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A title on eating and ethics in Shakespearean England and another on the Catholic content in the Bard’s work have been crowned the joint winners of this year’s Shakespeare’s Globe Book Award.
David B Goldstein and Gillian Woods will share the £3,000 cash prize for their books Eating and Ethics in Shakespeare’s England (Cambridge University Press) and Shakespeare’s Unreformed Fictions (Oxford University Press), respectively. In addition to the cash prize, they will also receive workshops on presentation skills in preparation for delivering a public lecture on their work in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse.
The biennial award, run by Globe Education, is given to a first monograph published in the last two years that has made an important contribution to the understanding of Shakespeare, his theatre, or his contemporaries. Also shortlisted this year was Kevin A. Quarmby’s The Disguised Ruler in Shakespeare and his Contemporaries (Ashgate).
Patrick Spottiswoode, director of Globe Education and chair of the judging panel, said of the winners: "I am delighted that two scholars have been invited to speak about their books in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. Sam always wanted the Globe to be the place where scholars could share their knowledge and expertise with the general public. This Award is one way in which Globe Education is supporting and celebrating new scholars and new research."
Goldstein, associate professor of English at York University, Toronto, said: “It’s gratifying to see that the study of food in Shakespeare has moved from a pastime to a serious field of analysis.”
Woods, who is lecturer in Renaissance Theatre and Drama at Birkbeck College, University of London, said: “It’s a terrific honour to receive an award from the Globe, an institution that does such a brilliant job of making Shakespeare accessible to a wide range of people.”
The Shakespeare’s Globe Book Award was judged by a panel of academics, in addition to Spottiswoode, including Dr Farah Karim-Cooper of Globe Education; the University of Leeds’ Professor David Lindley; Professor Gordon McMullan of King’s College London; the University of Oxford’s Professor Laurie Maguire; and Dr Abigail Rokison of The Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham, who was the inaugural Shakespeare’s Globe Book Award winner in 2012.
The winning authors will present their lectures on Wednesday 1st October. They will be presented with their award at the event by Shakespeare scholar, Professor Stanley Wells. Tickets for the lecture are available online at shakespearesglobe.com/education/events