Shakespeare and Virtual Reality. Edited by Stephen Wittek and David McInnis

Abstract

A title in the Cambridge Elements’ “Shakespeare and Pedagogy” series, this small but valuable collection grew out of a seminar at the 2020 Shakespeare Association of America meeting. It will be of interest to anyone who wishes either to use virtual reality in their teaching or to bring early modern literature into conversation with virtual reality technology. The book is divided into three sections, “Why Shakespeare and Virtual Reality?,” “Education,” and “Current and Future Directions,” and concludes with an annotated bibliography of Shakespearean projects that deploy or invoke virtual reality, augmented reality, and related technologies. The book’s opening essay, Jennifer Roberts-Smith’s “What Can Shakespeare Do for Virtual Reality,” is one of several essays addressed specifically to “we” “as Shakespeare educators” (4), though theorists of the virtual in any field will find much to mine here. Making the counterintuitive case that “new technologies do not bring new affordances to Shakespeare; rather, ‘Shakespeare’ … will bring new opportunities for meaning-making to VR” (4), Roberts-Smith sets a conceptually rigorous tone for the study of Shakespeare in virtual space. The manifesto-like set of provocations includes shrewd ruminations on issues such as intermediality, community, and personal agency as they relate to virtual reality. Invoking game studies, she argues that “as in the theatre, the meaning of a VR experience is located outside, not inside, the ‘magic circle’ that has come to be understood as the hermetic space of a virtual world,” and that VR therefore “generates opportunities for the communal consideration of shared experiences” (9). Curiously though, Roberts-Smith does not turn to works by or adaptations of Shakespeare or his contemporaries to make these points; rather, she cites mostly non-Shakespearean virtual reality productions, such as imagineNative 2167 VR and The Blue Hour VR, allowing the reader to forge their own connections. The reader is, in fact, not told what Shakespeare “can do” for VR, though like any good opener, Roberts-Smith’s piece generates questions and tensions that help steer the collection.