Postmillennium Instances

In Screening Shakespeare in the Twenty-First Century editors Mark Thornton Burnett and Ramona Wray explore the ways Shakespeare is negotiated in contemporary media culture on both the small and large screen. Departing from more traditional arguments about the validity or impact of Shakespeare's appearance in media, Burnett, Wray, and their contributors instead focus on specific postmillennium instances of Shakespeare's intersections with a culture that views Shakespeare and his work not as a renowned author or site of intellectual culture but, instead, as a "magnet for negotiations about style, value, and cultural identity" (9).

Burnett and Wray's introduction sets the tone for the volume, beginning with a discussion of BBC's 2005 spoof-documentary, Shakespeare's Happy Endings. The editors argue that, like the comic representation of Shakespeare in that documentary, Shakespeare in the modern cultural context has come to signify more than a repository of lore and knowledge. Instead, argue the editors, modern adaptations have grown more reflexive with other popular revisions than with the text or indeed Shakespeare himself. Contemporary interpretations, then, are as aware of the text they are interpreting as they are aware of the interpretations that have preceded them. Shakespeare in the media (who may or may not be a different Shakespeare than Shakespeare of the text) is removed from the vacuum and, in doing so, suddenly subject to every conceivable influence.

Responding to this central idea, Richard Dutton, in his chapter "'If I'm right': Michael Wood's In Search of Shakespeare," engages in exploring (and sometimes lamenting) the perceived division between popular and scholarly discussions of Shakespeare. Citing Wood's 2003 biography special and related text, Dutton questions what he perceives as a (faulty) contemporary need to render Shakespeare as a man of the masses whose life is imagined to parallel contemporary experiences. Dutton's line of inquiry is later picked up by Susanne Greenhalgh and Robert Shaughnessy in "Our Shakespeares: British Television and the Strains of Multiculturalism." Electing to focus on several examples rather than one, Greenhalgh and Shaunghnessy examine the "shifting concepts of race and ethnicity in recent British television documentary and drama to show how these have both mediated and interrogated the social, cultural, and therapeutic values of Shakespearean performance 'after multiculturalism'" (90). Greenhalgh and Shaunghnessy examination leads them to argue for what they term a "fusion" (109) of Shakespeare and alternative identities not traditionally present in the Bard's work: a mixing of original text and more modern (or otherwise non-Renaissance) ideas, themes, language, and interpretations.

This idea is later freed from both the small screen and its specifically ethnic identity concerns in Carolyn Jess-Cooke's chapter, "Screening the McShakespeare in Post-Millennial Shakespeare Cinema" which renders problematic the tendency to dismiss recent commercialized Shakespeare cinema and argues instead for a critical study of the culturally embedded "meaning" of Shakespeare presented in such films. Wray's own chapter, "Shakespeare and the Singletons, or Beatrice Meets Bridget Jones: Post-Feminism, Popular Culture, and 'Shakespeare (Re)-Told'" reinforces this idea, arguing that Shakespeare's gender issues are still relevant (if recast) even in a post-feminist world.

The remaining six chapters engage in more detailed, example-specific interpretations of the book's larger project. Speaking to the concern of Shakespeare, interpretation, and ethnic portrayal, Richard Burt's chapter "Backstage Pass(ing): Stage Beauty, Othello, and the Make-Up of Race" advocates an understanding of an at times controversial "post-post-colonial Shakespeare (9)" that threatens recent casting choices in Shakespearean-themed cinema. Catherine Silverstone's chapter, "Speaking Maori Shakespeare: The Maori Merchant of Venice and the Legacy of Colonization" provides a unique insight into the difficulties of adapting Shakespeare's supposedly universal stories to the context of local traditions and understanding. These difficulties are reiterated Courtney Lehmann's "The Postnostalgic Renaissance: The 'Place' of Liverpool in Don Boyd's My Kingdom," with specific attention paid to the influence of nostalgia, race, and class. Samuel Crowl's chapter "Looking for Shylock: Stephen Greenblatt, Michael Radford, and Al Pacino...