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Reviewing ShakespeareReviewing Shakespeare

with Dr Paul Edmondson and Dr Paul Prescott

Sponsored by the Arden Shakespeare

#reviewingshakespeare

www.bloomsbury.com/arden

A Year of Shakespeare

and new and new directions in directions in

academic academic reviewingreviewing

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And I, forsooth, in love! I, that have been love’s whip,

A very beadle to a humorous sigh,

A critic, nay, a night-watch constable,

A domineering pedant o’er the boy [Cupid]

Than whom no mortal so magnificent! (Love’s Labour’s Lost 3.1.169-73)

Nightwatch Constables vs.

Domineering Pedants

The rise of academic reviewing

Shakespeare Survey – 1948

Shakespeare Quarterly – 1950

Cahiers Élisabéthains – 1972

Shakespeare Bulletin - 1982

Busting the joint, joining the beat

Busting the joint, joining the beat

[T]he public critic has been dismembered by two opposing forces: the tendency of academic criticism to become increasingly inward-looking and non-evaluative, and the momentum for journalistic and popular criticism to become a much more democratic, dispersive affair, no longer left in the hands of the experts.

Rónán McDonald, The Death of the Critic. London: Continuum, 2007: ix.

[T]oo often members of the postmodern professoriate […] sound as if they live in some very distant world. Not an elite ivory tower as in the past, but something like a strange, perhaps perverse, cult […] I’m not sure if it’s a prison or a madhouse or both. In any event, the inmates show little desire to ‘bust the joint’.

Curtis White, The Middle Mind: why Americans don’t think for themselves. London: Allen Lane, 2004: p.5

'This is an extraordinary collection of essays recording the events of the World Shakespeare Festival, summoning up its kaleidoscopic diversity, its global reach, its oddities, triumphs and provocations- it's Shakespeare criticism as you have never encountered it before, scholarly, experimental, instant, and at times bizarre.’

Dame Margaret Drabble

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‘The written response we have in mind is

something of a hybrid – part blog, part review,

part provocation, depending on the writer and

his/her experience of the production. We are

not looking for an authoritative, densely

detailed and argued verdict on the

production, more a lively, unguarded and

informal set of thoughts and impressions.’

Newspaper coverage of the Globe to Globe Festival

Newspaper coverage of the Globe to Globe Festival

The Guardian only newspaper to review all productions

The Financial Times covered roughly half

Excluding Globe’s own production of Henry V, the rest of the national press published only fifteen reviews in total of the remaining 37 productions

Chariots of Fire at Hampstead Theatre reviewed by at least 17 critics; most RSC and Globe productions reviewed in a dozen newspapers

‘Back to British business as usual’….‘Back to British business as usual’….

‘After the enticing international extravaganza of Globe to Globe, it’s back to British business as usual at Bankside’ (Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard)

Dominic Dromgoole had ‘timed to perfection his production of Shakespeare’s celebration of our country, our way of life and our willingness to defend it’ (Tim Walker, Sunday Telegraph)

‘The evening acts as a chastening reminder of what a country needs when it’s up against it. Those rash souls at the Ministry of Defence, pruning the army to within an inch of its life, would do well to take note’ (Dominic Cavendish, Daily Telegraph)

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World Shakespeare Festival Archive

World Shakespeare Festival Archive

• Shakespeare Centre Library• Trusted Digital Repository• Paper Archive

World Shakespeare Festival Archive

World Shakespeare Festival Archive

We need the following programmes:• The Rest is Noise (dreamthinkspeak)• Falstaff (ROH)• Macbeth: Leila and Ben – A Bloody History (LIFT)• West Side Story (Sage, Gateshead)• Desdemona (Barbican Centre)• 2008 Macbeth (Edinburgh Festival)

World Shakespeare Festival Archive

World Shakespeare Festival Archive

Please send your memories, photos, press-clippings, and accounts of the WSF to:

library@shakespeare.org.uk

or

The Shakespeare Centre Library, Henley Street, Stratford-upon-Avon, CV37 6XA

2626founding associate partner

shksp.re/reviewingapp

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Questions

http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/a-year-of-shakespeare-9781408188149/

Discount code: SBT0513