This chapter considers reprints as new editions and insists that they offer the clearest indication of an author or play’s popularity. I explore the accessibility of Shakespeare’s plays between 1660 and the turn of the century, place quarto playbook publication in the context of late seventeenth-century politics, and highlight how traditional periodization, folio-centric scholarship and attitudes toward abbreviated and altered playtexts have distorted our view of the print history of Renaissance drama. I argue that Shakespeare’s unaltered plays were not recognised as marketable print commodities until c. 1681, a development reflected in publishers’ willingness in the 1680s and 1690s to not just publish his plays but also risk facing the consequences associated with pirate printing ventures. The chapter intervenes in long-standing debates about the causes and measurability of Shakespeare’s popularity and his relationship to authorship, genre, and the canon in the late seventeenth-century book trade.

This chapter explores the political implications of reprinting Othello in republican England. Recent scholarship has drawn attention to the publication of early modern drama during the mid seventeenth century, examining how the ban on theatrical performance and the circumstances of civil war and revolution shaped the production and reception of pre-Civil War plays. The chapter builds on these studies by situating Othello within the ideological currents of English republicanism, focusing on the ways in which Venice, the play’s setting, took on new and pressing significance during the 1650s as a model of kingless governance. Renowned both for its elitist, rather than populist, tendencies as well as for its institutional stability, Venice exemplified an aristocratic form of republicanism that promised to secure traditional social hierarchies. By reprinting Othello in 1655, the bookseller William Leake capitalized on the topicality and political associations of the play’s Venetian milieu.

In conflict and conflict-affected areas, the environment can take a backseat to other pressing issues. Whether due to limited capability, capacity, or will, the environment is often neglected during conflict activities, resulting in substantial risks to human health and environmental quality. Understanding how this happens and what can be done is critical to prevention and, where needed, remediation in conflict settings to promote human and environmental flourishing. This chapter explores how and why the environment can become neglected in conflict and what the key implications of this are.

The final three chapters are dedicated to the censors’ third major concern: the representation of government. Chapter 5 focuses on representing monarchies, at home and abroad, through periods when kings were in power in France (until 1792 and from 1814 and 1815) and when they were declared enemies of the state. It examines not only monarchies in major new tragedies, high comedies, or drames for the principal Parisian theatres like the Comédie-Française or the Odéon, but also the afterlives of pre-existing plays like Tartuffe and the opéra-comique Richard, Cœur de Lion, and new propagandistic productions to celebrate the restored monarchy. Such plays encountered bureaucratic censorship, certainly, but also performances despite their bans in places like Caen, Bordeaux, and the Roer and Cantal departments. Additionally, thanks to dynamic lateral censorship from audiences and theatres alike, royal figures could become a thorn in the sides of monarchical and republican or imperial governments alike.

The first set of chapters operates at the level of patrons and their communities—imperial and local—to grapple with architectural rebuilding as a mechanism through which shared pasts, presents, and futures were articulated and substantiated. Chapter 1 examines architectural rebuilding as an ideological virtue. In particular, it looks to evidence from Roman and late antique histories, coins, and inscribed statue bases to chart the place and shape of architectural rebuilding (in comparison with and juxtaposition to new construction projects) within the broader commemorative landscape of honor and virtue in cities across the Mediterranean.

Chapter 4 examines a test case for the book’s account of Milton’s political priorities: Milton’s view of the Cromwellian Protectorate. The Protectorate presents a test case because it was a monarchy, and it has often been alleged that Milton grew more disaffected with Cromwell’s government as it grew more monarchical in its later phase. The findings here cast doubt on this view. While the Cromwellian religious settlement fell short of the disestablishment Milton wanted, Cromwell favored religious toleration more strongly than his parliaments did, and Milton supported him in foreign affairs. The chapter’s upshot is to reinforce a claim made in the Introduction: not that Milton lacked principles, but that his firmest principles were not constitutional ones.

