Memes, Screens and Broadway Scenes: Popular Culture Representations of Shakespeare’s Actors in the Age of Participatory Media

Abstract

William Shakespeare, as a writer and actor, has recently become a popular fictional character in different forms of entertainment. Conscious fictions of Shakespeare in popular culture have proliferated since the rise of participatory media. Shakespeare on Twitter (@Shakespeare) has more than 40,000 followers, while William Shakespeare (@WilliamShakespeareAuthor) on Facebook has over 16 million “likes”. In this, we can see a postmodern need to reshape Shakespeare in our own image, while simultaneously drawing on his cultural capital to either promote or challenge his work as “high” art. There have also been recent popular culture representations of Shakespeare’s actors. These representations operate as fictionalised accounts of the acting profession in Elizabethan/Jacobean England, drawing on our modern expectations and attitudes to appeal to contemporary audiences. This essay will examine modern representations of Shakespearean actors from the past twenty-five years, including the film Shakespeare in Love, musical Something Rotten and television series Upstart Crow. It will explore the existing frameworks and theoretical approaches used when discussing popular culture Shakespeare. This essay will also consider the fictionalised accounts of the acting companies as depicted in the texts. In doing so, it will examine the authenticity of these portrayals against what is known of actors and the acting profession in the Shakespearean era and address the desires represented by these depictions today. The essay will explore three common tropes evident in popular culture representations of Shakespeare’s actors. First, Shakespeare was a bad actor. Second, acting was a profession that others aspired to; this includes amateurs wanting to be professional and women wanting to perform. Third, males playing female characters was funny; the representations of theatrical transvestism in these popular culture texts are typically played for comedy today. Overall, this essay examines how Shakespeare’s actors have been represented online, on screens and in theatres in the age of participatory media.