Freeing Shakespeare's Voice

Freeing Shakespeare's Voice
Author: Kristin Linklater
Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
Total Pages: 225
Release: 1993-01-01
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 1559366389

A passionate exploration of the process of comprehending and speaking the words of William Shakespeare. Detailing exercises and analyzing characters' speech and rhythms, Linklater provides the tools to increase understanding and make Shakespeare's words one's own.

Shakespeare / Not Shakespeare

Shakespeare / Not Shakespeare
Author: Christy Desmet
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2017-11-09
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3319633007

This essay collection addresses the paradox that something may at once “be” and “not be” Shakespeare. This phenomenon can be a matter of perception rather than authorial intention: audiences may detect Shakespeare where the author disclaims him or have difficulty finding him where he is named. Douglas Lanier’s “Shakespearean rhizome,” which co-opts Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of artistic relations as rhizomes (a spreading, growing network that sprawls horizontally to defy hierarchies of origin and influence) is fundamental to this exploration. Essays discuss the fine line between “Shakespeare” and “not Shakespeare” through a number of critical lenses—networks and pastiches, memes and echoes, texts and paratexts, celebrities and afterlives, accidents and intertexts—and include a wide range of examples: canonical plays by Shakespeare, historical figures, celebrities, television performances and adaptations, comics, anime appropriations, science fiction novels, blockbuster films, gangster films, Shakesploitation and teen films, foreign language films, and non-Shakespearean classic films.

Local and Global Myths in Shakespearean Performance

Local and Global Myths in Shakespearean Performance
Author: Aneta Mancewicz
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2018-08-08
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3319898515

This collection of scholarly essays offers a new understanding of local and global myths that have been constructed around Shakespeare in theatre, cinema, and television from the nineteenth century to the present. Drawing on a definition of myth as a powerful ideological narrative, Local and Global Myths in Shakespearean Performance examines historical, political, and cultural conditions of Shakespearean performances in Europe, Asia, and North and South America. The first part of this volume offers a theoretical introduction to Shakespeare as myth from a twenty-first century perspective. The second part critically evaluates myths of linguistic transcendence, authenticity, and universality within broader European, neo-liberal, and post-colonial contexts. The study of local identities and global icons in the third part uncovers dynamic relationships between regional, national, and transnational myths of Shakespeare. The fourth part revises persistent narratives concerning a political potential of Shakespeare’s plays in communist and post-communist countries. Finally, part five explores the influence of commercial and popular culture on Shakespeare myths. Michael Dobson’s Afterword concludes the volume by locating Shakespeare within classical mythology and contemporary concerns.

OuterSpeares

OuterSpeares
Author: Daniel Fischlin
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 414
Release: 2014-11-05
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 1442669373

For Shakespeare and Shakespearean adaptation, the global digital media environment is a “brave new world” of opportunity and revolution. In OuterSpeares: Shakespeare, Intermedia, and the Limits of Adaptation, noted scholars of Shakespeare and new media consider the ways in which various media affect how we understand Shakespeare and his works. Daniel Fischlin and his collaborators explore a wide selection of adaptations that occupy the space between and across traditional genres – what artist Dick Higgins calls “intermedia” – ranging from adaptations that use social networking, cloud computing, and mobile devices to the many handicrafts branded and sold in connection with the Bard. With essays on YouTube and iTunes, as well as radio, television, and film, OuterSpeares is the first book to examine the full spectrum of past and present adaptations, and one that offers a unique perspective on the transcultural and transdisciplinary aspects of Shakespeare in the contemporary world.

Shakespeare's Ideas

Shakespeare's Ideas
Author: David Bevington
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2011-09-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 1444357638

An in-depth exploration, through his plays and poems, of the philosophy of Shakespeare as a great poet, a great dramatist and a "great mind". Written by a leading Shakespearean scholar Discusses an array of topics, including sex and gender, politics and political theory, writing and acting, religious controversy and issues of faith, skepticism and misanthropy, and closure Explores Shakespeare as a great poet, a great dramatist and a "great mind"

Shakespeare's Table

Shakespeare's Table
Author: Howard Gimple
Publisher: Mystromedy Books
Total Pages: 351
Release: 2024-07-11
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

Jordan Day, the young head of the Melville University’s Special Collections library, is told her department is slated for elimination due to budget cuts. Then out of the blue, the university’s most esteemed professor declares that he will donate to her department a table that once belonged to William Shakespeare. He then announces that this newly discovered artifact provides definitive proof that Shakespeare never wrote the works attributed to him. Thrilled that the donation will take her department off the chopping block, Jordan’s relief turns to despair when she finds the professor’s severed head impaled on a pole outside her window and the priceless table nowhere to be found. Things get worse when she is accused of stealing Shakespeare’s table and is named a suspect in the professor’s murder. To save her department and clear her name, Jordan must find Shakespeare’s table, reveal the real murderer and discover who really wrote the works of William Shakespeare. All while navigating the back-biting, petty jealousies and and academic treachery that characterizes university life.

