Schedule / Horaire
Panel A: Wednesday 23 April 2014, 9h-10h30
Panel B: Wednesday 23 April 2014, 16h-17h30.
Room: V107.
Leaders / Organisatrices
Clara Calvo, Universidad de Murcia (Spain) and Coppélia Kahn, Brown University (USA)
Participants
Panel A:
- Andrew Murphy, University of St. Andrews (UK)
Radical Commemorations: 1864 Chartists and 1916 Rebels - Monika Smialkowska, Northumbria University (UK)
Reluctant Commemorators: Rudyard Kipling’s and Thomas Hardy’s Contributions to Israel Gollanz’s A Book of Homage to Shakespeare - Nely Keinänen, University of Helsinki (Finland)
Commemoration as Nation-Building: The Case of Finland, 1916
Panel B:
- Richard Schoch, Queen’s University Belfast (Ireland)
Genealogies of Shakespearean Acting - Graham Holderness, University of Hertfordshire (UK)
Remembrance of Things Past: 1851, 1951, 2012 - Nicola J. Watson, Open University (UK)
Gardening with Shakespeare
Abstracts / Résumés
1. Andrew Murphy, University of St. Andrews (UK)
Radical Commemorations: 1864 Chartists and 1916 Rebels
The tercentenary of Shakespeare’s death happened to coincide exactly with the separatist uprising staged in Dublin at Easter weekend in 1916 – generally seen as the foundational moment of Irish independence. This paper explores the Shakespearean connections of some of the activists who took part in the uprising and examines these Irish cultural networks within the greater context of political appropriations of the poet stretching back to the Working Men’s Shakespeare Committee, which was closely involved in celebrations of the tercentenary of the poet’s birth, in 1864.
2. Monika Smialkowska, Northumbria University (UK)
Reluctant Commemorators: Rudyard Kipling’s and Thomas Hardy’s Contributions to Israel Gollanz’s A Book of Homage to Shakespeare
When Israel Gollancz invited Rudyard Kipling and Thomas Hardy to contribute to his commemorative volume for the 1916 Shakespeare Tercentenary, they questioned whether celebrating Shakespeare during the war was appropriate. In the end, Hardy agreed but Kipling refused to write a tribute, allowing only a reprint of his 1898 article on The Tempest. This paper explores the negotiations between the editor and the two writers, investigating the reasons for their respective positions and the impact of the pieces which Gollancz eventually published. In doing so, it interrogates the interactions between commemorating the past and the contingencies of the historical moment in which these commemorations occur.
3. Nely Keinanen, University of Helsinki (Finland)
Commemoration as Nation-Building: The Case of Finland, 1916
This paper examines the curious life of a poetic tribute to Shakespeare by the Finnish poet Eino Leino. The version published in The Book of Homage to Shakespeare (1916) ends with a searing call for freedom of speech; the version Leino published in his political/literary journal as part of a 1916 Shakespeare commemorative issue is missing the final three lines; and these same lines have been meticulously cut out of one copy of Homage in the Finnish National Library. These versions show how minority cultures use “Shakespeare commemoration” for their own purposes but also the ways their efforts to voice dissent are thwarted.
4. Richard Schoch, Queen’s University Belfast (Ireland)
Genealogies of Shakespearean Acting
To what extent has Shakespeare in performance been regarded as a living archive, an embodiment and preservation of past performances? To what extent has performance been regarded as the opposite: a source of novelty and innovation that spurns its own past? Is acting Shakespeare a matter of commemoration or, alternatively, dismissal? Contrasting case studies of the Restoration actor Thomas Betterton (c. 1635-1710) and the Victorian actor-manager Henry Irving (1838-1905) demonstrate that both the commemorative tradition and its opposite have dominated concepts of theatrical excellence at different moments. Each tradition enjoyed a period of dominance, revealing the theatre’s changing perspective on itself.
5. Graham Holderness, University of Hertfordshire (UK)
Remembrance of Things Past: 1851, 1951, 2012
This paper examines the re-contextualisation of Shakespeare in three major festival celebrations of British culture: the Great Exhibition of 1851, the Festival of Britain 1951, and the London Olympics of 2012. In all three we find Shakespeare repositioned in relation to the disciplines of engineering, design and technology. Three case studies explore how Shakespeare is simultaneously celebrated as a cornerstone of British culture, and brought into intimate relation with the scientific and technological priories of the festivals. These re-contextualizations also bring Shakespeare into connection with some key themes of contemporary Shakespeare studies, including internationalism and popular participation.
6. Nicola J. Watson, Open University (UK)
Gardening with Shakespeare
When and why did the idea of making Shakespeare gardens develop, and what has plausibly constituted a ‘Shakespeare garden’? Garrick’s celebration of Shakespeare as ‘Warwickshire Will’ led to claims for an organic relation between Shakespeare’s genius and the English countryside. Eventually, a concept of the ‘Shakespeare garden’ emerged from the Arts and Crafts movement in gardening. Many such gardens were realised in Stratford, then exported to the USA and developed in more hostile environments. The history of Shakespeare gardens provides a context for understanding the projected redevelopment of New Place and its garden for the 2016 anniversary.