. Publicover convincingly argues that Shakespeare infuses the romantic genre with more commercial elements at multiple instances within the comedy." -- Louise Powell, The English Association

"[The book] invites us to think about those early modern plays in new and productive ways." -- Nandini Das, Early Theatre

"This is an important book on the geographies of Early Modern English drama that is long overdue. It is beautifully, at times even movingly, written. It includes some stunning exegeses of individual plays [...] This book offers some of the best intertextual reading I have seen since David Quint's Epic and Empire. [...] Publicover brings this most difficult of all hermeneutic practices with pathbreaking originality to the dramatic canon. The second section of the book, in which he reads Shakespeare reading Marlowe reading Kyd, is a tour de force. I don't know of anyone else in the field who can do what Publicover can do, and it was a pleasure being led by him through a London theater world haunted with recollections of its own past performances. [...] Dramatic Geography is a magnificent accomplishment. It has left me inspired and even a little shaken. This is exactly what the best literary criticism should accomplish." --Prof. John Watkins, University of Minnesota