Shakespeare / Not Shakespeare

This essay collection addresses the paradox that something may at once “be” and “not be” Shakespeare. This phenomenon can be a matter of perception rather than authorial intention: audiences may detect Shakespeare where the author disclaims him or have difficulty finding him where he is named. Douglas Lanier’s “Shakespearean rhizome,” which co-opts Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of artistic relations as rhizomes (a spreading, growing network that sprawls horizontally to defy hierarchies of origin and influence) is fundamental to this exploration. Essays discuss the fine line between “Shakespeare” and “not Shakespeare” through a number of critical lenses—networks and pastiches, memes and echoes, texts and paratexts, celebrities and afterlives, accidents and intertexts—and include a wide range of examples: canonical plays by Shakespeare, historical figures, celebrities, television performances and adaptations, comics, anime appropriations, science fiction novels, blockbuster films, gangster films, Shakesploitation and teen films, foreign language films, and non-Shakespearean classic films. 

1 Introduction.- 2“This is not Shakespeare!".- 3 Chasing Shakespeare: The Impurity of the “Not Quite” in Norry Niven’s From Above and Abbas Kiarostami’s Where Is My Romeo.- 4 HypeRomeo & Juliet: Postmodern Adaptation and Shakespeare.- 5 “I’ll always consider myself Mechanical”: Cyborg Juliette and the Shakespeare Apocalypse in Hugh Howey’s Silo Saga.- 6 Guest Starring Hamlet: The Proliferation of the Shakespeare Meme on American Television.- 7 Romeo Unbound.- 8  Chaste Thinking, Cultural Reiterations: Lucrece and the Violence of The Letter.-9 Paratextual Shakespearings: Comics’ Shakespearean Frame.- 10 “Thou hast it now”: One-on-Ones and the Online Community of Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More.- 11 Dirty Rats, Dead for a Ducat: Shakespearean Echoes (and an Accident) in Some Films of James Cagney.- 12 YouShakespeare: Shakespearean Celebrity 2.0.- 13 Finding Shakespeare in Baz Luhrmann’s e great gatsby.- 14 surfing with juliet: the dialectics of disney’s Teen Beach Movie.- 15 “Accidental” Erasure: Relocating Shakespeare’s Royal Women in Philippa Gregory’s The Cousins’ War Series.- 16 Scenes of Recognition: Pan’s Labyrinth and Warm Bodies as Accidental Shakespeare.