Big-Time ShakespeareRoutledge, 2005 M08 12 - 272 pages Shakespeare has made the big time. No less than the Beatles or Liberace, Elvis Presley or Mick Jagger, Shakespeare is big-time in the idiomatic sense of cultural success and widespread notoriety. Not only has he achieved canonical status, Shakespeare is a contemporary celebrity. His artistic distinction and aptitude for controversy constantly keeps his name in the public eye. Bristol debates Shakespeare's cultural authority, and clarifies the semantics of his name in our culture. Big-Time Shakespeare suggests his plays represent the pathos of our civilisation with extraordinary force and clarity. Shakespeare's contradictory understanding of the social and cultural past is also examined with close analysis of The Winter's Tale, Othello, and Hamlet. |
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achieved activity actually aesthetic affirmation articulate artifacts artistic audience authorship Bakhtin Big-time Shakespeare Bloom Branagh Calvin Calvin and Hobbes Candlemas carnivalesque celebrity century character charivari commercial commodity companies complex contemporary context critics critique cultural consumers cultural market cultural production culture industry Davenant Desdemona dialogue early modern economic editors Edmond Malone ethical expression feast festive film fundamental Garrick gift gift economy Hamlet Harold Bloom historical human idea ideological important individual institutional interests interpretation Jacob Tonson judgements kind King’s Leontes Liberace literary literature Lord Morpheus Malone Malone’s edition marriage means Merchant of Venice misrecognition moral Morpheus narrative notion Othello performance play’s players political Polixenes popular practice printed radical readers reading recent represent ritual role sense serial reciprocity sexual Shakespeare’s authority Shakespeare’s plays sheepshearing show business simply social spatio-temporal specific standard story success successor cultures suggests temporal textual theater theatrical traditional William Shakespeare Winter’s Tale