Shakespeare and the Ethics of Appropriation

273 Pages·2014·1.44 MB·English

by  Alexa Huang

Shakespeare and the Ethics of Appropriation
Reproducing Shakespeare: New Studies
in Adaptation and Appropriation
Reproducing Shakespeare marks the turn in adaptation studies toward recon-
textualization, reformatting, and media convergence. It builds on two
decades of growing interest in the “afterlife” of Shakespeare, showcasing
some of the best new work of this kind currently being produced. The series
addresses the repurposing of Shakespeare in different technical, cultural,
and performance formats, emphasizing the uses and effects of Shakespearean
texts in both national and global networks of reference and communication.
Studies in this series pursue a deeper understanding of how and why cul-
tures recycle their classic works, and of the media involved in negotiating
these transactions.
Series Editors
Thomas Cartelli, Muhlenberg College
Katherine Rowe, Bryn Mawr College
Published by Palgrave Macmillan:
The English Renaissance in Popular Culture: An Age for All Time
Edited by Greg Colón Semenza
Extramural Shakespeare
By Denise Albanese
The Afterlife of Ophelia
Edited by Kaara L. Peterson and Deanne Williams
Spectral Shakespeares: Media Adaptations in the Twenty-First Century
By Maurizio Calbi
Shakespeare’s Surrogates: Rewriting Renaissance Drama
By Sonya Freeman Loftis
Bollywood Shakespeares
Edited by Craig Dionne and Parmita Kapadia
Shakespeare and the Ethics of Appropriation
Edited by Alexa Huang and Elizabeth Rivlin
Shakespeare and the Ethics of

Appropriation
Edited by
Alexa Huang
and
Elizabeth Rivlin
SHAKESPEARE AND THE ETHICS OF APPROPRIATION
Copyright © Alexa Huang and Elizabeth Rivlin, 2014.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-37576-6
All rights reserved.
First published in 2014 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States— a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-47744-9 ISBN 978-1-137-37577-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137375773
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Shakespeare and the ethics of appropriation / edited by Alexa Huang and
Elizabeth Rivlin.
pages cm.—(Reproducing Shakespeare)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Shakespeare, William, 1564–1616—Adaptations—History and
criticism. 2. Moral conditions in literature. 3. Ethics in literature.
I. Huang, Alexa, 1973– editor. II. Rivlin, Elizabeth J., 1971– editor.
PR2880.A1S573 2014
822.3(cid:25)3—dc23 2014015391
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: October 2014
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents

Acknowledgments vii
Introduction Shakespeare and the Ethics of Appropriation 1
Alexa Huang and Elizabeth Rivlin
Chapter 1 Shakespearean Rhizomatics: Adaptation, Ethics, Value 21
Douglas Lanier
Chapter 2 Recognizing Shakespeare, Rethinking Fidelity:
A Rhetoric and Ethics of Appropriation 41
Christy Desmet
Chapter 3 Ethics and the Undead: Reading Shakespearean
(Mis)appropriation in Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula 59
Adrian Streete
Chapter 4 Adaptation Revoked: Knowledge, Ethics,
and Trauma in Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres 73
Elizabeth Rivlin
Chapter 5 Double Jeopardy: Shakespeare and Prison Theater 89
Courtney Lehmann
Chapter 6 Theater Director as Unelected Representative:
Sulayman Al-Bassam’s Arab Shakespeare Trilogy 107
Margaret Litvin
Chapter 7 A “Whirl of Aesthetic Terminology”:
Swinburne, Shakespeare, and Ethical Criticism 131
Robert Sawyer
vi (cid:77) Contents
Chapter 8 “Raw-Savage” Othello: The First-Staged Japanese
Adaptation of Othello (1903) and Japanese Colonialism 145
Yukari Yoshihara
Chapter 9 The Bard in Bollywood: The Fraternal Nation and
Shakespearean Adaptation in Hindi Cinema 161
Gitanjali Shahani and Brinda Charry
Chapter 10 Multilingual Ethics in Henry V and Henry VIII 179
Ema Vyroubalová
Chapter 11 In Other Words: Global Shakespearean
Transformations 193
Sheila T. Cavanagh
Afterword “State of Exception”: Forgetting Hamlet 211
Thomas Cartelli
Appendix For the Record: Conversation with Sulayman Al-Bassam 221
Bibliography 241
Notes on Contributors 257
Index 261
Acknowledgments

