| Title | : | Shakespeare and Modern Culture |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0307377679 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780307377678 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 368 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 2008 |
Shakespeare has determined many of the ideas that we think of as “naturally” our own and even as “naturally” true — ideas about human character, individuality and selfhood, government, leadership, love and jealousy, men and women, youth and age. Yet many of these ideas, timely as ever, have been reimagined (indeed, are often now first encountered) not only in modern fiction, theater, film, and the news but also in the literature of psychology, sociology, political theory, business, medicine, and law.
Marjorie Garber delves into ten plays to explore the interrelationships between Shakespeare and twentieth century and contemporary culture — from James Joyce’s Ulysses to George W. Bush’s reading list. In The Merchant of Venice, she looks at the question of intention; in Hamlet, the matter of character; in King Lear, the dream of sublimity; in Othello, the persistence of difference; and in Macbeth, the necessity of interpretation. She discusses the conundrum of man in The Tempest; the quest for exemplarity in Henry V; the problem of fact in Richard III; the estrangement of self in Coriolanus; and the untimeliness of youth in Romeo and Juliet.
Shakespeare and Modern Culture is a tour de force reimagining of our own mental and emotional landscape as refracted through the prism of protean “Shakespeare.”
Shakespeare and Modern Culture Reviews
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Shakespeare and Modern Culture is a related series of essays focusing on ten of the Bard's plays. Garber argues "Shakespeare was...a writer and thinker who changed the fundamental was in which people write, read, and think." (p. 270) A relatively uncontroversial position, at least in Anglophone literature and culture. Where Garber goes beyond that is in her position that Shakespeare, having created the framework by which we interpret the world, has been continually reinterpreted by subsequent generations (along with his plays) within those constraints. His purported "timelessness" is a result of his "timeliness."
It is the chief fault of this author's writing that this thesis isn't clearly expressed until the final four pages.
There were two things that marred my enjoyment of the book. The first was a personal failing - I don't have much of a literary/literature background and was often unable to fully grasp and appreciate Garber's points. The second thing lay squarely in the author's lap. Garber tends to write in a highly elliptical style, heavily laced with academic jargon. Too often a chore to read. If her prose had been a tad more user friendly, I could bring this book into the 4-star range (regardless of my personal ignorance).
Before moving on to mention some of the interesting points I found in the essays, I do want to mention that a good feature of Garber's writing is that she has an almost unerring knack for picking just the right quote to illustrate her point.
In the first essay, "The Tempest: The Conundrum of Man," one of the points that most struck me (probably because of my history/poli-sci background) was that "Ariel" was the character originally adopted by Latin American philosophers and statesmen as it represented the superiority of rationality and feeling over irrationality. A symbol of transformation from chaos to order and freedom. It's only in the last 60+ years that "Caliban," the native oppressed by colonialism, has come to dominate the symbolic discourse. (p. 21f.)
The third essay, "Coriolanus," is an example of the jargon-laden, opaque writing that ruined some of the readings for me. Garber gets into a deep, extended riff involving Bertold Brecht and Gunter Grass, hardly mentioning Shakespeare or his play at all. It only ever gets this "bad" in the final essays on "Hamlet" and "King Lear," thankfully.
In "Macbeth: The Necessity of Interpretation," I found Garber's chief point to be that the play is a reflection of the unending cycle of corruption, betrayal and guilt. In addition to her eagle-eye for the apt quote, Garber also pointed out a scene from Roman Polanski's version (w/ excellent performances from Jon Finch and Francesca Annis) that I remember but which now has new meaning: The final scene of the movie is not Malcolm proclaiming his coronation at Scone but is of Donalbain, the younger brother, returning to the heath where Macbeth met the witches.
The essay "Othello: The Persistence of Difference" is interesting in its charting of peoples' reactions to the play - the "race" question has not always been the central one.
In "Henry V: The Quest for Exemplarity," there's a quote that I especially enjoyed: "...language is treacherous, meanings shift, all speech is dangerous and not always under the control of the speaker." (p. 187) (emphasis mine)
I also enjoyed Garber's taking to task the recent trend in self-help/business publishing to co-opt Shakespearean figures - in this case "Henry" as the paragon of "Leadership" - missing all but the surface qualities of the character. In Henry's case, Garber argues (I believe correctly) that the spate of leadership books ignores the ambiguities of command and that events are often beyond one's control (never more so than in war).