Shakespeare’s Histories on Screen

Shakespeare’s Histories on Screen
Author: Jennie M. Votava
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2023-06-29
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 1350326666

This volume reframes the critical conversation about Shakespeare's histories and national identity by bringing together two growing bodies of work: early modern race scholarship and adaptation theory. Theorizing a link between adaptation and intersectionality, it demonstrates how over the past thirty years race has become a central and constitutive part of British and American screen adaptations of the English histories. Available to expanding audiences via digital media platforms, these adaptations interrogate the dialectic between Shakespeare's cultural capital and racial reckonings on both sides of the Atlantic and across time. By engaging contemporary representations of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, disability and class, adaptation not only creates artefacts that differ from their source texts, but also facilitates the conditions in which race and its intersections in the plays become visible. At the centre of this analysis stand two landmark 21st-century history adaptations that use non-traditional casting: the British TV miniseries The Hollow Crown (2012, 2016) and the American independent film H4 (2012), an all-Black Henry IV conflation. In addition to demonstrating how the 21st-century screen history illuminates both past and present constructions of embodied difference, these works provide a lens for reassessing two history adaptations from Shakespeare's 1990s box office renaissance, when actors of colour were first cast in cinematic versions of the plays. As exemplified by these formal adaptations' reappropriations of race in history, non-traditional Shakespearean casting practices are also currently shaping digital culture's conversations about race in non-Shakespearean period dramas such as Bridgerton.

Shakespearean Biofiction on the Contemporary Stage and Screen

Shakespearean Biofiction on the Contemporary Stage and Screen
Author: Edel Semple
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2023-11-02
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1350359211

This book is the first edited collection to explore Shakespeare's life as depicted on the modern stage and screen. Focusing on the years 1998-2023, it uniquely identifies a 25-year trend for depicting Shakespeare, his family and his social circle in theatre, film and television. Interrogating Shakespeare's afterlife across stage and screen media, the volume explores continuities and changes in the form since the release of Shakespeare in Love, which it positions as the progenitor of recent Shakespearean biofictions in Anglo-American culture. It traces these developments through the 21st century, from pivotal moments such as the Shakespeare 400 celebrations in 2016, up to the quatercentenary of the publication of the First Folio, whose portrait helped make the author a globally recognisable icon. The collection takes account of recent Anglo-American socio-political, cultural and literary concerns including feminism, digital media and the biopic and superhero genres. The wide variety of works discussed range from All is True and Hamnet to Upstart Crow, Bill and even The Lego Movie. Offering insights from actors, dramatists and literary and performance scholars, it considers why artists are drawn to Shakespeare as a character and how theatre and screen media mediate his status as literary genius.

The Shakespeare Authorship Question and Philosophy

The Shakespeare Authorship Question and Philosophy
Author: Michael Quinn Dudley
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 335
Release: 2023-10-17
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1527539369

For nearly 200 years, people have questioned the identity of Shakespeare; however, this debate is often dismissed by most scholars as “just a conspiracy theory,” with the life of the poet-playwright being “beyond doubt.” And yet, the documented facts related to the man from Stratford are meagre—where they exist at all—forcing biographers to rely heavily on their own imaginations. What does it mean to say that the traditional stance on Shakespeare’s authorship is a belief as opposed to a search for knowledge? What are the ethical implications of declaring that some history is “beyond doubt,” and that no debate about it may be permitted? What can theories of knowledge, truth and rhetoric tell us about how knowledge of Shakespeare has been constructed and justified? To the extent that this belief has consequences for society, can it then be said to be an ethical one? Finally, what difference does it actually make—from a pragmatic perspective—who the Author was? Highly original in its scope, The Shakespeare Authorship Question and Philosophy sets out the debate’s many profound philosophical dimensions concerning knowledge, historiography, truth and academic freedom—implications that transcend the debate itself.

Shakespeare and Comics

Shakespeare and Comics
Author: Jim Casey
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2024-08-22
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1350401366

From their inception, 'low culture' comics have intersected with the 'high culture' of Shakespeare. This is the first book-length collection dedicated entirely to the exploration of this collision. Its chapters illuminate the ways in which different texts, time periods, politics, authors, media, approaches and forms interact. Ranging from Classic Comics to Marvel, from tebeo to manga, from independent to mainstream comics, texts explored include Y: The Last Man, Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' (The Sandman #19), The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, I Am Alfonso Jones, Marvel 1602, Doom 2099, and manga adaptations of The Tempest and Macbeth, among many others. As comic books and their big-screen progeny dominate mainstream popular culture, the association of Shakespeare with comics offers creators and critics tools with which to interrogate the place of Shakespeare within the English and global literary and cultural traditions. Shakespeare and Comics argues that, at a moment when the reassessment and reimagining of literary canons has become more urgent than ever, thinking about Shakespeare through the lens of comics invites us to imagine a literary and cultural landscape in which so-called 'great works' exist alongside and in equal conversation with marginalized writers, topics and forms.