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Shakespeare and Complex TV: “Our Old Work Coming Back to Haunt Us”

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Shakespeare’s Serial Returns in Complex TV

Part of the book series: Reproducing Shakespeare ((RESH))

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Abstract

The introductory chapter argues that in the transmedial transformation of Shakespeare’s oeuvre, the adaptational energy once associated with Shakespeare films has partly travelled to complex TV, which offers a new field for fruitful examinations of Shakespearean adaptations. It discusses the phenomenon of ‘quality’ or ‘complex’ TV series and explains how the study seeks to initiate a dialogue between Shakespeare studies, adaptation studies, and TV studies. Making a case for the influence, sometimes unacknowledged and unintentional, of the Shakespearean legacy on the selected TV series, the introduction charts the variety of adaptational strategies that the book discusses, from direct intertextual references and an emphasis on the Shakespearean legacy in the marketing of the series to the lack of any such references in unmarked adaptations. This broad spectrum of adaptational strategies allows for mutually illuminating readings of the plays and the TV series as well as for insights into adaptation theory. In each of the series, a particular form of a return is taken over as a topic from Shakespeare, and at the same time this serialised form of return speaks to the series’ adaptational stance: returns of the dead in Westworld, returns of the predecessor in Succession, returns to the roots in Black Earth Rising, and returns to the home in Homeland.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    I will discuss this question in more detail below. For an exemplary account of this question, see the substantial introduction and the contributions to the collection Shakespeare/Not Shakespeare edited by Christy Desmet, Natalie Loper, and Jim Casey (Desmet et al. 2017).

  2. 2.

    As Simon Ryle notes in his study of Shakespearean film versions, the ‘thisness’ of film, its mostly realistic visuality, “is in direct contrast to the ‘radically synecdochic’ quality of English Renaissance theatre” (2014, 10).

  3. 3.

    Patricia Parker introduced the term ‘pre-post-erous’ as an analytical category for reading early modern plays: “Preposterous—from posterus (after or behind) and prae (in front or before)—connotes a reversal of ‘post’ for ‘pre’, behind for before, back for front, second for first, end or sequel for beginning” (1996, 21). Mieke Bal employs the concept of ‘preposterous history’ to describe a “reversal, which puts what came chronologically first (‘pre-’) as an aftereffect behind (‘post’) its later recycling” (1999, 6–7). Bronfen uses Bal’s concept for her method of crossmapping (2004, 18).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. English and Comparative Literature, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany

    Christina Wald

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Correspondence to Christina Wald .

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Wald, C. (2020). Shakespeare and Complex TV: “Our Old Work Coming Back to Haunt Us”. In: Shakespeare’s Serial Returns in Complex TV . Reproducing Shakespeare. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46851-4_1

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