Reinventing the Renaissance Shakespeare and his Contemporaries in Adaptation and Performance

The plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries continue to inspire fresh interpretations in every genre and medium. Reinventing the Renaissance: Shakespeare and his Contemporaries in Adaptation and Performance offers new perspectives on the ways in which writers, critics, directors, artists, and other creative practitioners have used Renaissance drama to address current concerns and reach new audiences.

As well as exploring the fortunes of Shakespeare and his contemporaries in more expected contexts, such as film and theatre, these essays examine the relationship between the plays and new social media, detective fiction, translation, ballet, and illustration. The collection also reconsiders the boundary which separates critical and creative responses to Shakespeare by including explorations of 'creativity' in Shakespeare's biographers, as well as a creative revisioning of Macbeth.

Written by an international team of scholars, this accessible and innovative volume will provide a valuable resource for all readers and researchers interested in the creative reception of Renaissance English drama.

Sarah Annes Brown is Professor of English Literature at Anglia Ruskin University, UK. Her publications include The Metamorphosis of Ovid: From Chaucer to Ted Hughes (1999), Devoted Sisters: Representations of the Sister Relationship in Nineteenth-Century British and American Literature (2003) and A Familiar Compound Ghost: Allusion and the Uncanny (2012).


Robert I. Lublin is Chair of Performing Arts at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, USA. He is the author of Costuming the Shakespearean Stage: Visual Codes of Representation in Early Modern Theatre and Culture (2011) and has published a number of articles on early modern English theatre and contemporary drama.


Lynsey McCulloch teaches English Literature at Coventry University, UK. She has published on Shakespearean performance and Spenser's The Fairie Queene and is currently working towards a monograph on the animated statue in early modern drama. Her research interests include the interface between art and literature, front and end matter in Renaissance texts and the use of dance in literature and as literature.

Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Notes on contributors
1. Introduction; Sarah Annes Brown, Robert I. Lublin and Lynsey McCulloch
PART I: POPULAR CULTURE
2. Hamlet: Looking Before and After: Why So Many Prequels and Sequels?; Ann Thompson
3. Educating for Pleasure: The Textual Relations of She's the Man; Reina Green
4. 'Brush up your Shakespeare': Genre-shift from Shakespeare to the Screen; Kinga Földváry
5. Cinematizing Shakespeare; Charles Marowitz
PART II: CRITICISM AND CREATIVITY
6. Circulating through 'languages and tales': Stephen Greenblatt's Cardenio; Theodora Papadopoulou
7. Peter Ackroyd's Shakespeare the Biography and Stephen Greenblatt's Will in the World or Facts and Fiction about William Shakespeare; Urszula Kizelbach
8. The Weird Sisters; Ewan Fernie and Simon Palfrey
9. 'You kiss like in a movie': A Contemporary Translation/Adaptation of Romeo and Juliet; Pietro Deandrea
PART III: NATIONAL RESPONSES
10. At the Threshold – Remembrance and Topicality in Recent Productions of The Merchant of Venice in Germany; Zeno Ackermann
11 . Kabuki Shakespeare: The NINAGAWA Twelfth Night; Seiji Furuya
12 . 'Downright unsaxogrammatical'? – Do Postcolonial Adaptations Contest, or Reinforce Shakespeare's Canonical Status?; Jenni Ramone
13 . 'My dream was lengthened after life': Ghosts in Michael Boyd's History Cycle; Kate Wilkinson
PART III: VISUALISING PERFORMANCE
14 . 'Four legs and two voices': An Interview with Édouard Lekston; Pascale Drouet
15 . Shakespearean Visual Semiotics and the Silver Screen; Robert I. Lublin
16 . 'Here's that shall make you dance': Movement and Meaning in Bern:Ballett's Julia und Romeo; Lynsey McCulloch
PART IV: NON-SHAKESPEAREAN DRAMA
17 . The Duchess of Malfi on Film: Peter Huby's Quietus; Rowland Wymer
18 . The Act of Murder: Renaissance Tragedy and the Detective Novel; Esme Miskimmin
19 . Fishing at the Swan: Swan Theatre Plays and the Shaping of an Interpretive Community; Laura Grace Godwin
Selected Bibliography
Index