ABSTRACT
It has become the fashion to see the lady (or gentleman) appear as the Epilogue, now called an ‘Afterword’, and to speak on behalf of a collection’s critical performances. Although it is not an entirely ‘new’ (could one call it ‘retro’?) phenomenon, that a theatrical convention has travelled into critical territory seems, in this case, especially apt. For many of the theatrical and cinematic refashionings of Shakespeare considered in World-wide Shakespeares either derive from or engage with the resonant doubleness characteristic of a present-day climate where theatrical and critical cultures intersect, weaving together not only to make new performances of old plays but also to ‘re-member and dis-member’ old plays as new ones (Döring p. 21). Put another way, the ‘dramatic field’ not only abuts the ‘lit-crit’ field but also extends Shakespeare’s reach beyond the borders of both: travelling here, there and everywhere, occurring in various sites and citings, deploying a wide range of theatrical-textual strategies, encountering local cultural fields and speaking in many languages, Shakespeare is represented here as a resource for mapping the poetics and politics of cultures. What a case am I in, then, for surely such good performances need no epilogue? Taking my cue from Rosalind (although disclaiming her magical properties), my way is to conjure: first, to pose some questions about the critical vocabularies we mobilize in mapping these fields of (inter)act ivity; then, to suggest some areas for further research and analysis.
