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Islands have always occupied a significant place in literature and have been a source of inspiration for the literary imagination. Fictional islands have existed as either lost paradises, or places where law breaks down under physical hardships and a sense of entrapment and oppression. Islands can be sites of exotic fascination, of cultural exchange and of great social and political upheaval. However, they are more than mere locations since to be in a place implies being bound to that place and appropriating it. That means that the islands narrow boundaries, surrounded by the sea and cut off from mainland, can create bridges between the real and the imaginary as a response to cultural and social anxieties, frequently taking the form of eutopias/dystopias, Edens, Arcadias, Baratarias, metatexts, or cultural crossroads, deeply transforming that particular geographical location. This article is concerned with insularity as a way of interrogating cultural and political practices in the early modern period by looking at the works of Cervantes, Fletcher and Shakespeare where insular relations are characterized by tensions of different sort. The arrival of Prospero and Miranda, Periandro and Auristela (The Trials of Persiles and Segismunda), and Albert and Aminta (The Sea Voyage) to their respective islands take us to a different world, revealing different political and cultural interests and generating multiple perspectives on the shifting relationship between culture, society and power.

Comunicación presentada en ESSE 10, European Society for the Study of English 10th International Conference, Torino, Italy, 24-28 August 2010. ; The new century has turned out to be a productive time for theatre productions. There has been an unprecedented increase of Shakespearean performances in Spain in contrast with the number of plays by the Golden Age dramatists seen on the Spanish stage. The paper reviews those productions that have taken up an engagement with current affairs as well as those that show new tendencies in theatrical production from which to challenge and understand the present social, cultural and political situation in Spain.

In Renaissance England literature, and especially drama, is fully aware of the historical and political context. What we get in The Spanish Tragedy is not a precise reference to the tactual event but its dramatic interpretation. The literary use of history is a consequence of the personal and contextual experience of the dramatist drawn by the writer from the ideas and practices of the culture he inhabits as well as of his historical awareness and political situation. Thus the metahistorical approach becomes an essential clue to understand the Spanish element which, in this case, has not only a negative sense but a paradigmatic intention.

In Renaissance England literature, and especially drama, is fully aware of the historical and political context. What we get in The Spanish Tragedy is not a precise reference to the tactual event but its dramatic interpretation. The literary use of history is a consequence of the personal and contextual experience of the dramatist drawn by the writer from the ideas and practices of the culture he inhabits as well as of his historical awareness and political situation. Thus the metahistorical approach becomes an essential clue to understand the Spanish element which, in this case, has not only a negative sense but a paradigmatic intention.