ABSTRACT
There has been a boom in academic work on Shakespeare’s afterlives during the past two decades, prompted by a variety of internal and external factors: cultural materialism’s emphasis on the contemporary work art does; the poststructuralist recognition that readers (and by extension theatrical interpreters) create “meaning by Shakespeare” (Hawkes 1992); historicist studies and political challenges to canonical authorship; and, perhaps most importantly, creative multimedia revisions by modern artists (postcolonial and feminist, queer, populist, and apolitically experimental) that puzzle university students and have found enthusiastic advocates among like-minded scholars. These developments have all been, to a greater or lesser degree, controversial and contested, and the standpoints of their practitioners varied: while some have emphasized the power dynamics of appropriation and displacement, others hold on to the more Bardocentric vocabulary of adaptation, especially in reference to new art forms or media. Differences notwithstanding, amidst and alongside this exploration, there has been a fundamental expansion of understanding regarding Shakespeare’s role as a collaborative artist.
