Shakespeare S Modern Collaborators

Recent work in Shakespeare studies has brought to the forefront a variety of ways in which the collaborative nature of Shakespearean drama can be investigated: collaborative performance (Shakespeare and his fellow actors); collaborative writing (Shakespeare and his co-authors); collaborative textual production (Shakespeare and his transcribers and printers). What this leaves unaccounted for is the form of collaboration that affects more than any other our modern reading experience of Shakespeare's plays: what we read as Shakespeare now always comes to us in the form of a collaborative enterprise - and is decisively shaped by the nature of the collaboration - between Shakespeare and his modern editors. Contrary to much recent criticism, this book suggests that modern textual mediators have a positive rather than negative role: they are not simply 'pimps of discourse' or cultural tyrants whose oppressive interventions we need to 'unedit' but collaborators who can decisively shape and enable our response to Shakespeare's plays. Erne argues that any reader of Shakespeare, scholar, student, or general reader, approaches Shakespeare through modern editions that have an endlessly complicated and fascinating relationship to what Shakespeare may actually have intended and written, that modern editors determine what that relationship is, and that it is generally a very good thing that they do so.

Recent work in Shakespeare studies has brought to the forefront a variety of ways in which the collaborative nature of Shakespearean drama can be investigated: collaborative performance (Shakespeare and his fellow actors); collaborative writing (Shakespeare and his co-authors); collaborative textual production (Shakespeare and his transcribers and printers). What this leaves unaccounted for is the form of collaboration that affects more than any other our modern reading experience of Shakespeare's plays: what we read as Shakespeare now always comes to us in the form of a collaborative enterprise - and is decisively shaped by the nature of the collaboration - between Shakespeare and his modern editors. Contrary to much recent criticism, this book suggests that modern textual mediators have a positive rather than negative role: they are not simply 'pimps of discourse' or cultural tyrants whose oppressive interventions we need to 'unedit' but collaborators who can decisively shape and enable our response to Shakespeare's plays. Erne argues that any reader of Shakespeare, scholar, student, or general reader, approaches Shakespeare through modern editions that have an endlessly complicated and fascinating relationship to what Shakespeare may actually have intended and written, that modern editors determine what that relationship is, and that it is generally a very good thing that they do so.

While Shakespeare's popularity has continued to grow, so has the attention paid to the work of his contemporaries. The contributors to this Companion introduce the distinctive drama of these playwrights, from the court comedies of John Lyly to the works of Richard Brome in the Caroline era. With chapters on a wide range of familiar and lesser-known dramatists, including Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, John Webster, Thomas Middleton and John Ford, this book devotes particular attention to their personal and professional relationships, occupational rivalries and collaborations. Overturning the popular misconception that Shakespeare wrote in isolation, it offers a new perspective on the most impressive body of drama in the history of the English stage.

This Companion is devoted to the life and works of Shakespeare and contemporary playwrights in early modern London.

In this new monograph, Claire Hansen demonstrates how Shakespeare can be understood as a complex system, and how complexity theory can provide compelling and original readings of Shakespeare’s plays. The book utilises complexity theory to illuminate early modern theatrical practice, Shakespeare pedagogy, and the phenomenon of the Shakespeare ‘myth’. The monograph re-evaluates Shakespeare, his plays, early modern theatre, and modern classrooms as complex systems, illustrating how the lens of complexity offers an enlightening new perspective on diverse areas of Shakespeare scholarship. The book’s interdisciplinary approach enriches our understanding of Shakespeare and lays the foundation for complexity theory in Shakespeare studies and the humanities more broadly.

"Like the artists studied here, we pick and choose our Shakespeares, and through that labor another story emerges. Frozen in time on the page or screen, some of those collaborations continue to speak, but denuded of their immediate moment and surroundings; we are left to supplement the traces. In recovering that past, the present takes on greater clarity and contrast. But the proof must be in the telling. A writer lifts a pen. Enter the multiple forces—political and economic, psychological, formal, and technical—that serendipitously transform imagination into memory. Let the collaborative play begin."—from the Introduction Focusing on key writers, actors, theater directors, and filmmakers who have kept Shakespeare at the center of their endeavors over the past two hundred years, Collaborations with the Past illuminates not only the playwright's work but also the choices and responsibilities involved in re-creating culture, and the ingenuity and peril of the artistic process. By concentrating on rich yet problematic instances of Shakespeare's reanimation in such quintessentially modern forms as the novel and film, from Sir Walter Scott's Kenilworth to Kenneth Branagh's Henry V, Diana E. Henderson sketches a complex history of the pleasures and difficulties that ensue when Shakespeare and modern artists collaborate. Working with texts across the entire range of Shakespeare's career, Henderson demonstrates—through detailed analyses of novels including Jane Eyre and Mrs. Dalloway as well as filmed, televised, and staged performances—that art (even in the newest media) cannot avoid collaborating with the past. Only by studying that collaborative process can we comprehend Shakespeare and Anglo-American culture.

This book presents a series of essays exploring the cultural notion that has come to be known as â oeShakespeare.â Shakespeare's collaborators are not only those who were his contemporaries but also those who have given new life to his works in a new garb, be it a play, a theatre production, a film, a TV play, a novel, a museum item, or a collection of illustrated strips. The collection presents papers given at an international conference entitled Shakespeare and His Collaborators over the Centuries, which took place at the Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University (Brno, Czech Republic) on February 8-11, 2006. The individual contributions deal with the notion of collaborating with Shakespeare both in a literal as well as figurative sense. The essays in the first section discuss the literary and cultural milieus which were conducive to the creation of Shakespeareâ (TM)s works. The second part discusses early adaptations and variants of Shakespeareâ (TM)s plays while the third section offers a broader range of artistic (as well as idolatrous) repercussions of the Shakespearean canon.

The Arden Research Handbook of Shakespeare and Textual Studies is a wide-ranging, authoritative guide to research on Shakespeare and textual studies by an international team of leading scholars. It contains chapters on all the major areas of current research, notably the Shakespeare manuscripts; the printed text and paratext in Shakespeare's early playbooks and poetry books; Shakespeare's place in the early modern book trade; Shakespeare's early readers, users, and collectors; the constitution and evolution of the Shakespeare canon from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century; Shakespeare's editors from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century; and the modern editorial reproduction of Shakespeare. The Handbook also devotes separate chapters to new directions and developments in research in the field, specifically in the areas of digital editing and of authorship attribution methodologies. In addition, the Companion contains various sections that provide non-specialists with practical help: an A-Z of key terms and concepts, a guide to research methods and problems, a chronology of major publications and events, an introduction to resources for study of the field, and a substantial annotated bibliography. The Arden Research Handbook of Shakespeare and Textual Studies is a reference work aimed at advanced undergraduate and graduate students as well as scholars and libraries, a guide to beginning or developing research in the field, an essential companion for all those interested in Shakespeare and textual studies.