Shakespeare and Canada : Remembrance of Ourselves

Description

Shakespeare in Canada is the result of a collective desire to explore the role that Shakespeare has played in Canada over the past two hundred years, but also to comprehend the way our country’s culture has influenced our interpretation of his literary career and heritage. What function does Shakespeare serve in Canada today? How has he been reconfigured in different ways for particular Canadian contexts?

The authors of this book attempt to answer these questions while imagining what the future might hold for William Shakespeare in Canada. Covering the Stratford Festival, the cult CBC television program Slings and Arrows, major Canadian critics such as Northrop Frye and Marshall McLuhan, the influential acting teacher Neil Freiman, the rise of Québécois and First Nation approaches to Shakespeare, and Shakespeare’s place in secondary schools today, this collection reflects the diversity and energy of Shakespeare’s afterlife in Canada.

Collectively, the authors suggest that Shakespeare continues to offer Canadians “remembrance of ourselves.” This is a refreshingly original and impressive contribution to Shakespeare studies—a considerable achievement in any work on the history of one of the central figures in the western literary canon.

Sujets

• Shakespare
• Literary Criticism

Informations

• Publié par: Presses de l'Université d'Ottawa
• Date de parution: 08 mars 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 3
• EAN13: 9780776624433
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 6 Mo

Extrait

The University of Ottawa Press gratefully acknowledges the support extended to its publishing list by Heritage Canada through the Canada Book Fund, by the Canada Council for the Arts, by the Ontario Arts Council, and by the University of Ottawa.
Copy editing: Robbie McCaw
Proofreading: Susan James
Typesetting: CS
Cover illustration and design: Bartosz Walczak
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Shakespeare and Canada : remembrance of ourselves / edited by Irena R.Makaryk and Kathryn Prince.
(Reappraisals : Canadian writers ; 38)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-0-7766-2441-9 (softcover).--ISBN 978-0-7766-2442-6 (PDF).--
ISBN 978-0-7766-2443-3 (EPUB).--ISBN 978-0-7766-2444-0 (Kindle)
1. Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616--Appreciation--Canada.
2. Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616--Stage history--Canada.
3. Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616--Adaptations. 4. Shakespeare,
William, 1564-1616--Criticism and interpretation. I. Makaryk,
Irena R. (Irena Rima), 1951-, editor II. Prince, Kathryn, 1973-,
editor III. Series: Reappraisals, Canadian writers
PR3109.C3S525 2017
822.3 3
C2017-900724-6
C2017-900725-4
Irena R. Makaryk and Kathryn Prince, 2017, under Creative Commons License Attribution-Non Commercial Share Alike 4.0 (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) http://creative-commons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
Printed in Canada
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Shakespeare and Canada: Remembrance of Ourselves
I RENA R. M AKARYK AND K ATHRYN P RINCE
Theatre is not a nursing home : Merchants of Venice of The Stratford Festival
C. E. M CGEE
Intercultural Performance and The Stratford Festival as Global Tourist Place: Leon Rubin s A Midsummer Night s Dream and Twelfth Night
R OBERT O RMSBY
Stratford, Shakespeare, and J. D. Barnett
I AN R AE
Counterfactual History at The Stratford Festival: Timothy Findley s Elizabeth Rex and Peter Hinton s The Swanne
P ETER K ULING
Who s There? : Slings Arrows Audience Dynamics
K AILIN W RIGHT
Race, National Identity, and the Hauntological Ethics of Slings Arrows
D ON M OORE
Performing Indigenous Shakespeare in Canada: The Tempest and The Death of a Chief
S ARAH M ACKENZIE
Shakespeare, a Late Bloomer on the Quebec Stage
A NNIE B RISSET
Mediatic Shakespeare: McLuhan and the Bard
R ICHARD C AVELL
Shakespeare and the Cultural Lag of Canadian Stratford in Alice Munro s Tricks
T RONI Y. G RANDE
Beyond (or Beneath) the Folio: Neil Freeman s Shakespearean Acting Pedagogy in Context
T OM S CHOLTE
Rhyme and Reason: Shakespeare s Exceptional Status and Role in Canadian Education
D ANA M. C OLARUSSO
The Truth About Stories About Shakespeare In Canada?
D ANIEL F ISCHLIN
Contributors
Index
List of Illustrations and Figures
Theatre is not a nursing home : Merchants of Venice of The Stratford Festival C. E. M CGEE
Figure 1: Production Photograph of Douglas Rain (Shylock), The Merchant of Venice , Avon Theatre, 1996. Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann, courtesy of The Stratford Festival Archives.
Figure 2: Production Photograph of Frederick Valk (Shylock), Charlotte Schrager (Jessica), Ted Follows (Launcelot Gobbo), The Merchant of Venice , Stratford Tent, 1955. Photo by Donald McKague, courtesy of The Stratford Festival Archives.
Figure 3: Production Photograph of Susan Coyne (Portia), The Merchant of Venice , Avon Theatre, 1996. Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann, courtesy of The Stratford Festival Archives.
Figure 4: Production Photograph of Seana McKenna (Jessica), Ernest Harrop (tailor), Patruska Sarakula and Holly Dennison (ladies in waiting), The Merchant of Venice , Festival Theatre, 1984. Photo by David Cooper, courtesy of The Stratford Festival Archives.
Who s There? : Slings Arrows Audience Dynamics K AILIN W RIGHT
Figure 1: The New Burbage Theatre Festival s gift shop sells stuffed Shakespeare dolls in the series first episode.
