Wartime Shakespeare
Performing Narratives of Conflict

First transhistorical monograph to examine and theorize how Shakespeare has been mobilized in performance during wartime.

Amy Lidster (Author)

9781009356060, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 26 October 2023

324 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.2 cm, 0.61 kg

'In considering the history of Shakespeare during wartime across the centuries, Lister delivers a necessary, detailed exploration and at the same time contributes to the larger conversation as to the why of the Bard's sustained legacy. Highly recommended.' A. P. Pennino, CHOICE

This is the first book-length, interdisciplinary study of how Shakespeare has been mobilized in performance at times of conflict spanning the eighteenth to the twenty-first century. It sets out a brand-new critical methodology that recognizes how wartime theatre is mediated by networks of production and reception that control its meaning and impact. Performances of Shakespeare's plays, like the texts themselves, do not have single or fixed meanings, and one production context often brings together conflicting agendas and responses. Amy Lidster explains how differing productions of Shakespeare shed light on issues at the heart of conflicts and negotiate concepts such as patriotism, commemoration, and propaganda. With wide-ranging transhistorical coverage, she argues that wartime Shakespeare is defined by its malleability and plural (mis)understandings, which determine its power to shape the experience of war, the political issues at stake during a period of crisis, and the construction of narratives of conflict.

Introduction: a history of wartime production and reception
Part I: 1. Royal Shakespeare: Commemorating conflict during the Seven Years' War (1756-63)
2. Shakespeare as propaganda: British military performances during the American revolutionary war (1775-83)
3. 'Patriotic' Shakespeare and dialectics of conflict during the French revolutionary-Napoleonic wars (1792-1815)
Interlude. Nostalgia, nation building and the Russian war (1853-56)
Part 2: 4. Fragmenting Shakespeare(s) and the first world war (1914-18)
5. 'What we are fighting for': the state mobilization of Shakespeare during the second world war (1939-45)
6. 'Anti-war' Shakespeare: just war theory, sponsorship, and the impact of theatre during the Iraq war (2003-11)
Conclusion: wartime Shakespeare – 'a playable surface'.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]