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this one, when experiencing Shakespeare becomes “like living in a public park.” Private interests and public situations converge, and back-stage suddenly becomes front-stage, so that truth comes into focus with the force of a “grotesque.” Verisimilitude, that comforting illusion that drama holds the mirror up to nature, but from a safe distance, becomes something more, either dream or nightmare. Then Shakespearean appropriation becomes possible, perhaps even imperative.

The essays in this volume approach Shakespearean appropriation from two perspectives. They discuss what Michael Bristol (1996) has called “big-time Shakespeare,” an institutionalization of the Bard that has been ongoing at least since David Garrick’s early theme park venture, the Shakespeare Jubilee (1769). As Richard Finkelstein demonstrates, Shakespeare continues to be appropriated by large corporations such as Disney as a vehicle for accruing capital, power, and cultural prestige. Ivo Kamps and Terence Hawkes remind us that Shakespeare has also been used ideologically to shape the academic study of English; battles over his literary remains still help to keep the professoriate and institutions of higher education in business.

Shakespeare and Appropriation also considers what might be termed ‘‘small-time Shakespeare,” individual acts of “re-vision” that arise from love or rage, or simply a desire to play with Shakespeare. As Laurie Osborne shows, contemporary romance novelists are drawn to Shakespeare, in part for the cultural prestige he confers on their devalued genre, in part for the sheer fun of playing “identify that quotation.” At times, Shakespearean appropriations have a personal urgency for their creators, and might, in Adrienne Rich’s words, even be considered acts of survival. Jane Smiley, as discussed in Caroline Cakebread’s contribution, writes vehemently against traditional readings of King Lear in. A Thousand Acres. African American writer Gloria Naylor rejects Shakespeare as a literary forebear, but as James Andreas argues, her novel Mama Day can be read as a productive act of resistance, a rewriting of The Tempest from an Africanist point of view. Productions and films of Shakespeare’s plays can also be appropriations. According to Lisa S.Starks, directors from Laurence Olivier to Kenneth Branagh reformulate not only the psychology of Hamlet, but also their relation to Shakespeare and to one another, through their filmed interpretations. The same could be said for Tom Stoppard’s play, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead.

“Big-time Shakespeare” serves corporate goals, entrenched power

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