ABSTRACT
The affordances of a global, post-textual William Shakespeare network have presented challenges for those who seek out the place of language in appropriation theory. Shakespeare studies continues to wrestle with what fidelity might mean; appropriative critical practices increasingly dismiss of visible manifestations of the Shakespeare text. This chapter attempts to centralize the plasticity of text by emphasizing the multiplicity of language, and suggests that Ivo Van Hove’s 2012–2018 multimedia production Roman Tragedies is an appropriative text that enacted the borderlands subjectivity that is crucial to appropriation. The prominence of digital textuality has made the multiplicious nature of text more apparent, and in the case of Roman Tragedies, gives continued life to the text in cyberspace, sustained by its existence in hyperlinks, snapshots, videos, and recollections shared on social media. Roman Tragedies suggests that, in borderlands, new methods of communication can yield new strategies for participation.
