![Sample our Language & Literature journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5941/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Language-Literature.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
In human subjects, celebrity is an active, yet predictable, phenomenon, one that is a carefully structured and managed experience designed to evoke ideas of talent, of charisma that is presented as distinct from the machinations that generate fame, even as it is obliquely acknowledged to depend on these very factors. Celebrity, therefore, is a reactive phenomena that helps define cultural norms. This essay suggests that Shakespeare plays are celebrities in their own right and accrue particular stage histories that are actively perpetuated as ‘Shakespearean’. Stagings of famous plays are expected to visually embody an idea of Shakespeare that is faithful to, not the original text, but a rich and often hegemonic cultural mythology that is embedded in the collective understanding of a particular play. For canonical plays, celebrity manifests in the competing assumption that a Shakespeare play’s fame stems from its universal timelessness and that it can be mobilised to speak to the current political moment or changing cultural practices. If embodied fidelity, then, is when a celebrity play is expected to look, feel, and be acted a particular way, theatre’s capacity as memory machine means that lineages develop that can actively dictate performance and casting strategies, making implicit decisions about who is granted access to ‘authentic’ Shakespeare – and who is not. This essay uses appropriation theory to suggest that the stakes of embodied fidelity are high, as it dictates conditions of performance along lines of race and gender, ability, and class.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Kidnie, Shakespeare and the Problem, 31; Worthen, Shakespeare and the Force, 29.
2 Kidnie, Shakespeare and the Problem, 29.
3 Ayanna Thompson explicitly addresses the racialised politics of such audience expectations when she points out that inherent to approaches to color blind casting 'is an admission that socio-political and cultural-historical factors influencing an audience’s viewing capacities' (Thompson, 'Practising a Theory' (7)) by casting agents and arts institutions.
4 Desmet, 'Rethinking Fidelity', 47.
5 Ibid., 47.
6 Kidnie, Shakespeare and the Problem, 15; Worthen, Shakespeare and the Force, 29.
7 See Corredera, Reanimating Shakespeare.
8 See Sayet, 'The Shakespeare System'.
9 Kidnie, Shakespeare and the Problem, 23.
10 Dustagheer, Jones, and Rycroft. '(Re)constructed Spaces', 175.
11 Pao, No Safe Spaces, 69.
12 Holderness, Cultural Shakespeare, 97.
13 Thompson, Karim-Cooper, and Brown, 555.
14 Worthen, Shakespeare and the Force, 65.
15 Cook, Building Character, 64.
16 Cook, Futurities, 23.
17 Pao, No Safe Spaces, 35.
18 Stamberg, 'A West Side Story with a Different Accent'.
19 Kidnie, 'Hamlet', 116.
20 Pilkington, 'Latino Liberation'.
21 Ibid.
22 Schwartz, 'A Grim Take'.
23 Franko, 'Introduction', 4.
24 Ibid., 7.
25 For an in-depth discussion of archontic literature, see DeKosnik, Rogue Archives.
26 Kidnie, ‘Hamlet’, 102.
27 Lampert, 'Are You Ready'.
28 See Geddes, 'The Thing Itself'.
29 See Lanier, 'Post Textual Shakespeare'.
30 Thompson, Passing Strange, 95.
31 Gabler, Celebrity, 5.
32 Ibid., 10.
33 Cook, Building Character, 64.
34 Phillips, 'Review: Shakespeare’s Baddies'.
35 Cook, Building Character, 38.
36 Franko, ‘Introduction’, 7.
37 Billington, 'Indian Summer'.
38 Fanlore, 'Headcanon'.
39 For a more extensive discussion of headcanon and archontic Shax, see Fazel and Geddes, The Shakespeare Multiverse.
40 Pohlkamp, 'BWW Reviews'.
41 Clapp, 'Review - Othello'.
42 Fujishima, 'Review'.
43 Ibid.
44 Collins-Huges, 'Twelfth Night Review'.
45 Fanbyte remembers that the production was a ‘goldmine of gags for late night talk show hosts’ (Fanbyte). Lyle Slack’s MacLeans review opens by snidely pointing that ‘Keanu Reeves is no Daniel Day-Lewis.’
46 Slack, ‘Keanu's Excellent Adventure’.
47 Lunden, 'Jude Law'.
48 Hawkins.
49 Cook, Building Character, 38.
50 Linden, 'Jude Law'.
51 Billington, 'Hamlet'.
52 Ibid.
53 Saville, ‘Hamlet – Review’.
54 Williams, 'Incomplete Dramaturgies', 2.
55 Feaster, 'Rise and Obey', 357.
56 Grady, ‘Staging West Side Story’.
57 Desmet, 'Rethinking Fidelity', 42.
58 Ibid., 43.
59 Nerenson, Democracy Moving, 4.