ABSTRACT
Shakespeare’s ubiquity in Western culture means that his oeuvre appears in even the most unlikely of places. In a perhaps unexpected engagement in early-modernism, the writers of Marvel’s Deadpool #21 set a story in a Shakespeare-inspired, ‘medieval-esque’ universe where many of the Bard’s plays are lived out, and intersect. In the story, the eponymous anti-hero wakes up in an unfamiliar place, only able to speak in iambic pentameter. Over the course of the episode, Deadpool meets with characters from a variety of Shakespeare’s plays, including Hamlet, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, The Tempest, and The Merry Wives of Windsor. By using Deadpool #21 as a case study, this introduction analyses the way that modern adaptations play with Shakespeare in an attempt to make him more ‘interesting’ for modern readers. As such, irreverent adaptations can be considered an attempt to bring Shakespeare down off the pedestal that he is often placed on, while still demonstrating the Bard’s continued place in popular culture. This chapter situates the collection within the current scholarship, and explains how the book fills a gap. Particular focus is given to the intersection between academics and practitioners, as this collection is distinctive in its combination of the two different approaches: approaches that acknowledge the duality of Shakespeare’s plays as texts that are consumed visually, aurally, orally, and auditorily.
