Shakespeare and Modern Culture

December 15, 2008
The pervasive influence of Shakespeare on modern culture cannot be overstated. Garber argues that we should not merely consider how culture has appropriated and interpreted Shakespeare but how Shakespeare "writes" the modern. Thus, for instance, Freud does not so much interpret Hamlet as interpret himself through Hamlet. Romeo and Juliet define our conception of lovers, and Prospero, Caliban, and Ariel inscribe the colonial and postcolonial discourse. Garber (William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of English and American Literature and Language, Harvard Univ.) has written extensively on Shakespeare, including the award-winning "Shakespeare After All". She covers ten major plays, examining their role in literature, performance, film, politics, theory, and popular culture. Though Garber assumes familiarity with the plays and some theoretical sophistication, her treatment is thorough, witty, fluent, and accessible. An important contribution for both the serious reader and the specialist; recommended for public and academic libraries.T.L. Cooksey, Armstrong Atlantic State Univ., Savannah

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2008
This is not about Shakespeare in modern culture. It is a wide-ranging foray into Shakespeare and into modern culture. Shakespeare, Garber argues, makes modern culture, while modern remakings of Shakespeare, in turn, remake the Bard, and not only through the theater. Therapists use Freudian understandings of Shakespeare to help clients navigate their lives. Politicians compare their careers to those of Wills imagined kings. Ad writers play with language from the plays (who can resist This is the winter of our discount tents?). A less-eloquent writer might make a tangle of factoids and theories out of all the threadsin one chapter, prison theater, postcolonialism, evolution, magic, and moreGarber masterfully weaves together. Yet the thrills she affords mostly lie in the details: The Merchant of Venice was performed in New York with Shylocks lines in Yiddish. Karl Marx knew Shakespeare almost as well as Freud did. New York once rioted over the best acting in Macbeth. Laura Bush assigned George W. a list of plays he should read.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)