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

\u27Another Key\u27 to Act Five of \u3cem\u3eA Midsummer Night’s Dream\u3c/em\u3e

Daniel Pollack-Pelzner offers evidence as to why editors might choose to assign speeches in Act Five of Shakespeare\u27s A Midsummer Night\u27s Dream either to Philostrate or to Egeus

Rewriting Greek Tragedies as Immigrant Stories

In this piece originally published in the New York Times, Daniel Pollack-Pelzner writes about Mojada, Luis Alfaro\u27s adaptation of the Greek tragedy, Medea. Mojada is part of a trilogy from Alfaro that attempts to bring his Latino community into modern theater by writing them into classical plays

Inside Portland’s Theatre Scene

English Professor Daniel Pollack-Pelzner takes advantage of the Portland Campus during a January Term class to give students an inside look at Portland’s vibrant theatre scene – populated with a number of Linfield alumni

Shakespeare in the Nineteenth Century; Shakespeare, Time and the Victorians: A Pictorial Exploration

Daniel Pollack-Pelzner reviews Shakespeare in the Nineteenth Century (edited by Gail Marshall) and Shakespeare, Time and the Victorians: A Pictorial Exploration (by Stuart Sillars) for Victorian Studies

\u27Mary Poppins\u27 and a Nanny\u27s Shameful Flirting with Blackface

In this piece originally published in the New York Times, Daniel Pollack-Pelzner discusses problematic racist imagery in both the 1964 and 2018 Mary Poppins films and argues that minstrelsy has long been Disney\u27s mode of expressing topsy-turvy fun

The Hidden History of \u27Oklahoma!\u27

Daniel Pollack-Pelzner explains that contemporary reinterpretations of the classic American musical Oklahoma! may be getting back to its root: it\u27s based on a play by a gay Cherokee man

My Grandfather Was an Illegal Immigrant: Guest Opinion

In this opinion piece originally published in the Oregonian, Daniel Pollack-Pelzner reflects on his grandfather\u27s immigration status in light of the Trump administration\u27s decision to end temporary protection for 200,000 Salvadoran immigrants who came to the United States without documentation

Lin-Manuel Meets \u3cem\u3eMoana\u3c/em\u3e

In this article originally published in Public Books, Daniel Pollack-Pelzner wonders whether a Disney musical and a Lin-Manuel Miranda musical want the same thing

Quoting Shakespeare in the British Novel from Dickens to Wodehouse

Novelists heralded as Victorian Shakespeares frequently navigated the varied nineteenth-century practices of Shakespeare quotation (in the classroom in compilation books, in stage spoofs) to construct the relationship between narrator and character, and to negotiate the dialogue between Shakespeare\u27s voice and the voice of the novel. This chapter looks at three novelists whose practices intersect and contrast: George Eliot, who resists the Bardolatrous imputation of a Shakespearean character\u27s wisdom to its author by distinguishing her own characters\u27 inept Shakespeare quotations from her narrative voice; Thomas Hardy, who claims the authority of Shakespearean pastoral, regional language against the glib quotations of his more cosmopolitan characters; and a latter-day Victorian, P.G. Wodehouse, who plays the irreverent, defamiliarising gambits of Victorian Shakespeare burlesques against the educational and commonplace authority that Shakespeare quotations accrue