Dickens\u27s Hamlet Burlesque

Daniel Pollack-Pelzner considers what an interlude in Great Expectations involving a spectacularly bad production of Hamlet can do for Hamlet. Specifically, Pollack-Pelzner looks at what Dickens\u27s rendering of Mr. Wopsle\u27s travesty reveals about Hamlet\u27s openness to an audience\u27s derisive laughter. Wopsle’s production may be a travesty, but Dickens’s narrative of that production is a burlesque, with Hamlet as much its target as Wopsle

Performing Relevance/ Relevant Performances: Shakespeare, Jonson, Hitchcock

Engages with questions of historicism and presentism in the modern performance of early modern drama, and compares Ben Jonson with Alfred Hitchcock

William Shakespeare as a Purveyor of Re-Productions: Understanding Shakespeare’s Plays as Profitable Products

This project, “Recasting William Shakespeare in The Business of Playwriting,” works to reinvigorate the value gained by reading Shakespeare by: Beginning with espousing the importance of reading Shakespeare as a practical businessman first, instead of the mythological literary genius that men decades and now centuries after Shakespeare marketed and herald him as. Although this is not the primary focus of this paper, it is an important framework that begins to enable us to shift our presumptions of the canonical text, Romeo and Juliet . The next section sets the backdrop, i.e. the environment, in which Shakespeare used an emerging profession to recreate literature and runs through the “ancestry” of the star-crossed lovers archetype. Finally, the main section of this project identifies and explicates particular loci where Shakespeare transformed the original text in order to target and appeal to the audience of the times; in particular to Romeo & Juliet , this includes that of the creation of suspense, tragedy in relation to comedy, and an interrogation of love at first sight. This project concludes with a quick review of other proof of audience recognition within Shakespeare’s corpus that can lead to further investigations and close readings of other texts, Shakespearean or not, for financial motivations. All of which will help readers of Shakespeare come away with a greater business appreciation of his work and possibly force readers to think about the economic constraints and incentives shaping literature

'Our Darker Purpose' : the calculus of desire in King Lear : a Girardian reading

Rene Girard has always seen in Shakespeare's work a supreme example of his mimetic theory applied with genius in a dramatic context. He sees in King Lear a kind of summa which brings to 'a sharp focus . .. the mimetic vision.' Using key Girardian concepts like mimetic desire and rivalry, the crisis of Degree, sacred violence, and the victimage mechanism as hermeneutical tools, and applying them rigorously and systematically to the text may yieldfresh and illuminating insights into one of the greatest tragedies of Shakespeare.peer-reviewe

Cultural ecology and Chinese Hamlets

This essay examines the critical potential of cultural ecology and cultural mobility studies for modeling the relations between literature and culture. It investigates the mobility and portability of literary effects across different media, periods, and cultural and geographical spaces. It intends to offer a glimpse of what a continentally informed view of cultural ecology can contribute to the understanding of literary history as a cultural history of media effects. With a view to the twofold promise of cultural ecology, it hopes to accommodate both the historical singularity of literary objects (mostly, but not exclusively, texts) and their multifarious continuations in other media configurations. As a paradigmatic example, it explores the global cultural mobility of Shakespeare. Using the example of the adaptation of Hamlet in recent Chinese films, the essay demonstrates how literary effects circulate in different media contexts across temporal and spatial distances, beyond the range of traditional literary history. In the larger framework of cultural mobility studies, these suggestions also attempt to overstep the self-imposed generic limits of current world literature studies and to find an alternative to their methodological problems

Intercultural theatrical encounter and the dramaturgy of surtitles

Theatre surtitles have tended to be seen as a necessary inconvenience. However, recent technological developments have streamlined the provision of translated captions and these advances are influencing awareness of and attitudes to the use of surtitles in theatre spaces. Taking the ITA’s Roman Tragedies as an illustration, this article examines the application of surtitling technology in theatre translation. The intermedial performance of surtitles positions surtitles within new media dramaturgy, creating a form of interlinear translation. The dramaturgical effect of the integration of surtitles into production demonstrates how technological intervention can operate to co-produce the humanity of intercultural theatrical encounter. / Les surtitres de théâtre ont eu tendance à être considéré inconvénients nécessaires. Cependant, les développements technologiques récents ont simplifié la fourniture de sous-titres traduits et ces progrès influent l'utilisation des surtitres dans les espaces de théâtre. En étude de cas, cet article prend l'œuvre d'Ivo van Hove, Tragédies romaines [tragedie romaine in italics, please], pour examiner l'application de la technologie surtitrage en traduction théâtrale. La performance intermédiale des surtitres résonne avec la nouvelle dramaturgie médiatique, ce qui crée une forme de traduction interlinéaire. L'effet dramaturgique de l'intégration des surtitres dans la production affiche l'interaction de l'intervention technologique avec l'humanité de la rencontre théâtrale interculturelle

Shakespeare and Psychology: Emotional Intelligence and Machiavellianism in King Lear and Othello

The current study evaluated the role of emotional intelligence and Machiavellianism in two of William Shakespeare’s tragedies: Othello and King Lear. The general organization of Shakespeare’s tragedies and character development were of particular interest, as the author hypothesized that the presence of emotional intelligence and Machiavellianism in antagonists and protagonists may have a significant effect on the plots of the relevant plays. The current study concluded that the antagonists may be deemed more successful in these Shakespearean tragedies due to the cooperation of two key factors: Machiavellian personalities and higher levels of emotional intelligence than their protagonist counterparts. Potential implications of the results are discussed