In 1916, the 300th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death coincided with the first anniversary of the Gallipoli landings, thus providing the impetus for this absorbing study of memory and forgetting, and what the authors call a specifically ‘antipodal’ dynamic of asymmetrical commemorations across the northern and southern hemispheres. The Shakespeare Tercentenary, they note, ‘lies at the cusp … of the imperial and the post-imperial’, and the antipodal reading they offer steers a middle course between the ideas of ‘global’ and ‘local’ Shakespeares by focusing on distinct but ‘antipodally connected’ parts of the world. Their focal cities – London, Sydney, Auckland, and Dunedin – have a ‘sustained socio-historical relationship across the hemispheres’ which causes them to function in a manner characterised by ‘resistance-yet-interdependence’. It is not simply ‘antipodean’ – this isn’t a study of Shakespeare in Australia or New Zealand – it is ‘antipodal’:
David McInnis reviews 'Antipodal Shakespeare: Remembering and forgetting in Britain, Australia, and New Zealand, 1916–2016' by Gordon McMullan and Philip Mead et al.
Antipodal Shakespeare: Remembering and forgetting in Britain, Australia, and New Zealand, 1916–2016
by Gordon McMullan and Philip Mead et al.
Bloomsbury, $160 hb, 239 pp, 9781474271431
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David McInnis
David McInnis is a Senior Lecturer in Shakespeare Studies at the University of Melbourne. In 2016 he was jointly awarded the Australian Academy of the Humanities' Max Crawford Medal (granted to Australian early-career researchers for outstanding scholarly achievement in the humanities). He is the author of Mind-Travelling and Voyage Drama in Early Modern England (Palgrave, 2013), co-editor of Lost Plays in Shakespeare's England (Palgrave, 2014; co-edited with Matthew Steggle), and is currently editing Dekker's Old Fortunatus for the Revels Plays series. With Roslyn L. Knutson, he is founder and co-editor of the Lost Plays Database.
By this contributor
- David McInnis reviews 'Tyrant: Shakespeare on Power' by Stephen Greenblatt
- David McInnis reviews 'Shakespeare’s Library: Unlocking the Greatest Mystery in Literature' by Stuart Kells
- David McInnis reviews 'Antipodal Shakespeare: Remembering and Forgetting in Britain, Australia and New Zealand, 1916 - 2016' by Gordon McMullan and Philip Mead et al.
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