Andrew J. Power

Background

About Andrew J. Power

I am currently Associate Professor of English at The University of Sharjah. My principal research interests lie in Shakespeare and early modern drama, and in madness and emotional extremity in the theatre of the period. My book, Stages of Madness: Sin, Sickness and Seneca in Shakespeare (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2023) is an exploration of the ways that Shakespearean drama represents madness, reflecting the contemporary association between sin and madness, utilising contemporary medical approaches to madness, and consistently absorbing the influence of classical theatrical models for madness. I am also interested in performance cultures, and in the contexts that influence apparent flourishes of theatrical productivity throughout history. I am currently writing a second monograph study, Love, Tyranny and Revenge: Shakespeare, Elizabeth I, and the Senecan Tradition, on the performance cultures at Cambridge University and the Inns of Court in the early reign of Elizabeth I and about the influence of the Senecan plays produced and translated at these institutions on the drama of the professional playhouses of the later reign. I am the editor (with Rory Loughnane) of Late Shakespeare, 1608-1613 and of Early Shakespeare, 1588-1594 (Cambridge University Press, 2012 and 2020). In 2014, I was guest editor of The Yearbook of English Studies special issue on Caroline Literature with Peter Sillitoe and Rory Loughnane and most recently I edited a volume of critical essays, The Birth and Death of the Author: a multi-authored history of print authorship (Routledge, 2020). Specialties: Shakespeare, Renaissance Literature, Early-Modern Literature, Tudor Literature, Renaissance Medical Science, Senecan Tragedy, Classical Tragedy, Theatre History