Shakespeare for Snowflakes On Slapstick and Sympathy

Drawing on plays by Shakespeare, Sarah Kane, Sophocles, Samuel Beckett, and others, this book examines the ways in which these dramatists manipulated the actor’s body to demand laughter and/or sympathy. Ian Burrows shows how these strategies can be thought about beyond the stage-space: in the classroom, in the media, and in relation to the social construction of ‘snowflake culture’ as a 21st century phenomenon.

Ian Burrows is a fellow of Clare College, Cambridge. He previously spent three years working at the University of Bristol. His research has considered the ways in which aspects of dramatic performance have been translated into text by printers and by editors. He is increasingly interested, though, in the pedagogical and cultural ramifications of such textual decisions. Ian is currently working on a monograph for Palgrave Macmillan’s Early Modern Cultural Studies series. He lives in Cambridge, UK.