Shakespeare's Reception Research Articles

Shakespeare in Spain: Current Research Trends

This essays aims to offer an overview of recent critical work on the reception of Shakespeare and his works in Spain. It does not offer a history of how Shakespeare fared in Spain across the centuries or a survey of work on Shakespeare by Spanish scholars published in Spain; instead, it takes stock to determine what research trends have prevailed in the last decade and how they have aimed to promote the study of the Shakespeare industry in Spain. It also suggests how current research increasingly regards Shakespeare's reception in Spain as part of a larger picture and a bigger research area, i.e. Shakespeare in Europe. While doing so, it argues that the study of Shakespeare in Spain is still a site displaying a ‘work in progress’ sign – although much has been done recently, the field is slightly behind its counterparts in some European countries. The only possible conclusion, given the state of research in the field, is that there is still ample room for imaginative work in Shakespeare's Spanish afterlives.

Akhir Yom (The Last Day): A Localized Arabic Adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet

This paper is an exploration of the 2004 Arabic adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, which premiered in Casino du Liban in Beirut. The Last Day was created by Oussama al-Rahbani, who also composed the musical scores. The play shows how local Shakespeares resonate with the wider global field of study, which in turn echo East–West cultural interactions. The Last Day challenges our perception of the Other in Arabic drama as it questions intraculturalism within the conflict-ravaged Middle East. It prompts us to ask how we should address local Shakespeares in a global context, and how local knowledge illuminates our understanding of Shakespeare's reception. This paper emphasizes the fluidity of the field of Shakespearean studies and the instability of East–West cultural divides.

The School of Shipwrecks: Improvisation in Wilhelm Meisters theatralische Sendung and the Lehrjahre

GOETHE'S TWENTY-SIX YEAR TENURE as director of the Weimar Theater gives little indication of an interest in improvisational acting. In 1803 he composed a comprehensive list of rules for the aspiring actor which includes guidelines for pronunciation, rhythmic delivery, posture, hand positions, costumes and almost everything else imaginable.1 This narrow corset2 with which Goethe girded the actors under his purview is a far cry from the improvisational acting popular in Germany at the beginning of the eighteenth century, before the onset of the theatrical reform spearheaded by Johann Christoph Gottsched and others.3 Given Goethe's programmatic attention to detail as director, it comes as some surprise that the first two Wilhelm Meister novels, Wilhelm Meisters Theatralische Sendung (1786) and Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795), reveal a pervasive interest in extemporized acting. In fact, it is fair to say that in the Lehrjahre Wilhelm Meister's early theatricalcareer (i.e., his childhood) is profoundly shaped by an act of involuntary improvisation when, on the spur of the moment, he decides to stage a performance of Ariosto's Jerusalem Delivered. He summons the neighborhood children, assigns the parts and hastily gathers an audience. Despite the good intentions of the young actors, however, the performance is a failed venture:Verungluckt war die Expedition (MA 5:29)The children are unfamiliar with the story and have no idea when to speak or even what to say. Wilhelm's performance as Tancred, recited directly from Ariosto's text, provokes laughter from the audience when a lengthy mo no log unwittingly slips into the third person. Only the last-minute decision to perform the well-known story of David and Goliath, with the help of a clownish Hanswurst to compensate for the occasional lapses, keeps the theatrical expedition from shipwrecking completely4 The evening becomes a true exercise in improvisation the moment the children take up a plot with which they are familiar and perform it extemporaneously. The structure of repetition and variation-when a familiar scenario is enacted in such a way as to allow for the contingencies of the moment-is the essence of improvisational theater. The improvised performance of David and Goliath is indicative of a broader interest in extemporized acting in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre already found in the Theatralische Sendung. References to improvisational in the two novels are clearly connected to the theatrical tradition of the commedia dell'arte.this style of acting was familiar to Goethe, who witnessed-and enjoyed-lengthy extemporized pieces during his journey to Italy in 1786. It was also well-known within the eighteenth-century German cultural context: troops of traveling commedia dell'arte performers had been roaming through the continent at least since the sixteenth century5 The references to commedia dell'arte in the Wilhelm Meister novels provide a well-established performance model which can elucidate Goethe's idiosyncratic use of improvisation, and they also allow for renewed reflection upon the importance of as a potentially product in a time when German lands were fractured politically and linguistically by a multitude of principalities and diverse dialects. The question of a German theater-what guidelines it should follow, and even who is writing for it-runs throughout the eighteenth century and is also a frequent topic of discussion for Wilhelm and his friends. Yet the vast critical scholarship on the Wilhelm Meister novels has in its discussion of a national theater preferred to focus on Goethe's Shakespeare reception, references to classical French drama, and the German Volksbuch tradition. Given that improvisation is a central topic in eighteenth-century theatrical reform, it is all the more surprising that the episodes of improvised and their connection to the commedia dell'arte tradition have been largely disregarded. …

