Kevin Curran is Professor of Early Modern Literature at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland and editor of the book series ""Edinburgh Critical Studies in Shakespeare and Philosophy."" He is the author of Shakespeare's Legal Ecologies: Law and Distributed Selfhood (Northwestern, 2017) and Marriage, Performance, and Politics at the Jacobean Court (Ashgate, 2009).
Among the innovations of the Elizabethan theaters - the first such purpose-built structures in England since the time of the ancient Roman occupation - was the introduction of the box office. Performers would no longer pass the hat at the end of a performance in the hope of a generous reward. Theatergoers would now pay in advance for their entertainment, whether they judged it to their liking or not. Then, as now, at a play's end they demonstrated their judgment in the form of applause or noises of disapproval. In this innovative study, Kevin Curran has identified and explored a concept that shaped the experience of playwrights and audiences alike. He shows the extent to which judgment - critical, punitive, just, forgiving, loving - was central to Shakespeare's imagination and his practice.--Stephen Greenblatt, Harvard University In this lucid, concise and yet wide-ranging book, Kevin Curran recovers the multifariousness of judgment as vital to Shakespearean theatre. Challenging the modern association of judgment with boundary-policing and normativity, Curran shows how evaluative skills honed by early modern literary culture migrated into a theatrical practice that continues to demand creative and collective participation in the imagining of human relations, present and future.--Lorna Hutson, University of Oxford