Alexa Huang and Ton Hoenselaars led a seminar on “Shakespeare,
Appropriation, and the Ethical” at the 2007 Shakespeare Association
of America Meeting in San Diego. That conversation germinated
ideas for the present book. Some of the seminar members’ contributions
are part of this volume, while more essays were commissioned on other
occasions. The editors are grateful to Tom Cartelli and Katherine Rowe
for their support and inclusion of the book in their series, “Reproducing
Shakespeare: New Studies in Adaptation and Appropriation.” We would
like to thank the anonymous reader for invaluable feedback, and we express
our gratitude to Brigitte Shull, Naomi Tarlow, and Ryan Jenkins at Palgrave
Macmillan, who were both patient and encouraging during the lengthy
process of editing this volume. Research support from the editors’ institu-
tions has played a crucial role in the completion of the book. Elizabeth
Rivlin thanks Clemson University for a generous sabbatical leave and
Cameron Bushnell, Erin Goss, Michael LeMahieu, and Brian McGrath for
their excellent suggestions about improving the introduction. Alexa Huang
thanks her research assistant, Katherine Bradshaw at George Washington
University, for her hard work and editorial acumen, especially with the
bibliography.
Alexa Huang, George Washington University,
and Elizabeth Rivlin, Clemson University
INTRODUCTION

Shakespeare and the Ethics of
Appropriation
Alexa Huang and Elizabeth Rivlin
The 2012 London Olympics ushered in a new era of global
Shakespearean appropriation. The Globe-to-Globe festival, held in
conjunction with the Olympics, brought theater companies from
many parts of the world to the United Kingdom to perform Shakespeare in
their own languages (“37 plays in 37 languages”). Globe-to-Globe suggested
the ethical aspirations of such ambitious Shakespearean events as well as
their conflicts and contradictions. Self-conscious about international poli-
tics and the guilty pleasure of festive cosmopolitanism, Globe-to-Globe’s
website promised that the festival “will be a carnival of stories,” including
inspirational ones of the companies “who work underground and in war
zones.”1 By giving expression to marginalized, oppressed, and disenfran-
chised cultural voices, Shakespeare becomes a vehicle of empowerment, an
agent to foster the multicultural good. Yet the global reach of this festival
and others of its kind also invites pressing questions: How does Shakespeare
make other cultures legible to Anglo-American audiences? What does it
entail for the British media to judge touring productions of Shakespeare from
around the world? What roles do non-Western identities, aesthetics, and idi-
oms play in the rise of Shakespearean cinema and theater as global genres?
To what extent do non-Western Shakespeare productions act as fetishized
commodities in the global marketplace? Shakespearean celebrations on an
international scale continue through the decade, tied to the landmark years
of 2014 (the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth) and 2016 (the 400th
2 (cid:77) Alexa Huang and Elizabeth Rivlin
anniversary of his death). In an age when Shakespeare is increasingly glo-
balized, diversified, spread thin, and applied in service of a multitude of
agendas, it is more urgent than ever to analyze the ethical ramifications,
byproducts, and problems that inevitably attend such appropriations.
To tackle the range of issues involved, this volume is organized around
the three words in our title: Shakespeare, ethics, and appropriation. The
first refers to a biographically known person and his works, but also, and
especially important for our purposes, to a signifier with rich and unstable
connotations. The second term, ethics, is notoriously difficult to define,
but most people agree that ethics focus on how human beings should act
and treat one another and, in particular, what constitutes a good action.2 In
our contemporary context, ethics are often interpreted specifically in terms
of a responsibility to cultural otherness. The third term, appropriation,
introduces difficult questions about the relationship between Shakespeare
and ethics. With its connotations of aggressive seizure and forced posses-
sion, it might suggest that Shakespeare is a signifier that can be seized and
deployed—against Shakespeare’s will, as it were.3 From this perspective,
appropriation might seem inherently unethical. Yet, to borrow from Diana
Henderson, we could also say that Shakespeare “collaborates” with and inter-
venes in appropriations: perhaps Shakespeare need not be a passive victim
in the transaction.4 Precisely because appropriation carries strong overtones
of agency, potentially for the appropriated as well as for the appropriator, it
can convey political, cultural, and in our contention, ethical advocacy. The
fact of appropriation therefore does not prescribe in advance a particular
ethical stance but does make evident its status as an act and its entanglement
with ethics. In choosing appropriation over adaptation, the most common
alternative, we do not pretend that these two terms are mutually exclusive—
indeed, the term adaptation appears in the introduction and several of the
essays—but seek to highlight the active potential of appropriation and the
openness of its forms, which encompass cultural deployments in addition to
discrete works. Combining our three title words, the volume considers the
following questions: What are some ways to describe and define the ethics
of Shakespearean appropriation? How do ethics intersect with aesthetics,
authority, and authenticity? What can the “ethics of appropriation” add to
the analysis of Shakespeare’s afterlife?
Most fundamentally, we assert, ethics is an essential, often missed, term
in discussions of Shakespeare and appropriation. To address and redress
this lack, the essays in this volume come at the interrelation of the three
terms in several ways. Some contributors explore how ethical issues in
Shakespeare’s plays have been received and interpreted, others study the