Shakespeare Translation in France and Germany in the 1950s: a Comparison

The article investigates the role of Shakespeare translation for post-war cultural development in France and the two Germanys in the 1950s. It shows a marked contrast between the French and the German case, which is interpreted in terms of the respective Shakespearian traditions in the two cultures. Throughout the 1950s, German Shakespeare translation continues to be enmeshed in the past: there are only individual attempts at new Shakespeare translations, whereas, both in terms of publications and of critical reception, the Schlegel-Tieck version continues to dominate. This situation seems to attest to an inability, or an unwillingness, to break with the tradition and, in particular, to question the close relationship between German nationalism and Shakespeare reception that had obtained in the past. Hence, Shakespeare translation in 1950s’ Germany appears as a reinforcement of a traditional German identity, rather than as an active cultural renewal. Conversely, through novel translations, 1950s’ France sees a renewed dialogue with the English Bard. Building on an enhanced translation activity in the first half of the 20th century, Shakespeare translation represents a seat of cultural dynamism and renewal. There are collaborative translation projects (such as the edition in the Club francais du livre ) and, not least because of the way in which young creative writers are involved in these enterprises, Shakespeare translation in the 1950s constitutes a motor for French cultural development in general.

Shakespeare and Modernism (review)

Reviewed by: Shakespeare and Modernism Michael J. Brisbois DiPietro, Cary . 2006. Shakespeare and Modernism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. $85.00 hc. 234 pp. Intended for scholars of Shakespeare, Modernism, and Performance studies, Cary DiPietro's Shakespeare and Modernism is an examination of the Bard's role as a source of authority and controversy during British High Modernism (roughly defined here as 1890 to 1940). The work's intended purpose, to discuss "how artists and writers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century England engaged with the cultural traditions of Shakespeare as a means of defining . . . their own distinct historical experience" (7), is reliant upon three "frameworks" (12), each appropriate to DiPietro's focus: Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud. Of these three, Marx plays the largest and most consistent role as the author sees the various attempts to render Shakespeare commonly available or intellectually exclusive in the context of class tensions that arose in the Victorian era and collapsed during the Modern period. Although not clearly divided into separate sections, the book follows three phases of discussion: critical responses, performance history, and gender. The author's reliance on these thinkers produces a work that has pedagological worth, even to those instructors of survey courses rather than period specialists. The first two chapters focus upon modernism's creative and scholarly reevaluation of Shakespeare. In Chapter One, DiPietro presents his argument that focuses on George Bernard Shaw's and T. S. Eliot's, and other modernsrespective writings on Shakespeare. DiPietro refines his argument that certain moderns intended to "topple Shakespeare" from his paramount role as cultural icon (42) and does an excellent job of exposing the complex interrelations [End Page 206] between Shaw's and Eliot's respect for (or envy of?—there is enough internal conflict in their critical approaches to suggest both) Shakespeare and their desire to recreate the canon in a less dominated form; Shaw, as we are reminded, coined the term "bardolatry" to denigrate the Shakespeare criticism of his day (15). Chapter two focuses less upon the critical theory of modernists and more upon the literary criticism of the period. Here DiPietro's range of study is dazzling. Those authors immediately expected, such as A. C. Bradley (Shakespearean Tragedy [Palgrave MacMillan 1992]) and Freud ("the Oedipus complex in Hamlet" [Interpretation of Dreams (Modern Library 1995, 55]), are discussed alongside lesser-known contemporary critics. Of these, biographic scholarship, exemplified by Frank Harris's The Man Shakespeare (Kessinger 2004), are considered in detail and this is a discussion that usefully contextualizes the recent flourish of Shakespeare biographies. Hamlet looms large throughout this section, and as it is the quintessential modernist Shakespeare, DiPietro deftly shifts his consideration of psychoanalytic approaches to Hamlet and Ulysses. The relationship between biographic speculation and canonization is demonstrated through a close reading of the "Scylla and Charybdis" section of Joyce's masterwork and illuminates Shakespeare's reception in the period, and the novel. DiPietro then moves from criticism to theatrical theory and performance. Chapter three considers the changes to British theater in the period, with some brief discussion of Continental European and U.S. influences. DiPietro's focus on the rise of cinema as a competing and more mass audience form of dramatic presentation, as well as the radical approaches to stage design and costuming—modern dress performances are discussed ably in these two chapters—is rewarding and logical. The fourth chapter is an interestingly themed case study of Shakespearean performance circa 1923. This is a year chosen for its locus so close to the peak of British Modernism (1922, Ulysses, The Waste Land) and also for the fact that it was the tercentenary of the First Folio, an event that occasioned anniversary celebrations and an increase in performances. Throughout his discussion of performance, DiPietro makes good use of illustrations and photographs of stages and performers, enhancing the visual nature of this section. Finally, he turns to a close examination of gender theory through Virginia Woolf's little known play Freshwater, loosely based upon the life of the actress Ellen Terry, along with the more canonical A Room of One's Own and Orlando. While the discussion of the play is engaging, the most...

