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Introduction to “Special Issue on Adaptation and Early Modern Culture: Shakespeare and Beyond”

This short article introduces a special issue that addresses both Shakespearean and non-Shakespearean adaptations. While Shakespeare has dominated the field of early modern adaptation studies, especially screen Shakespeare, a number of recent articles, special issues and essay collections have argued that a much wider engagement with early modern texts and their afterlives is essential for understanding both Shakespeare and what is often termed “not-Shakespeare” more fully. This article takes up this argument to suggest that the database Early English Books Online (EEBO) offers one way of thinking about early modern culture in terms of remediation and adaptation, and also of challenging Shakespeare's primacy in early modern adaptation studies.