The theoretical question of how we read or receive the works of the past has been at the core of critical concerns in the last decades. One approach to the problem may be summed up by Antoine Vitez's comparison of the plays of the past ages with ‘sunken galleons which we bring back to light in pieces, without ever putting them together, since, in any case, we no longer know how to use them’. In this attempted salvage operation, it is increasingly recognized that one of the missing pieces is the set of cultural assumptions underlying the plays. The difficulty of recapturing the ideological frame of reference of the original audience is perhaps one reason why so many directors now practise substitution devices like the transposition of historical periods.

As its title indicates, the present collection of essays shares in the current curiosity about the interconnections between text and context. It is thus doubly apposite to begin our introduction with a quotation from a French director constantly interested in historicity, since Travel and drama in Shakespeare's time is largely the offspring of a fruitful international encounter held in 1992 at Rouen, during which critics reflected upon ‘Idea and Form in Renaissance Theatre: European Crosscurrents and New World Perspectives’.