Customer Reviews

Reinventing Shakespeare: A Cultural History, from the Restoration to the Present

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Taylor's survey of Shakespearean adaptations and performance is engagingly written, filled with little revealing details, and opinionated without being biased. It's certainly NOT a Bard-bashing book, though it's not reverent in its discussions of Shakespeare. It's the place to start if you're interested in a one-volume history of Shakespearean adaptation. The last section of the book, on contemporary Shakespeare and written in an arch tone, isn't as interesting, at least to a non-academic. And one might argue that the book is rather Euro-centric: see Dennis Kennedy's Foreign Shakespeare as a good supplement. Even so, it's an essential book for any person interested in Shakespeare and cultural change. You'll think differently about Shakespeare after reading it.

The premise of this book is clearly stated in its last five paragraphs. Shakespeare it seems is not very important at all or at least not more important or very different from other playwrights and authors - or even from any one of us. He, or rather, his works are merely a cultural construct which has been re-invented many times to serve the varied, sometimes unseemly, purposes of the "re-inventors". Using a clumsy scientific analogy, Shakespeare is compared to a black hole which absorbs everything coming within its purview and emitting nothing, save what we ourselves have put into it. This analogy proves only two things. One, that the author has only the haziest idea of physics and two, that postmodern textual criticism is a crock of ....

Others, much more learned, wise and erudite than I have already dealt with this book and its patently ridiculous claim. There is also no real need for the intelligent reader to be convinced of the historical, cultural, linguistc and literary significance of Shakespeare. I wish only to add that this thesis shows once more that in our modern intellectual climate one can dream up any preposterous nonsense and base a whole comfortable academic career on dishing it out to a gullible world.

Oh, Alan Sokal! Where are you when we need you?

This book on Shakespeare is the obvious result of a lot research from an author who knows his subject as well as anyone. Yet it is a disappointing book as Taylor seems to get lost in endless erudite arguments about shakespeare. The book needs far more context than supplied here to explain to the reader what is occuring.

The gneral problem with the reputational school is that hey seem to think that the debate caused by the work, is mor important than the work itself. Im the end, the quality of Shakespeare's writing and ideas are what continues to encourage study.