As I mentioned earlier, the last two essays - "Hamlet: The Master of Character" and "King Lear: The Dream of Sublimity" - lost me about half-way through in each but I did net some interesting fish. For example, the oddest interpretation of Hamlet I learned of was Edward Vining's argument that Hamlet was a woman. (pp. 202-03) In "King Lear," Garber makes the significant point that, until 1838, no one saw the original play - they were watching Nahum Tate's "improved" version (the one where Cordelia and Edgar are secret lovers and she lives...I shudder at the very idea).
Despite its flaws, I enjoyed this book and did gain an even, ever deeper appreciation of Shakespeare's work and importance. I can easily recommend this book to anyone interested in the subject. -
I totally loved this book. I physically shook my fist at the end matter because my little brain had selectively chosen to forget the concept of end matter and thought I had a whole other chapter to go before I had to be done!
Garber took a thematic, big-picture look at one play at a time, and then various conversant works with the play (whether they be adaptations, rewrites, staging or casting decisions), criticism placed in its context (YES it is very important to distinguish a romantic era critic from an early 20th century critic, their worlds were very different!), and then, usually, a big concept that seemed, upon first mentioning, to be picked at random from a hat, until she wove it in so masterfully that my reaction was to want to jump up onto a table. You know how GOOD a literary theoretical article has to be to make someone want to JUMP ON A TABLE? The level of SKILL? I was in awe. The kind of writing that is structured SO WELL that it's like watching a perfectly choreographed music number unfold.
My particular favorite chapter was probably (predictably) the Romeo & Juliet look at the concept of youth. This was also one of only two chapters that I had the chance to expose myself to the full text of the play roundabout reading the chapter. (the King Lear essay came at the end of the book, and was one of the reasons I chose to reread the play last month.) After reading the chapter, I was able to watch the Globe Theatre's stream of a production from 2010 starring Tomiwa Edun and Ellie Kendrick (which was fantabulous) (as well as, a few weeks later, the Royal Ballet's version, just for the lols), and I picked up on so many references to youth and the other ideas that Garber had laid out. I just loved her outlines of the various long-standing revisions that these plays underwent, where actors and theatre goers would go decades, sometimes centuries, only ever seeing modified versions and thinking it was Shakespeare, while the original texts stayed locked in university English departments and never making it to the stage. It's such a fascinating lens through which to think about textuality, and originality, and how we think about Shakespeare as an idea instead as of a person (boring) or as a stack of plays (less boring but still not great). That extra context on the in-between time that so often gets left out of classes, between "what was up in Shakespeare's day" and "how this is relevant today", was so so valuable. I hope to return to this book as I reread the plays.
I still don't get King Lear tho.
Wonderfully interesting and intellectually stimulating. I enjoyed pretty much every minute of reading this book. It was a welcome reminder that I may have sold my academic soul to library science but HA!HA! I can still read all the literary theory my other soul wants. A wonderful, wonderful addition to my library, and I'm glad I nabbed it from my papa (which he would have liked) and then annotated the heck out of it (which he would not have lol). -
A whirlwind tour through some of the most prominent plays in the Shakespearean canon, and how they're reflected in modern (mostly 20th century to the present) life and literature. The argument got a little repetitive and circular at times, but I felt like I gained some new insights into all of the plays. The chapter on 'Henry V' is particularly good. Nice stretching of the brain muscles. I might have preferred a more detailed exploration of fewer topics, but the broad survey feel of the book is probably necessary for publication by a major (non-scholarly) press.
The book is pretty well footnoted, but I'm not sure how useful it would be as a research source. Not really for beginners, either; I'd think you have to be fairly well versed either in Shakespeare or in modernist literature/theater to get a lot out of it. -
This was a very good read, though there are parts that get difficult to follow. This is in part because the author's range of material is so broad that she ends up exploring territory that is probably foreign to many of her readers.
