Abstract
This chapter introduces new theoretical foundations for understanding aspects of the Shakespeare myth beyond bardolatry and provides definitions of key terms. Myth is introduced from several perspectives: literary (Northrop Frye), semiological (Roland Barthes), materialist (Graham Holderness), and theatrical (Heiner Müller). It is defined as a story that presents itself as true through a particular framing of events and that plays an ideological role. Contradictory myths are the foundation to many conversations about Shakespeare today. Taking up where Graham Holderness left off in his landmark volume The Shakespeare Myth (1988), this chapter delineates the ways in which international films and performances construct myths of Shakespeare’s moral authority and use value.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
See the Danish tourism board’s website http://www.visitdenmark.com/kronborg-castle-shakespeare-hamlet; accessed March 7, 2016. The UNESCO’s world heritage sites’ website states that “It is world-renowned as Elsinore, the setting of Shakespeare’s Hamlet” (http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/696, accessed March 7, 2016). We are told that “Hamlet’s spirit is still roaming the hallways of Kronborg” as well by Copenhagen’s visitor bureau (http://www.visitcopenhagen.com/copenhagen/kronborg-castle-gdk476685, March 7, 2016).
References
Aristotle. 1902. Poetics. Trans. S.H. Butcher. London: Macmillan.
Barthes, Roland. 1991. Mythologies. Trans. Annette Lavers. New York: The Noonday Press.
Bate, Jonathan. 2008. The Genius of Shakespeare. London: Picador.
Bhatia, Nandi. 2004. Acts of Authority/Acts of Resistance: Theatre and Politics in Colonial and Post-Colonial India. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Bohannan, Laura. 1966. Shakespeare in the Bush. Natural History 75 (August–September): 28–33.
Burnett, Mark Thornton Burnett. 2013. Shakespeare and World Cinema. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dromgoole, Dominic. 2017. Hamlet Globe to Globe. New York: Grove Press.
Frye, Northrop. 1961. Myth, Fiction, and Displacement. Daedalus 90 (3, Summer): 587–605.
———. 1990. Myth and Metaphor: Selected Essays, 1974–1988. Ed. Robert D. Denham. Charlottesville/London: University Press of Virginia.
Gollancz, Israel, and Gordon McMullan. 2016. A Book of Homage to Shakespeare. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Greenblatt, Stephen. 2016. General Introduction. In The Norton Shakespeare, ed. Stephen Greenblatt et al., 3rd ed., 1–74. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
Hackett, Helen. 2009. Shakespeare and Elizabeth: The Meeting of Two Myths. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Hodgon, Barbara. 1998. The Shakespeare Trade: Performance and Appropriation. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania.
Hoenselaars, Ton, and Ángel-Luis Pujante. 2003. Shakespeare and Europe: An Introduction. In Four Hundred Years of Shakespeare in Europe, ed. Ángel-Luis Pujante and Ton Hoenselaars, 15–25. Newark/London: University of Delaware Press/Associated University Press.
Holderness, Graham. 1988a. Bardolatry: Or, The Cultural Materialist’s Guide to Stratford-upon-Avon. In The Shakespeare Myth, ed. Graham Holderness, 1–15. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
———. 1988b. Preface: ‘All This’. In The Shakespeare Myth, ed. Graham Holderness, xi–xvi. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
———. 2001. Cultural Shakespeare: Essays in the Shakespeare Myth. Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press.
Joubin, Alexa Alice. 2017. Tang Xianzu and Shakespeare. Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 86, NPR One and Folger podcast, Moderated by Barbara Bogaev and Michael Witmore. Washington, DC: NPR One, November.
Kennedy, Dennis, ed. 1993. Foreign Shakespeare: Contemporary Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Knowles, Ric. 2004. Reading the Material Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kronborg Castle. 2017. http://kongeligeslotte.dk. Accessed 15 May 2017.
Loomba, Ania, and Martin Orkin, eds. 1998. Post-Colonial Shakespeares. London: Routledge.
Magill, Tom. 2011. Sarah Werner’s Interview with Mickey B Director Tom Magill. Shakespeare Quarterly Forum Archives. Published December 6. http://titania.folger.edu/blogs/sq/forum/?p=399. Accessed 25 Feb 2016.
Massai, Sonia, ed. 2006. World-Wide Shakespeares: Local Appropriations in Film and Performance. New York: Routledge.
Müller, Heiner. 2001. Shakespeare a Difference. In A Heiner Müller Reader: Plays, Poetry, Prose, ed. and trans. Carl Weber, 118–121. Baltimore/London: The John Hopkins University Press.
National Theatre Live. 2017. About Us. http://ntlive.nationaltheatre.org.uk/about-us. Accessed 17 July 2017.
Orkin, Martin. 2005. Local Shakespeares: Proximations and Power. London: Routledge.
Royal Shakespeare Company. 2016. https://www.rsc.org.uk/about-us/key-dates. Accessed 21 Mar 2016.
Schaubühne. 2017. Hamlet. http://www.schaubuehne.de/en/productions/hamlet.html. Accessed 17 July 2017.
Thompson, Ayanna. 2013. Passing Strange: Shakespeare, Race, and Contemporary America. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet. 1996. Directed by Baz Luhrmann. Century City, Los Angeles: Twentieth Century Fox, 2002. DVD.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Joubin, A.A., Mancewicz, A. (2018). Introduction. In: Mancewicz, A., Joubin, A. (eds) Local and Global Myths in Shakespearean Performance. Reproducing Shakespeare. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89851-3_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89851-3_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-89850-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-89851-3
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)