OuterSpeares: Shakespeare, Intermedia, and the Limits of Adaptation by Daniel Fischlin, and: Shakespeare and YouTube: New Media Forms of the Bard by Stephen O’Neill (review)

Daniel Fischlin’s edited collection on Shakespeare in the context of twentieth-and twenty-first-century technology provides a series of essays engaging with valuable theoretical and practical approaches to current responses to Shakespeare. This is a tricky field to present since the audience interested in the topic consists both of those completely au courant with relevant technical theories and scholars who know their Shakespeare but may be fuzzy on the concepts associated with “inter-media.” This collection will appeal to readers across this spectrum of expertise, however, since the authors consistently situate their arguments within clear parameters. As the intellectual worlds of the humanities and technology intersect more frequently, this kind of careful analysis that addresses scholars across a diverse spectrum has become increasingly more important and more challenging. This collection provides an admirable model for presenting such theoretically complex arguments in a manner that is both accessible and erudite.

Of uniformly high quality, the essays in this volume suggest that the authors are involved in larger projects on related topics that will undoubtedly expand productively on the discussions introduced here. This is good news. As technology and its tools and concepts continue to influence and invigorate literary studies, it will be increasingly important to have articulate and learned Shakespeareans who can speak with authority on the kinds of topics included in OuterSpeares. Christy Desmet and Sujata Iyengar, founding coeditors of Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation (http://www.borrowers.uga.edu), for example, each offer essays that illustrate this difficult but important balance between theoretical (often technical) explication and substantive Shakespeare investigations. Desmet, for instance, in “YouTube Shakespeare, Appropriation, and Rhetorics of Invention” situates current electronic Shakespeares, often created or posted by amateurs, in significant, classic discussions of artistic and literary representation. She deftly inserts Shakespearean “mashups” into the conceptual framework established by Roman Jakobson’s work on metaphor and metonymy (62), arguing persuasively that “A hybrid artefact, the mashup stands midway between curating (filtering, framing, and replication of other’s material) and what we consider individual creativity (making an “original” art object) and so tends to reflect self-consciously on its artistic status” (63). By doing so, she advances our ability to comment on not only “different registers of film and television” (64) but also media that superficially, but erroneously, may seem separate from more seasoned forms of intellectual discourse.

Iyengar’s essay offers similarly perceptive observations about more materially tangible Shakespearean artifacts in “Upcycling Shakespeare: Creating Cultural Capital.” As she remarks, “‘Shakespeare’ offers a liminal, intermedial space between branded, profit-generating, mass-market industry and independent, financially threatened, idiosyncratic cultural production” (347). Iyengar provides a sophisticated and nuanced examination of a range of Shakespearean objects and the ways that these items require scholars to create new conceptual categories, such as those emerging through “Thing Theory,” in order to discuss these materials and the conditions of their creation and dissemination. Iyengar demonstrates the significance of these “intermedial adaptations” at the same time that she models an intellectually rigorous way to discuss items ranging from “Ophelia’s Orange Blossom Lotion” (356) to themed jewelry, clothing, and books.

Fischlin contributes three notable sections to this solid collection. His densely informative introduction ably situates the vibrant discussions that ensue as his contributors address iPhone Shakespeares; Shakespeare in prison; Julie Taymor’s Tempest; YouTube; and a wide range of other intermediations including radio, television, and community-sponsored Shakespearean reimaginings. Fischlin’s introduction significantly contributes to the strength of this collection. He carefully delineates the terms of engagement underlying these essays, offering an astute level of what Desmet terms “methodological reflection” (68) that insightfully demonstrates how “intervention produces startling, unsettling ways of understanding...