The book is an exploration of how our modern culture (and notably, cultures and authors before us) approaches some of Shakespeare's plays. It is very interesting to see that our culture reacts to and experiences plays like Macbeth or King Lear differently than others have. This cannot help but broaden one's appreciation for the dynamics inherent in a Shakespeare play. I have personally always struggled with how to read or appreciate Lear, and this book's exploration of the play absolutely helps me to see and appreciate it in some new ways. -
This one is very much a work in progress. I take it a chapter or two at a time and then read something else and come back to it. Each chapter takes a Shakespeare masterpiece, dissects it and then traces it all the way to today -- finding evidence of it in films, music, television, even commercials. I've been re-reading each Shakespeare piece before I read the chapter on it. Really interesting . . .I mean I took something like eight semesters of Shakespeare in college, but this book is showing me even more what a master - no, what a REVOLUTIONARY WSS was. It IS work to read it . . but well worth it. BTW my kids gave me this book for Christmas!
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Garber's
Shakespeare After All is one of my favorite books on the Bard, but I was greatly disappointed by this one. I think I was expecting "modern culture" to mean "pop culture", but Garber is looking at such esoteric connections as Brecht's re-working of
Coriolanus, echoes of
King Lear in Becket's
Endgame and of
Hamlet in James Joyce. Perhaps a better title would have been Shakespeare and Postmodern Literature.
Some essays engaged me more than others; the history of blackface casting and minstrelsy in
Othello was fascinating, and the pathetic notion that Macbeth and Henry V can serve as models for business success hilarious. Yet overall, this wasn't a collection I'll likely be diving back into. Hopeful for
Coming of Age in Shakespeare. -
Garber definitely subscribes to the theory of never writing one word when you can write an entire jargony paragraph instead. She made some interesting points, and her close reads of non-dramatic humanities texts were compelling (eg Lear and the concept of zero), but long swathes of this were unreadable and I don't think her point about modernity cohered. I would have liked it more if she hadn't bothered with trying to make it and instead just written ten essays about her Shakespeare feelings.
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Of course, it's hard to cover some aspect of Shakespeare and his impact on the world that hasn't already been done. This book does have merit in tracking a single theme through to modernity in relation to one of the 10 Shakespeare plays she discusses. Examples are Romeo and Juliet and youth and Hamlet and character. The book is enjoyable though a little heavy going at times.
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Great book, though it needs an update!
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The last sentence begins, "The timelessness of Shakespeare is achieved by his recurrent timeliness." Absolutely right. The problem is that the previous 272 pages do not lead to this statement. Worse, Garber fails to address the many times when Shakespeare is not “universal.” Marlowe’s EDWARD II has more to say to our time than TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA, and what can be less universal than the word “honorificabilitudinitatibus”? Garber’s thesis is that Shakespeare creates modern culture and modern culture creates Shakespeare, which she fails to prove, and so settles for this short meditation of timelessness. As to the part of her thesis that Shakespeare created modern culture, this is only partly demonstrated (there are many influences, which she does not really acknowledge), but that modern culture also creates Shakespeare is only occasionally demonstrated, and then not convincingly. Do we create Shakespeare or interpret him? These are not the same, but too often the answer Garber goes to the latter. Very occasionally she muddies everything so effectively that while we can’t say that now culture creates Shakespeare, we wonder if it might. The chapter of MV is a case in point. Garber is at her best when she shows how writers such as Joyce, Stoppard, and even the writers of business books have appropriated Shakespeare in their work, though she admits the business writers get Shakespeare wrong undermining her thesis that modern culture creates Shakespeare. She is at her best 90% of the time. The 10% wrong with this book is the dots she so often fails to connect as described above, and perhaps a dozen statements that are just silly. This is a good book, but it should have been better.
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"He was not of an age, but for all time!"
Ben Jonson (1573-1637), Preface to the First Folio
Author Marjorie Garber’s premise is this:
Shakespeare’s plays almost always seem to coincide with the times in which they are read or produced. They are eternally “modern”. How can that be? How has each age seen Shakespeare as speaking for that time, right up to today? And as we change, how can Shakespeare’s works continue to change right along with us?
The author chooses 10 plays in which to explore these questions as well as others that specifically pertain to the individual play.
I found the questions raised about race in Othello, the female sensibilities of the character of Hamlet, and the changing and emerging role of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice especially compelling.
We will be hearing a lot about Shakespeare with the approaching 400th anniversary of his death in April 2016. This book adds a lot to the conversation. -
Does anyone ever read straight through a collection of essays? I generally wander and sample, so it may not be fair to rate this book yet. Given the title, I maybe shouldn't have been surprized and irked when, at one point, Shakespeare is described as postmodern before modern. Overall, though, the book makes readers more conscious of how Shakespeare has been read through the lenses of critical, political, or moral agendas. The essays on the Tempest and Merchant usefully and thoughtfully map out trends in reading Shylock, Prospero, and Caliban. The passage on exemplarity in Henry V was also thought-provoking. The breadth of the topic works against a totally satisfying exploration of many interesting ideas and observations, though.
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The back-cover blurb calling this "the best seminar on Shakespeare" or similar is right on: Garber brings up a lot of interesting points and connections, but doesn't always follow through on them. Lots of new threads to pursue – and of course am moved to read / re-read the plays themselves – but I was occasionally reminded of
this Onion bit. Also quite self-conscious about "studying up on" Shakespeare at age 30, as if prefiguring the "senior" or "life-long learner" who typically revisits the Great Books post-retirement. -
If there was a star between 3 and 4 on the goodreads ratings that is where this book would fall. Marjorie Garber does her usual impeccable job of explicating Shakespeare's text without paraphrasing or talking down to her readers. She knows her subject extremely well and seems to enjoy writing about Shakespeare. Her discussions of of how we see Shakespeare through the prism of modern culture is terrific but some of her comparisons/parallels between specific plays and more current events are facile.
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Read my review of
Shakespeare and Modern Culture.
I student gave me this book, and when I couldn't decide which book to read next, Maggie helped me out by selecting this one.
My first suggestion if a new edition is ever written is that Garber introduce each chapter with a quick summary of each play she discusses. I am familiar with the plots of the plays I've read recently, but I read plays like The Tempest and Coriolanus (or did I read it? can't remember!) too long ago for me to remember some of the plot. -
Garber looks at the dramatist’s major works from Romeo and Juliet, Merchant of Venice to Macbeth and Othello, just to name a few. From politics to popular culture and media, Shakespeare can be found everywhere. This is an entertaining and insightful read on how Shakespeare has been interpreted over time and how it is entrenched in our cultural psyche. I highly recommend it! –Amy O
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I really enjoyed this book, particularly the chapters on Othello and The Merchant of Venice. Garber looks at the plays from all sorts of angles including performance history, editing history, how the plays have been quoted and in what contexts, and contemporary parallels of the characters or situations. I know I will return to the book.
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There's lots of interesting thought in this book, but it doesn't cohere. Or maybe I'm just annoyed that most of her 'modern' culture examples are so old that I guess modern (as opposed to post-modern) does apply to them.
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Particularly good thoughts about Richard III and Henry V as they relate to a modern climate of spin.
But I would have enjoyed at least a chapter/paragraph/sentence explaining why there are no comedies considered in the book at all (Tempest and Merchant don't count). -
The title doesn't lie--it's all about Shakespeare and modern culture, from cartoons to film versions of plays. Much insightful stuff about more recent plays by people like Beckett, Stoppard, and Bond as well, and interesting glimpses of interpretations by Marx and Freud besides.
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Haven't read the entire book, but I've read enough for the semester. This book is meant for those who are much more fluent in Shakespeare (not me), so it's rather difficult if you're not.
From what I was able to glean, it's interesting. -
Garner combines her rich Shakespearean scholarship with her wide ranging imagination and her orientation to world as text in this entertaining gloss on how Shakespeare shaped modern life and modern life shapes Shakespeare (yet again).
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I heard Dr. Garber speak at Temple U. She is an amazing woman with diverse interests. Her perspective on Shakespeare is unique and refreshing, and valuable to anyone teaching Shakespeare.
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So far, very scholarly (as expected) and VERY insightful- lost of "aha"s and "hmmm"s and I'm only on the first chapter. Looking forward to getting into it more deeply.
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I took my time reading a chapter or two at a time and then leaving to come back to it later. All in all I just had higher expectations for the book and was disappointed.
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Very insightful, and well-written. This was the last book my father read.
