Shakespeare and the Blue Humanities

By exploring Shakespeare's maritime vocabulary across the full expanse of his career, this article engages with the multiple kinds of metaphorical and physical meanings the sea created for the playwright. Shakespeare's poetics of the sea connect to recent developments in the blue or oceanic humanities. The further distinction that Shakespeare makes between salt and fresh waters helps unpack the ecological and experiential question of environmental hostility and the dangers that water poses for terrestrial mammals. A final section briefly takes up a poetics of immersion through images of swimming in and beyond Shakespeare.