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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Monstrous!: Actors, Audiences, Inmates, And The Politics Of Reading Shakespeare, Matt Kozusko
Monstrous!: Actors, Audiences, Inmates, And The Politics Of Reading Shakespeare, Matt Kozusko
English Faculty Publications
This essay considers the use of Shakespeare as marker of authenticity and as a therapeutic space for performers and audiences across a number of genres, from professional actors in training literature to prison inmates in radio and film documentaries. It argues that in the wake of recent academic trends—the critique of "Shakespeare" as an author figure; the privileging of the text as a source of multiple, potentially conflicting readings—Shakespeare's function as cultural capital has shifted sites, from "Shakespeare" to the playtexts themselves.
The 'To Be, Or Not To Be' Speech: Evidence, Conventional Wisdom, And The Editing Of Hamlet, James Hirsh
The 'To Be, Or Not To Be' Speech: Evidence, Conventional Wisdom, And The Editing Of Hamlet, James Hirsh
English Faculty Publications
Substantial, conspicuous, and varied pieces of evidence demonstrate that Shakespeare designed the 'To be, or not to be' speech to be perceived by experienced playgoers of his time as a feigned soliloquy. Plentiful evidence within the play implies that Hamlet pretends to speak to himself but actually intends the speech itself or an account of it to reach the ears of Claudius in order to mislead his enemy about his state of mind. External evidence demonstrates that experienced playgoers of the period did indeed make the inference intended by Shakespeare. I pointed out much of this evidence in a 1981 …