Lands,realms,women and texts

Abstract

Words spread into diverse spaces. Such a word is ‘occupy’ along with its derivatives. It designates both possession and ownership, concepts explored in Shakespeare’s King John. Non-portable property is problematic: Can one ‘own’ enclosed commons, colonies designated as ‘plantations’, countries (The Tempest)? Certain comedies are set in occupied lands (Love’s Labour’s Lost, Much Ado About Nothing). Could a Renaissance prince be emperor in his own realm at the time of imperial papacy? The word became so ‘ill sorted’ (2 Henry IV), after it came to designate sexual possession or rape, that it almost vanished for 150 years.