New advances in using seismic anisotropy, mineral physics and geodynamics to understand deformation in the lowermost mantle

The D′′ region, which lies in the lowermost few hundred kilometres of the mantle, is a central cog in the Earth's heat engine, influencing convection in the underlying core and overlying mantle. In recent years dense seismic networks have revealed a wealth of information about the seismic properties of this region, which are distinct from those of the mantle above. Here we review observations of seismic anisotropy in this region. In the past it has been assumed that the region exhibits a simple form of transverse isotropy with a vertical symmetry axis (VTI anisotropy). We summarise new methodologies for characterising a more general style of anisotropy using observations from a range of azimuths. The observations can be then used to constrain the mineralogy of the region and its style of deformation by a lattice preferred orientation (LPO) of the constituent minerals. Of specific interest is the recent discovery of the stability of the post-perovskite phase in this region, which might explain many enigmatic properties of D′′. Mantle flow models based on density models derived from global tomographic seismic velocity models can be used to test plausible mineralogies, such as post-perovskite, and their deformation mechanisms. Here we show how linked predictions from mineral physics, geodynamical modelling and seismic observations can be used to better constrain the dynamics, mineralogy and physical properties of the lowermost mantle

Lukas Erne. Shakespeare and the Book Trade. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Pp 302. Lukas Erne. Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Pp 323.

This review considers Shakespeare and the Book Trade and Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist

London Theatrical Culture, 1560-1590

Early modern drama was a product of the new theatrical spaces that began to open from the 1560s onward, multiple venues in and just outside London that played to a significant proportion of Londoners on most afternoons. Revisiting the evidence for this historical moment offers the opportunity to look afresh at the playhouses, plays, and playmakers that drove this new theatrical culture. These three terms include the inns and indoor spaces that regularly hosted plays, alongside the now more familiar outdoor, amphitheatrical venues the Theatre and the Rose; plays onstage, plays in print, and plays that are now lost; and the writers, actors, company managers, and male and female playhouse builders and investors who made the creation and performance of those plays possible. Conventional histories of this period’s theaters have tended to concentrate on the opening of the Theatre in 1576 as the first such playhouse. Scholarship of the late 20th and early 21st centuries shows that this event was not the initiating formative act it has come to seem, and emphasizes instead the multiple decades and kinds of playing space that need to be attended to in understanding the earliest years of the playhouses. Multiple kinds of playing company, too, operated in this period, in particular companies made up of predominantly adult male performers, with boys playing female roles, and companies composed entirely of boy performers

John Lyly and Early Modern Authorship

This review considers John Lyly and Early Modern Authorship by Andy Kesson

Roundtable: What is Early Modern Collaboration?

Despite – or perhaps because – of the heat around dramatic attribution (Shakespeare, we’re looking at you), theories of dramatic authorship still tend to privilege the creative output of a single authorial mind. This narrow focus is mirrored in the ongoing commodification of single authorship as a marketable product which continues to interfere with critical work on collaboration. Collaborative drama is diagnosed as discontinuous or contradictory, and a range of creative, editorial, playmaking, and print practices tend to be lumped together under the term ‘collaboration’. This round table tries to move beyond this simplistic thinking, moving across the spheres of theatre history, editing, performance and textual transmission, to develop new models for understanding the collaborative forms of early modern dramatic production. We intend to open up a wider discussion of the impact of early modern collaboration on the development of English drama on the one hand, and twenty-first-century understandings of authorship and the marketability of early modern plays on the other. Complementing our interest in collaboration as an early modern practice of cultural production, we will also reflect on the current political climate which sends contradictory messages about collaboration at the different levels of PhD, tenure, citation, and research-leave funding

Act break 4: the bear stage

The animal remains at baiting arenas represent a unique set of archaeological fauna, exceptional in that their location connects them clearly to a wealth of documentary and literary evidence about their lifetime activities. Box Office Bears is a new research project that puts into dialogue this archaeological and documentary evidence with ancient-DNA analysis, asking new questions about baiting as a form of play: a game, a performance, a sport, an opportunity to bet, kinetic combat around which to excitedly crowd. This 'act break' will explore this predominantly non-verbal performance and non-human spectacle across the full range of expertise of our project, and ask what it means to think about Shakespearean play via bears. <br/

Shakespeare and the Book Trade; Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist

This review considers Shakespeare and the Book Trade and Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist