Shakespeare Without Class: Misappropriations of Cultural Capital Book

Classless, tasteless, and unclassifiable uses of Shakespeare, from the Bad Quarto of Hamlet to contemporary "post-queer" same-sex version of Romeo and Juliet, join each other through this collection of intriguing new essays that capture the essence of what its editors term "Shakespace." An alternative to "appropriation," "Shakespace" describes uses involving not a defined, ideological boundary patrolling but a creative, often dissident or transgressive, social space of transformation. "Transversality," the general dynamic of this space whereby assigned subjectivities can be transcended in order to "be all that you are not," is explicated in a groundbreaking theoretical introduction addressing new historicism and the recent film Shakespeare in Love. Contributors' essays address issues of class, race, gender, sexuality, postcoloniality, and pedagogy, through widely ranging topics: women writers of romance; the New York African Shakespeare Theater; witchcraft pedagogy; the theater of the absurd; Shakespeare's immorality; Brecht's Coriolan; My Own Private Idaho and Prospero's Books.Read More