The Shakespeare Remix

Catalog description

From Taylor Swift’s “The Fate of Ophelia” to Toni Morrison’s Desdemona, artists across genre and generation have devoted themselves to reimagining Shakespeare’s famous plays from the perspective of ‘minor’ characters. Why the continued confidence that 400-year-old characters have something new to say to a modern audience? This course will examine the rich tradition of re-writing Shakespeare’s ‘minor characters’ by writers seeking to challenge legacies of social discrimination and cultural exclusion that have frustrated readers for centuries. Reading original text of selected Shakespeare plays alongside creative re-writings, we will consider the potential and peril of these artistic critiques — in the end, does spotlighting underrepresented characters actually “fix” the problems identified in the original works? Examining plays, novels, and movies, we will seek to better understand how generations of writers have returned to “The Bard” to entertain and challenge audiences today.