Shakespeare™: myth and biographical fiction

Raymond Chandler and the Art of the “Shakespearean Touch”

“…They reveal, then, an awareness of past and present appropriations—textual, theatrical, cultural, even filmic—of Shakespeare. Farewell is especially attentive to “the cultural life and power” of the Bard “in forms and with meanings that stand well outside of ‘proper’ Shakespeare” (Lanier 19). At the important historical‐political juncture of 1940, perhaps no other approach to Shakespeare would satisfy Chandler.…”

In Our Own Image: Fictional Representations of William Shakespeare, by David Livingstone (Olomouc: Palacký University Olomouc, 2019)

“…

s book is an apt and enjoyable summary of the fictional accounts of Shakespeare's life from the 20 th and 21 st centuries. Partly due to recent popular cultural works such as the British sitcom Upstart Crow (2016-) and the awardwinning Shakespeare in Love (1998), the topic has received the attention of critics in recent decades (Buffey 2020;Lanier 2007;O'Sullivan 2005;Sawyer 2016), but book-length discussions are still rather rare (Franssen 2016). Livingstone's In Our Own Image fills a few gaps, but still leaves plenty of room for investigation.The book more or less follows a chronological order, insofar as it mentions a few 19 th century texts in its Introduction, starts its analytical sections with early 20 th century texts in Chapter 1, and gets to Robert Nye's Mrs. Shakespeare: The Complete Works (1993) and The Late Mr. Shakespeare (1998) in Chapter 5.

…”

“…s book is an apt and enjoyable summary of the fictional accounts of Shakespeare's life from the 20 th and 21 st centuries. Partly due to recent popular cultural works such as the British sitcom Upstart Crow (2016-) and the awardwinning Shakespeare in Love (1998), the topic has received the attention of critics in recent decades (Buffey 2020;Lanier 2007;O'Sullivan 2005;Sawyer 2016), but book-length discussions are still rather rare (Franssen 2016). Livingstone's In Our Own Image fills a few gaps, but still leaves plenty of room for investigation.…”

“It's All a Bit Harry Potter”: The Bard, The Doctor and The Cultural TARDIS in Doctor Who: The Shakespeare Code

“…However, at the same time as the episode works to challenge the audience's perception of the Bard as an aloof and consecrated genius, it concurrently rehearses assumptions about Shakespeare's work being, at times, irrelevant and inaccessible for its cultural consumers. In this regard, Lanier makes the argument that Shakespeare is to be seen as “popular culture's Other,” emblematic of elite literary culture, the inaccessible, the dull, and the long‐winded, and the episode can be seen to force the audience's empathy for the actors who, baffled by the mysterious lines at the end of Love's Labour's Won , mutter to each other, “Have you seen this last bit? Must have been dozing off when he wrote that.…”