Receiving the Stranger in Shakespeare

Hospitality to strangers has become an increasingly prevalent topic in recent years, from political upheavals resulting in the displacement of millions of people, to the emergence of our collective obligations towards strangers during the Covid-19 pandemic. Yet the vexed question of when to welcome or reject strangers is nothing new. In the context of an increasingly multicultural early modern London, where disease, including plague, was often rampant, Shakespeare repeatedly explores the subtle