"Barbour s volume makes available essential documentation for the history of the East India Company in the critical opening years of its existence. The journals of the first English voyage to reach the Indian subcontinent are here fully edited and described for the first time; they are essential for an understanding of the beginnings of the British colonial enterprise, but ... Read morethey also relate in surprising ways to the mercantile enterprise that constituted the Shakespearean stage. Barbour is a gifted expositor and an excellent editor. This is an exciting and important book." - Stephen Orgel, J. E. Reynolds Professor in the Humanities, Stanford University "Barbour s extensive and thorough introduction shows some of the riches here: ethnography, commerce, literacy, sailing, grievous danger, performance in a variety of forms, including, it seems, Shakespeare s Hamlet and Richard II performed aboard General Keeling s Dragon. Combined, the journals mesmerize and surprise as English merchants and sailors risk unknown seas and interact with the skilled sailors and sophisticated merchants of East and Southeast Asia." - A. R. Braunmuller, Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature, UCLA Show Less