Reading the Coastline in Shakespeare's Britain

When Regan in King Lear asks ‘Wherefore to Dover?’ she mobilises a number of early modern anxieties. Shores and coastlines are liminal spaces, subject to erosion, invasion and tidal flux. With their metaphorical mouths and their subjection to wind, wave and tide, ports were emblematic of instability, especially in the cases of once-thriving harbours which had silted up (Winchelsea) or coastal settlements claimed by the sea (Dunwich). Early modern plays and poems are drawn to such areas both...