Courteous exchanges

Courteous Exchanges explores the significant overlap between Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene and Shakespeare’s plays, showing how both facilitate the critique of Renaissance aristocratic identity. Moving from a consideration of Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier as a text that encouraged reader engagement, the book offers new readings of Shakespeare’s plays in conjunction with Spenser. It pairs Love’s Labour’s Lost , Much Ado About Nothing , The Merchant of Venice , and The Winter’s Tale with The