Encomium

Abstract

Gail Kern Paster has done the work of several lifetimes in service to the field of Shakespeare studies. Whether in her groundbreaking scholarship on humoral theory, her leadership of the Folger Shakespeare Library, or her editorial roles at Shakespeare Quarterly, Gail’s unique ability to bring passion, leadership, and insight to her work have been an inspiration to her colleagues. I know this firsthand as her successor as Folger Director. Gail led the Folger through a period of change, challenge, and innovation—including a period of seismic shifts in the intellectual landscape as the generalizations of “high theory” were forced into conversation with the “archive.” Shakespeare Quarterly helped lead the conversation about how methodologies from many fields could be in dialogue with our teaching and scholarship around this writer and the early modern period. As the aperture widens ever more in terms of the disciplines we engage, and the history and uses of Shakespeare scholarship come into clearer focus, I am grateful for the intellectual intensity and focus that Gail has brought to the journal—an intensity that we know sits comfortably with her warmth as a colleague and human being. In its role as lead journal for one of the most widely read and performed writers in the world, Shakespeare Quarterly has found and advanced the most searching discussions about this writer and the humanities more generally. Some of the intensity of that conversation is a result of Shakespeare’s myriad identities—as an institution, a canonical writer, a bankable theatrical storyteller, and a pivot-point in historical formations such as colonialism. And our ability to think about Shakespeare in these ways is itself a legacy of the journal and the care that has guided and sustained its work.