The Really Real, Authentic, Original Shakespeare

Authors

  • Marcela Kostihova Hamline University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1515/mstap-2016-0002

Keywords:

authenticity, consumer capitalism, consumerism, identity, individuality, originality, Shakespeare, „Twelfth Night”

Abstract

This essay considers the question of how original/new interpretations help redefine (or reify) the original/old perception of Shakespeare and the work its cultural capital performs, demonstrating the inherent impossibility of reconciling an “original” Shakespeare with contemporary performances of his plays through a reading of Twelfth Night, and address some of the ideological implications of trying to conflate the two. It then takes a detour into contemporary marketing and consumer-psychology literature to explore the crucial roles which the concepts of “authenticity” and “originality” have come to play in contemporary consumer culture, circling back to Shakespeare, to ruminate on the implications of the use of his cultural capital as an ultimate positional good in the 21st century.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Bray, Alan. The Friend. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.
Google Scholar

Bristol, Michael and Kathleen McLuskie, eds. Shakespeare and Modern Theater: The Performance of Modernity. London and New York: Routledge, 2001.
Google Scholar

Dollimore, Jonathan and Alan Sinfield, eds. Political Shakespeare: Essays in Cultural Materialism. 2nd ed. Cornell University Press, 1985.
Google Scholar

Heath, Joseph and Andrew Potter. Nation of Rebels: Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture. New York: Harper Collins, 2004.
Google Scholar

Holderness, Graham. Cultural Shakespeare: Essays in the Shakespeare myth. University of Hertfordshire Press, 1988.
Google Scholar

Howard, Jean E. and Marion F. O’Connor, eds. Shakespeare Reproduced: The Text in History and Ideology. New York: Methuen, 1987.
Google Scholar

Kastan, David Scott and Peter Stallybrass. Staging the Renaissance: Reinterpretations of Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama. London and New York: Routledge, 1991.
Google Scholar

Lewis, Cynthia. Particular Saints: Shakespeare’s four Antonios, Their Contexts, and Their Plays. Delaware University Press, 1997.
Google Scholar

Lewis, David and Darren Bridger. The Soul of the New Consumer. London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2001.
Google Scholar

Montaigne, Michel de. Essays. Harmondsworth : Penguin, 1958.
Google Scholar

Orgel, Stephen. Authentic Shakespeare, and Other Problems of the Early Modern Stage. London and New York: Routledge, 2002.
Google Scholar

Orgel, Stephen. Impersonations: The Performance of Gender in Shakespeare’s England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Google Scholar

Pine II, B. Joseph and James H. Gilmore. Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2007.
Google Scholar

Pine II, B. Joseph and James H. Gilmore. The Experience Economy: Work Is Theater and Every Business a Stage. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1999.
Google Scholar

Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night: Or What You Will. Smith, Bruce, ed. Bedford, 2001.
Google Scholar

Twenge, Jean M. Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled—and More Miserable Than Ever Before. Free Press, 2006.
Google Scholar

Downloads

Published

2016-04-22

How to Cite

Kostihova, M. (2016). The Really Real, Authentic, Original Shakespeare. Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance, 13(28), 11–23. https://doi.org/10.1515/mstap-2016-0002

Issue

Section

Articles

Similar Articles

<< < 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 > >> 

You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.