‘So Common-Hackneyed in the Eyes of Men’: Banal Shakespeare and the Eighteenth-Century Novel

This essay was runner-up in the 2006 Literature Compass Graduate Essay Prize, Eighteenth Century Section. Scholars of Shakespeare's reception still conclude that he was elevated in the eighteenth century from provincial playwright to ‘secular scripture’, his words reverently spoken ‘everywhere’. This article proposes that there was a negative side to this omnipresence. Through the lens of the eighteenth-century novel, it examines the hitherto unstudied phenomenon of ‘banal Shakespeare’: a Shakespeare whose phrases are overused by polite society. It focuses on those instances in the fiction of Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, Sarah Fielding and Laurence Sterne when the novelists deliberately have their characters quote Shakespeare in ways that are trite, cliched or compelled by society. Asking whether ‘banal Shakespeare’ is a threat, or an aid, to the ‘rise of bardolatry’, this article contributes a new sense of the multiple, ambiguous meanings of ‘Shakespeare’ in the eighteenth century, and develops the study of novelistic quotation.

The Politics of Non-Translation: A Case Study in Anglo-Portuguese Relations

The Politics of Non-Translation: A Case Study in Anglo-Portuguese Relations — One of the most fruitful paths opened up by the functionalist, target-oriented, turn in the study of the translation has been the possibility of taking into theoretical and analytical account objects that are epistemologically identifiable as being empirically absent. Non-translation, both at a lexical or a textual level, becomes thus available for research. In this context, the present paper has a double purpose: to describe a set of non-translation categories and to discuss a case of ideologically driven absence of translation. This case study concerns an intriguing episode in Shakespeare reception in Portugal: the almost complete lack of new translations from Shakespeare's works into the last decade of the nineteenth century following a fifteen-year period of intense translational activity and unprecedented popularity enjoyed by Shakespeare in the target culture. It was found that such a striking instance of non-translation was due to a nation-wide wave of anti-British nationalism that swept the country in the wake of colonial rivalry over a portion of territory in Southern Africa.

Hamlet ‘in and out’ oder: Wie Hamlet und Grabbes Faust im Theater ihres Geistes spielen

Abstract Grabbe played a decisive role in the German Shakespeare reception, and his Faust has affinities with Hamlet. Comparing their language, their attitude to the world, and their concepts of subjectivity and history, we gain insights that go beyond the characters themselves. Faust's and Hamlet's subjectivity, their different concepts and perceptions of reality, and Grabbe's way of referring to them suggest that the genesis of his Hamlet-Faust derives from his own Shakespeare interpretation, which differs from the accepted, mainly romantic view of Hamlet. Grabbe's Faust becomes plausible if we regard Hamlet, Don Juan and Faust as its source, and Grabbe's own hero type as its inspiration.

Four Hundred Years of Shakespeare in Europe by A. Luis Pujante , Ton Hoenselaars (review)