Figure 2: The advertising firm, Froghammer, insults New Burbage Theatre Festival s subscriber base in the second season.
Figure 3: Charles Kingman (William Hutt) plays the role of King Lear and is on his own quest for self-knowledge as he seeks the answer to the series pervading question, Who s there?, with the help of Oliver s ghost (Stephen Ouimette).
Figure 4: The final season s production of King Lear (with the title character played by William Hutt) is markedly minimalistic and takes place on a bare stage in a church.
Shakespeare, a Late Bloomer on the Quebec Stage A NNIE B RISSET
Figure 1: Translations of Shakespeare: Montreal and Quebec City 1968-1999.
Figure 2: Shakespearean Presence: Montreal and Quebec City 1968-1999.
Figure 3: Frequency of Plays, 1968-1999.
Figure 4: Productions of Macbeth : political context.
Figure 5: Productions of La Temp te : political context.
Rhyme and Reason: Shakespeare s Exceptional Status and Role in Canadian Education D ANA M. C OLARUSSO
Figure 1: We Are Here.
Figure 2: English Curriculum Displacement.
The Truth About Stories About Shakespeare In Canada? D ANIEL F ISCHLIN
Figure 1: Front and back covers of William Shakespeare s Mix n Match Magnetic Wardrobe.
Figure 2: Marked copy of Jacques Derrida s essay on Shakespeare s Idea of Kingship.
Figure 3: Splash page for the Canadian Adaptations of Shakespeare Project (CASP) http://www.canadianshakespeares.ca/
Figure 4: Front and back cover of Shakespeare Made in Canada exhibition catalogue.
Figure 5: Front covers of two editions in the Shakespeare Made in Canada series published by Oxford University Press and Rock s Mills Press.
Figure 6: The Sanders portrait of Shakespeare (1603).
Figure 7: Detail of the rag paper label on the back of the Sanders portrait of Shakespeare (1603) along with transcription.
Figure 8: Thomas King, friends, and the Sanders portrait of Shakespeare (1603). Photo courtesy of Thomas King.
Acknowledgements
T his collection is the final fruit of a project marking the four-hundredth anniversary of Shakespeare s death. From January to April 2016, we oversaw more than forty separate events for diverse audiences, ranging from the sublime ( Hamlet read in the thirty-five languages spoken by members of the University of Ottawa community) to the ridiculous (a Shakespearean insult-a-thon). What kept us from collapsing under the weight of all these activities (besides the support of our extraordinarily patient husbands) was the enthusiasm, energy, and diverse talents of our many collaborators, colleagues, and students. Among these, we would like to make particular mention of Victoria Burke, Joerg Esleben, Ann Hemingway, Tony Horava, Mariah Horner, Nancy Lemay, Cullen McGrail, Amanda Montague, Dillon Orr, Jennifer Panek, Christiane Riel, Bruce White at the ByTowne Cinema, and especially Cynthia Sugars, who co-organized the Shakespeare Canada symposium with us. Sponsors of Shakespeare Canada included the British Council, the British High Commission, the English-Speaking Union, Gale Cengage, the Royal Commonwealth Society, and Shakespeare Bulletin -along with the Faculty of Arts; the Vice-President, Research; and the central administration of the University of Ottawa. Our home departments (English and Theatre), and our colleagues within them, were enthusiastic and helpful in myriad ways. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada generously supported the entire project, including this volume. Thank you one and all for making Shakespeare 400 and Shakespeare Canada such extraordinary experiences.
Among those who supported us throughout these related projects is Anne Sophie Voyer, whose spectacular talents as a translator, editor, and organizer par excellence have made this volume a pleasure to prepare (and, we hope, to read). We dedicate this volume to her-the future of the discipline.
Shakespeare and Canada: Remembrance of Ourselves
I RENA R. M AKARYK AND K ATHRYN P RINCE
M ust there no more be done? Laertes anguished cry in response to the truncated ritual performed over his dead sister, Ophelia, draws attention to the human need for the comfort of ceremonies that bring together the individual and the community in shared expressions of mourning, remembrance, or, in other circumstances, of celebration. In the anniversary year of 2016, however, Laertes would have been hard pressed to repeat his question in response to the worldwide memorializations of the four hundred years of Shakespeare s remarkable afterlife. As theatre critic J. Kelly Nestruck accurately predicted in the New Year s Day edition of Canada s Globe and Mail , 2016 would include a bloat of commemorative activities.
Indeed, global commemorative and celebratory events fill seven pages of the Shakespeare Lives website hosted by the British Council. Among these are the Globe to Globe Hamlet tour; the World Shakespeare Congress; the Zurich Shakespeare Festival; the Shakespeare Rose Garden in Everland, Korea; the Shakespeare in Rome Exhibition; the Shakespeare Films at the Ankara International Film Festival; the Shakespeare Festival at the Grand Opera in Warsaw; Shakespeare at the Com die-Fran aise; a marathon reading of Shakespeare s sonnets in Milan; Shakespeare debates in Brazil; Shakespeare o a Tshela Showcase in Botswana; Shakespeare lectures in Abu Dhabi; the (In)Complete Works, Table Top Shakespeare in Chicago; All the world s a stage exhibition in Taiwan; I, Peaseblossom (Shakespeare through the eyes of a mischievous fairy) in New Zealand; Romeo and Juliet performe