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Tragedy, The Greeks, and Us

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Placing Lanier’s chapter immediately after Olive’s affords equal critical weight to both TV adaptations and YouTube vlogs, prompting a radical reconsideration of how Shakespeare circulates and is valued across media.… Click to show full abstract

Placing Lanier’s chapter immediately after Olive’s affords equal critical weight to both TV adaptations and YouTube vlogs, prompting a radical reconsideration of how Shakespeare circulates and is valued across media. Similarly, the other chapters in Part Three – ‘Broadcast the Self: Celebrity and Identity’ – also focus on individual acts of production, reception, and circulation. Romano Mullin sheds light on the online Twitter community that coheres around the popular @HollowCrownFans account and the #ShakespeareSunday hashtag, whilst Anna Blackwell examines how the actor Tom Hiddleston has cultivated a Shakespearean celebrity persona through social media. All three chapters expand an understanding of who is able to broadcast Shakespeare, how they might go about it, and what it might mean to them. Whilst the thematic structure of the collection does succeed in highlighting the continuity between old and new media, this book is at its strongest and most exciting when it is describing, and even advocating for, change. With seven of eleven chapters focused on new media, the collection cannot help but describe a broad chronological movement from Shakespeares produced, mediated, and broadcast by institutions to the ‘individual visions’ of Shakespeare that Mullin reports finding on Twitter (226). A key strength of the book lies in its analytical approach to these new and participatory media, never lapsing into uncritical assumptions about increased audience agency or emancipatory potential. The importance of such an approach is emphasised in Courtney Lehmann’s afterword to the collection, which reminds us that digital modes of participation are also bound up in complex political and economic systems, and challenges us to look more closely at iterations of Shakespeare that appear to be open, free, and participatory. This collection excellently illustrates the breadth of ways in which Shakespeare has been implicated within multiple media systems across time. Whilst a single volume could never provide a complete picture of broadcast Shakespeares, it would have been good to have also seen greater geographical diversity represented within the collection. In a book that raises important questions about who gets to broadcast Shakespeare and the networks, institutions, and political systems that facilitate those broadcasts, not engaging more with the production and reception of media Shakespeares outside of North America and Northern Europe feels like a missed opportunity. Nevertheless, this book makes a significant contribution to the growing media turn in Shakespeare studies and will no doubt be a source of inspiration for scholars and students looking for ways to explore media forms of Shakespeare as they develop. Most of all, it successfully demonstrates that the application of media studies approaches is not only valuable, but will be vital to understanding the changing place of Shakespeare as the twenty-first century progresses.

Keywords: tragedy greeks; shakespeare; book; collection; broadcast

Journal Title: Contemporary Theatre Review
Year Published: 2020

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