MLR, 100.3, 2005 771 creativity. Freinkel, by contrast, gives a quite extraordinary and challenging meaning to Puttenham's words: 'Catachresis thus compensates foran original lack in the proper order ofnature: a lack that compromises the verynotion oforigin itself (p. 162). Pretty much everything she claims for Shakespeare's use of language in the Sonnets hangs on this assertion. Though what it says about Luther carries an urgent conviction, Reading Shake? speare's Will requires us to believe that Shakespeare absorbed more of his theology than its author ever proves. Nor can its scrupulous and insightful reading of poetic language quite disguise the fact that it is constantly begging the question. University of York John Roe Four Hundred Years of Shakespeare in Europe. Ed. by A. Luis Pujante and Ton Hoenselaars, with a foreword by Stanley Wells. Newark: University of Delaware Press. 2003. 274 pp. ?42. ISBN 0-87413-812-4. This important collection of European studies of Shakespeare is a record of an in? ternational, or rather intercultural, conference held at Murcia, Spain, organized by a number ofscholars particularly interested in a dialogue between English-speaking and 'foreign' Shakespearians. The essays cover a wide range of issues, made more relevant by their context, even where they appear as simple case studies. Perhaps most typical is Dirk Delabastita's contribution, 'More Alternative Shakespeares'; it is 'trenchant, challenging and somewhat chastening', as Stanley Wells says in his generous and keen-sighted foreword, where he also speaks of the 'absorption of Shakespeare into the bloodstream of European civilization' (p. 9). Speaking no doubt for many Euro? pean Shakespearians, Delabastita points out, however, that there is still a deplorable gulf separating the English-speaking community of Shakespearians (including all those who use the English language as the only means of communicating with their English colleagues) from all the non-English discussions, performances, and cultural appropriations of Shakespeare. Some of this is certainly due to the ever increasing monolingual character of European (and global) academic discourse. This is also why in Britain and North America translation studies occupy a rather low position in the list of scholarly priorities. The present volume offers a number of particularly interesting examples of the importance of translations in various national cultures. Shakespeare's sonnets are perhaps a special case and seem to pose a particular fascination and challenge forpoets and translators. Thus Sonnet 66, of which more than 150 German versions exist, has been put to all kinds of political and sociological uses in Germany, as Manfred Pfister in his lively contribution, reprinted from Shakespeare Jahrbuch 200 j, demonstrates. The international interest in the sonnets is underlined by Martin Hilsky, whose discussion draws on three translations, including his own, of the whole cycle into Czech. It is a cogent demonstration that poetic translation must be practised and understood as an act of intercultural as well as interlingual dialogue. Most of the contributors, of course, are concerned with the plays, their adaptation and production in circumstances and theatrical conditions very differentfrom the Royal Shakespeare Company or the London Globe. Each country has its own charac? teristic history of Shakespeare reception, as Marta Gibinska's valuable essay, 'Enter Shakespeare: The Contexts of Early Polish Appropriation', demonstrates, with refer? ence to Polish history and the close links with France and the Enlightenment rather than with English culture, at least during the early stages of Shakespeare's influence. The concise overview by Isabelle Schwartz-Gastine, 'Shakespeare on the French Stage: A Historical Survey', provides a good deal of useful information on the classic 772 Reviews French stage tradition and more recent developments. She confidently claims that, in contrast to earlier critics and producers, 'it would occur to no one at present to turn to the English stage as a model and a source of inspiration, or to consider English companies and directors as the sole heirs to the Shakespearean heritage' (p. 238). Shakespeare's texts, in numerous translations, 'can be explored by directors, accord? ing to their whims, tastes, and interests' (p. 238). For her, this bold independence is proof 'that Shakespeare has definitely found roots in French culture' (p. 238) A very differentformofappropriation is introduced in Keith Gregor's essay 'Shake...

The political economy of aesthetics: Modes of domination in modern nation states seen through Shakespeare reception

In countries that adopt similar forms of hegemony or modes of domination, the ruling class might be expected to approach the problem of the control of taste, as part of that hegemony, in similar ways. Applying the historical ana sociological theory of Antonio Gramsci to the field of comparative literature, I will explore this proposition with respect to modern Shakespeare reception.1 The spread of finance capital in the latter years of the nineteenth century created political crises in virtually every country in the world, from which new strategies and modes of domination emerged. How many, and what sorts of domination came into existence through this process? To rephrase this question, how many ways of disguising class conflict have modern ruling classes devised? Gramsci indicated four generic hegemonic forms, spread throughout the world across different cultural and ideological divides: an English Road, based on rule by racial difference; a Russian Road, based on rule by caste; an Italian Road, based on rule by region; and an Albanian Road, based on tribal-ethnic and pronounced gender divisions.2 I have chosen to explore the reception of Shakespeare in these four different hegemonic modes because his works are important in all of them. An effect of cultural imperialism, the pervasive dissemination of Shakespeare has provoked, nonetheless, rich and varied ? sometimes subversive ? responses in the countless cultures in which his works have been adapted, staged and glossed. Neither Marx nor Gramsci wrote about Shakespeare to a great extent, but they did write about the importance of theatre for political economy. In Gramsci's theory of hegemony, theatre was important on two levels, that of the praxis of intellectuals, directors and actors, and that of hegemony itself.3 Thus, theatre has a privileged place in the study of the state's relation to aesthetics. Moreover, theatre includes the widest range of artistic expressions,