This is the editor's editorial. In lieu of an abstract, here is the editorial's first paragraph: In the first issue of Textual Practice, the late Shakespeare scholar Terence Hawkes claimed, "It is never a good time to start a new journal." "The Humanities in particular feel marginalized and underfunded," he continued. "[T]hey sense themselves to be hopelessly at odds with a culture which has long abandoned any recognition of the value of their role."1 More than thirty years later, some of these words still ring very true.
