Introduction

Abstract

Entering the twenty-first century, the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries continue to find enthusiastic new audiences. Companies perform Shakespearean drama around the globe, new movie versions appear regularly, and emerging genres, new social media for example, find fresh ways of making Shakespeare their own. At a glance, this seems counterintuitive; as the Western Canon has expanded to include a range of voices that were previously excluded, one would expect the prevalence and importance of 400-year-old plays to diminish, making room for other works. Instead, the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries have found new articulation, and have provided a medium through which the concerns and experiences of our own age can be expressed. Contemporary artists, including writers, directors, scholars, and more have made the works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries the material out of which they construct their own artistic projects, boldly and liberally reshaping the past to address the present, reinventing the Renaissance so that it speaks with purpose to the contemporary moment. To make sense of this cultural phenomenon, the third Scaena conference, held at Anglia Ruskin University in 2008, was begun with the express purpose of exploring Shakespeare and his contemporaries in adaptation and performance. Drawing and building upon the best work presented at this conference, this collection aims to map out the extraordinary range of approaches that mark the recent history of Shakespearean appropriation.