From the Editor

The Spring 2019 issue marks the beginning of a new publishing partnership between Shakespeare Quarterly (SQ) and Oxford University Press (OUP), and the end of a long and fruitful partnership with the Johns Hopkins University Press (JHUP).

Before the Journals Division of JHUP became the publisher of SQ in 2001, the journal had, in effect, published itself. From a tiny office on the second floor of the Folger Shakespeare Library, all subscription renewals and fulfillments were handled, invoices were sent, and bills were paid; even much of the production was done at the Folger. With the transfer of the journal's production, subscription fulfillment, and licensing to JHUP (management remained, as it does today, at the Folger), editors Barbara A. Mowat and Gail Kern Paster and the SQ staff could concentrate on fulfilling the journal's scholarly mission: to publish vanguard essays in Shakespeare studies. The new arrangement also brought SQ into the fold of Project MUSE, JHUP's pioneering digital platform for hundreds of scholarly journals. In the view of the SQ staff and JHUP, this was an arrangement that benefited all participants: SQ was more efficiently managed yet still editorially independent, and JHUP became the publisher of the world's preeminent Shakespeare journal. Everyone involved with SQ in the last two decades of our association is grateful to the Journals Division at JHUP—Bill Breichner, Carol Hamblen, Maria Kummerfeldt, and Patty Weber—for their care, efficiency, and standard of excellence.

The transition to OUP has been managed from the outset with meticulous care and characteristic far-sightedness by SQ's Managing Editor Jessica Roberts Frazier and the Folger Shakespeare Library's Director of Digital Access Eric Johnson. They have been supported in this detailed, complex, trans-Atlantic process by the hard work of SQ Production Associate Rebecca Niles, SQ Editorial Associate Jennifer Linhart Wood, and the Folger's Digital Projects Associate Sophie Byvik. It is a testament to the dedication and efficiency of this team, as well as to the collegiality and professionalism of our new partners at OUP—Trish Thomas, Clare Morton, Matthew Marusak, Antonina Javier, and Ashlee Russeau-Pletcher—that SQ's editorial process has gone on virtually unaffected during the nearly two-year transition process. Finally, all of us at SQ and OUP are grateful to the Folger Shakespeare Library and its Director, Michael Witmore, for endorsing and supporting the move to OUP, for continuing to provide the journal with its local habitation, and for promoting the journal's scholarly mission.

As a publication of OUP, SQ will benefit from the sophistication of OUP's digital platform as well as the global reach and storied reputation of the press. In many respects, very little will change about the journal. We will continue to publish the best contemporary work in Shakespeare studies; the journal will continue to appear in four beautifully produced hard-copy issues per year; and we will continue to present select journal content as well as online-exclusive content on our digital platform sq.folger.edu. One significant—and, we think, exciting—difference about publication under OUP is that SQ will move to an advance-access model of making content available. Essays in a given issue will now become available on OUP's website as they are print-ready—that is, ahead of their being bound together in hard copy. Please look forward to the advent of essays by Zachary Lesser, Tara Hamling and Cathryn Enis, and Matthew Steggle, as well as a full slate of book reviews, all comprised within the Spring 2019 issue, in the coming weeks.

As ever, SQ depends for its success most fundamentally upon its readers and contributors. Irrespective of publisher, platform, or format, you define what the journal is and can be. We are grateful for your continued support of SQ, and we are eager to receive your submissions.