Chapter 7 defends the view that Milton intended his hero as a hero, morally superior to his various interlocutors and divinely favored at the end. It examines prominent counter-arguments in recent criticism: the argument from source modification, the argument from multiple traditions, and the argument from contrast with Christ. Its final section considers the poem’s politics, and whether it is anachronistic to call Samson Agonistes a work in praise of terrorism.

Sets out the book’s main themes: Milton’s anticlericalism; his enduring concern to maximize liberty of conscience for heterodox godly lay intellectuals; Milton’s republicanism and its relatively minor place amongst his priorities; his political writing to be understood as partisan and polemical, not as philosophy; “follow the particular”; Milton’s multifarious, unsystematic liberty-talk; “strenuous liberty;” Milton’s tolerationist thought as proceeding from the lower ground; Milton’s poetry and prose not politically at odds, but differing in subject matter, audience, and purposes; unrepentant politics of the late poems. Brief discussion of archive and methods; summary of chapters.

Chapter 3 provides a case study in Milton’s strategic self-positioning. It argues against the hitherto prevailing view that Milton attempted to reclaim the terms “heresy” and “heretic.” It is shown here that he never did. Milton did however develop an unusual understanding of these terms, and the chapter describes how and why he did so. In so doing so it considers the role that Milton’s view of heresy played in his broader thinking about religion, and considers what this matter tells us about Milton’s sense of his own relation to his audience.

Epilogue reflects on the recent public discussions in Poland about ways to dismantle the legacy of rightwing authoritarian populist legalist rule and to “restore” democracy and the rule of law. These discussions raise critical questions about political strategy that has wide resonance beyond the national borders of Poland. In particular, they bring into focus the relationship between law, authoritarianism, democracy, and transitional justice, at the alleged ends of rightwing authoritarian rule from an international and historical perspective. In light of these discussions and the insights accumulated in this study, the epilogue suggests an alternative way of conceiving the means and ends relationship and formulating the question of social transformation and justice beyond the imaginary of “restoration” of democracy and the teleological vision of transition.

What is a counterrevolution? And how often do they occur? Chapter 2 is devoted to answering these foundational questions. According to this book, a counterrevolution is an irregular effort in the aftermath of a successful revolution to restore a version of the pre-revolutionary political regime. The chapter begins by explaining and contextualizing this definition. It reviews the various alternative understandings of counterrevolution that have been invoked by both scholars and activists. It then explains the decision to adopt a definition of counterrevolution as restoration and shows how this definition was operationalized in building the original dataset. The second half of the chapter lays out the main high-level findings from this dataset. About half of all revolutionary governments have faced a counterrevolutionary challenge of some type, and roughly one in five of these governments was successfully overturned. Moreover, these counterrevolutions have been distributed unevenly: the vast majority have toppled democratic revolutions, rather than ethnic or leftist ones. And counterrevolutions had for years been declining in frequency, until the last decade when this trend reversed. These descriptive findings provide the motivation for the theory developed in Chapter 3.

Rules for regulatory intervention aim to ensure that cumulative impacts remain or fall below thresholds of acceptable cumulative harm. A rule has two key dimensions: (1) its strategy – how it changes cumulative harm by reducing impacts, offsetting impacts, restoring, or facilitating coping with impacts; and (2) its approach – how it influences actions that cause impacts by using mandates (sticks), incentives (carrots) or information and persuasion (sermons) to influence adverse actions, or by using direct state action (state rescue). Each strategy and approach has strengths and weaknesses in addressing cumulative harms, and a cumulative environmental problem will likely need a carefully designed mix. In designing this mix, important challenges are ensuring connected decision-making so that actions are not considered in isolation; ensuring comprehensiveness, to avoid overlooking actions, including "de minimis" actions that could cause cumulatively significant impacts; managing costs related to intervention; and adapting interventions to accommodate changes to impacts and new information. Real-world examples illustrate legal mechanisms that include features designed to address these challenges.