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Page 198 but colonizing new territory—Shakespeare on video, Shakespeare on CD-ROM, Shakespeare on the Internet, Shakespeare on hypertext. Harold Bloom has just published a 745-page book entitled Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (1998b). The cover story of the November 1998 issue of Lingua Franca—an empathetic review of Bloom by another major scholar of his generation, William Kerrigan—is entitled ‘The Case for Bardolatry.’ How, at this particular cultural moment, could anyone sane claim that Shakespeare’s reputation is shrinking?” Different critics might cite different counter-examples, but the technique of refutation would remain the same: a statistical claim is countered by citing individual cases that contradict it. Such refutations are illogical, because the statistical claim has already included the evidence of the alleged counter-examples. I do not claim that Shakespeare’s reputation has disappeared; I claim only that it has passed its peak of expansion, and begun to decline. Such a claim can only be tested by looking beyond individual examples of appropriation to a larger pattern, which includes both positive and negative evidence. But Shakespeareans, almost by definition, never look at negative evidence: evidence of the absence of Shakespeare, where one might expect his presence. That is, Shakespeareans look for evidence that would confirm the hypothesis of his ubiquitous and expanding cultural mass; they do not look for evidence that would falsify that hypothesis. But falsification is an essential component in the construction of valid theories about the world (Popper 1959, 1963). From this perspective, look again at the alleged counter-examples. Video, CD-ROM, and the Internet are not really expanding the Shakespearean domain; they just provide an alternative way to satisfy the existing Bard market. They replace textbooks. Shakespeareans are not leading the digital revolution; they are just trying to preserve their market share in an increasingly demanding educational environment, where they must ward off hostile incursions from technologized multiculturalism. In 1996, the World Shakespeare Congress heard a self-congratulatory description of the development of new electronic, hypertext, and Internet editions of Shakespeare (Werstine 1998). This assessment ignored a fundamental historical shift in the balance of intellectual power. Specialists in Shakespeare and the English Renaissance dominated Anglo-American editorial practice and theory from the eighteenth century through McKerrow, Greg, Hinman, and Bowers. Terence |
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