The purpose of the present article is to survey recent developments in Shakespeare and book history and to identify promising new avenues in the field. Book history always had a close – if never precisely articulated – relationship with New Historicism, but in recent years, I argue, as the influence of the latter has waned in English studies, book history has become a crucible of alternative historicisms in part because it is the subfield that deals most immediately and reflexively with the status of texts as historical evidence. Perhaps paradoxically, I also suggest, book history is by its nature a demilitarized zone, protected from the extremes of presentism and pastism, aestheticism and contextualism, critique and affective attachment, while freer than many subfields to absorb what is best in these conflicting intellectual campaigns. I organize my account in three section headings that reflect what I see as the prevailing currents in Shakespeare and book history at present: the plurality of context, reading at scale, and beyond materiality.

中文翻译：

---

规模经济：莎士比亚和书籍历史

本文的目的是调查莎士比亚的最新发展和书籍历史，并确定该领域有希望的新途径。书籍历史一直与新历史主义有着密切的关系，甚至从来没有精确地表达过，但是我认为，近年来，由于后者在英语研究中的影响力减弱，书籍历史已成为替代性历史主义的坩埚。是最直接，最自如地处理文本作为历史证据的状态的子字段。我还建议说，也许自相矛盾的是，书史本质上是一个非军事区，免受当下主义和粘贴主义，唯美主义和情境主义，批评和情感依恋的极端影响，同时比许多子领域更自由地吸收这些相互冲突的知识分子运动中的最佳选择。