What's the Worst Thing You Can Do to Shakespeare?

What's the worst thing you can do to Shakespeare? The answer is simple: don't read him. To that end, Richard Burt and Julian Yates embark here on a project of un/reading the Bard, through both reverent and irreverent discourse. Addressing recent critical debates around problems of print and performance, works in media theory and deconstruction, and film adaptations, the chapters uncover areas of confluence and reveal the inventive ways in which these areas respond to each other. Ultimately, this book turns conventional challenges into a roadmap for textual analysis and a thorough reconsideration of the plays in light of their absorption into global culture.

Richard Burta Professor in the Department of English and Film and Media Studies Program at the University of Florida. Burt is the author three book, the editor or co-editor of another six anthologies, and the author of over forty articles and book chapters on topics including Shakespeare, Renaissance drama, literary theory, film adaptation, the Middle Ages in film and media, the erotics of pedagogy, cinematic paratexts, and censorship. He held a Fulbright scholarship in Berlin, Germany from 1995–96, and taught there at the Free University and the Humboldt University.

Julian Yatesis an Associate Professor of English and Material Culture Studies at University of Delaware. He is the author of some twenty book-chapters, essays, and journal articles on topics including Shakespeare, Renaissance English prose, ecology and literature, animal studies, actor network theory, and thing theory. His first book, Error, Misuse, Failure: Object Lessons from the English Renaissance(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003) was a finalist for the MLA Best First Book Prize in 2003. He has been the recipient of a long-term NEH fellowship at the Folger Shakespeare Library (2006-2007), a Francis Bacon Award from the Huntington Library (2007), and a Franklin Award from the American Philosophical Society (2007-2008). A special issue of Shakespeare Studies on 'Shakespeare and Ecology' edited by Yates will appear later this year.