Why is Shakespeare so often associated with information technologies and with the idea of archiving itself? Alan Galey explores this question through the entwined histories of Shakespearean texts and ...archival technologies over the past four centuries. In chapters dealing with the archive, the book, photography, sound, information, and data, Galey analyzes how Shakespeare became prototypical material for publishing experiments, and new media projects, as well as for theories of archiving and computing. Analyzing examples of the Shakespearean archive from the seventeenth century to today, he takes an original approach to Shakespeare and new media that will be of interest to scholars of the digital humanities, Shakespeare studies, archives, and media history. Rejecting the idea that current forms of computing are the result of technical forces beyond the scope of humanist inquiry, this book instead offers a critical prehistory of digitization read through the afterlives of Shakespeare's texts.
Shakespeare and the Book Trade follows on from Lukas Erne's groundbreaking Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist to examine the publication, constitution, dissemination and reception of Shakespeare's ...printed plays and poems in his own time and to argue that their popularity in the book trade has been greatly underestimated. Erne uses evidence from Shakespeare's publishers and the printed works to show that in the final years of the sixteenth century and the early part of the seventeenth century, 'Shakespeare' became a name from which money could be made, a book trade commodity in which publishers had significant investments and an author who was bought, read, excerpted and collected on a surprising scale. Erne argues that Shakespeare, far from indifferent to his popularity in print, was an interested and complicit witness to his rise as a print-published author. Thanks to the book trade, Shakespeare's authorial ambition started to become bibliographic reality during his lifetime.
Music pervades Shakespeare's work. In addition to vocal songs and numerous instrumental cues there are thousands of references to music throughout the plays and many of the poems. This book discusses ...Shakespeare's musical imagery according to categories defined by occurrence in the plays and poems. In turn, these categories depend on their early modern usage and significance. Thus, instruments such as lute and viol deserve special attention just as Renaissance ideas relating to musical philosophy and pedagogical theory need contextual explanation. The objective is to locate Shakespeare's musical imagery, reference and metaphor in its immediate context in a play or poem and explain its meaning. Discussion and explanation of the musical imagery suggests a range of possible dramatic and poetic purposes these musical references serve.
Shakespeare's international status as a literary icon is largely based on his masterful use of the English language, yet beyond Britain his plays and poems are read and performed mainly in ...translation. Shakespeare and the Language of Translation addresses this apparent contradiction and is the first major survey of its kind. Covering the many ways in which the translation of Shakespeare's works is practised and studied from Bulgaria to Japan, South Africa to Germany, it also discusses the translation of Macbeth into Scots and of Romeo and Juliet into British Sign Language. The collection places renderings of Shakespeare's works aimed at the page and the stage in their multiple cultural contexts, including gender, race and nation, as well as personal and postcolonial politics. Shakespeare's impact on nations and cultures all around the world is increasingly a focus for study and debate. As a result, the international performance of Shakespeare and Shakespeare in translation have become areas of growing popularity for both under- and post- graduate study, for which this book provides a valuable companion.
For many, Shakespeare represents the advent of modernity. It is easy to forget that he was in fact a writer deeply embedded in the Middle Ages, who inherited many of his shaping ideas and assumptions ...from the medieval past. This collection brings together essays by internationally renowned scholars of medieval and early modern literature, the history of the book and theatre history to present new perspectives on Shakespeare and his medieval heritage. Separated into four parts, the collection explores Shakespeare and his work in the context of the Middle Ages, medieval books and language, the British past, and medieval conceptions of drama and theatricality, together showing Shakespeare's work as rooted in late medieval history and culture. Insisting upon Shakespeare's complexity and medieval multiplicity, Medieval Shakespeare gives readers the opportunity to appreciate both Shakespeare and his period within the traditions that fostered and surrounded him.
How do writers of contemporary fiction incorporate Shakespeare - the man, his work and his cultural legacy? This collection brings together some of the leading voices in the scholarship of ...Shakespearean adaptation and appropriation to examine the ways in which writers have used literary culture's most prominent historical figure to their own ends since the year 2000. The essays consider the representation of the man himself, the rethinking of his stories - often in pointed defiance of the original - and explorations of the plays radically repositioned in time and space. In the process the collection reveals which versions of Shakespeare are most current in contemporary culture and education, even as they remake them in the terms of the present, often exploiting the new notions of genre, of publishing technologies, and of political identity which have evolved so drastically since the turn of the last century.
Music has been an essential constituent of Shakespeare's plays from the sixteenth century to the present day, yet its significance has often been overlooked or underplayed in the history of ...Shakespearean performance. Providing a long chronological sweep, this collection of essays traces the different uses of music in the theatre and in film from the days of the first Globe and Blackfriars to contemporary, global productions. With a unique concentration on the performance aspects of the subject, the volume offers a wide range of voices, from scholars to contemporary practitioners (including an interview with the critically acclaimed composer Stephen Warbeck), and thus provides a rich exploration of this fascinating history from diverse perspectives.
Shakespeare is the most frequently quoted English author of all time. Quotations appear everywhere, from the epigraphs of novels to the mottoes on coffee cups. But Shakespeare was also a frequent ...quoter himself - of classical and contemporary literature, of the Bible, of snatches of popular songs and proverbs. This volume brings together an international team of scholars to trace the rich history of quotation from Shakespeare's own lifetime to the present day. Exploring a wide range of media, including Romantic poetry, theatre criticism, novels by Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy and Ian McEwan, political oratory, propaganda, advertising, drama, film and digital technology, the chapters draw fresh connections between Shakespeare's own practices of creative reworking and the quotation of his work in new and traditional forms. Richly illustrated and featuring an Afterword by Margreta de Grazia, the collection tells a new story of the making and remaking of Shakespeare's plays and poems.
Ranging from David Garrick's Macbeth in the 1740s to the World Shakespeare Festival in London 2012, this is the first book to provide in-depth analysis of the history and practice of Shakespearean ...theatre reviewing. Reviewing Shakespeare describes the changing priorities and interpretative habits of theatre critics as they have both responded to and provoked innovations in Shakespearean performance culture over the last three centuries. It analyses the conditions – theatrical, journalistic, social and personal – in which Shakespearean reception has taken place, presenting original readings of the works of key critics (Shaw, Beerbohm, Agate, Tynan), whilst also tracking broader historical shifts in the relationship between reviewers and performance. Prescott explores the key function of the 'night-watch constable' in patrolling the boundaries of legitimate Shakespearean performance and offers a compelling account of the many ways in which newspaper reviews are uniquely fruitful documents for anyone interested in Shakespeare and the theatre.
In this book Craig, Kinney and their collaborators confront the main unsolved mysteries in Shakespeare's canon through computer analysis of Shakespeare's and other writers' styles. In some cases ...their analysis confirms the current scholarly consensus, bringing long-standing questions to something like a final resolution. In other areas the book provides more surprising conclusions: that Shakespeare wrote the 1602 additions to The Spanish Tragedy, for example, and that Marlowe along with Shakespeare was a collaborator on Henry VI, Parts 1 and 2. The methods used are more wholeheartedly statistical, and computationally more intensive, than any that have yet been applied to Shakespeare studies. The book also reveals how word patterns help create a characteristic personal style. In tackling traditional problems with the aid of the processing power of the computer, harnessed through computer science, and drawing upon large amounts of data, the book is an exemplar of the new domain of digital humanities.
