Mediterranean Empires, mobility and multiculturalism in shakespeare's plays

This study is an exploration of multicultural exchanges in Shakespeare's plays within their Mediterranean context. It analyses the Mediterranean empires and their multiculturalism which are enabled by the mobility of people, information, and cultures in Shakespeare. The primary sources used in this thesis are Pericles, Antony and Cleopatra, Titus Andronicus, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, and The Tempest. The study argues that the mobility in the Mediterranean brings distortive and transformative impacts on individuals and societies in these six texts. It looks at how the people who frequently travel across the Mediterranean lose their identity and the empires which incorporate 'others' through territorial expansion are threatened by degeneration. This study argues that Shakespeare problematizes the mobility and multiculturalism in the Mediterranean that are analysed in his past, contemporary and future empires. Therefore, the thesis points out that Shakespeare's exploration of the dangerous intercultural exchanges in ancient and early modern Mediterranean empires functions as a historical foreshadowing for the newly emerging British Empire in his present time.