Introduction: The Shakespeare User

Abstract

This introductory chapter argues that in the twenty-first century, Shakespeare readers are increasingly replaced by Shakespeare users. The chapter imagines Shakespeare not as a man or a body of work but a network of collective innovation, and considers the ways in which materialist forces shape—and are shaped by—Shakespeare use. The emergence of digital culture as mass media has expanded the user’s ability to participate in the text, and this chapter considers how new opportunities for critical interrogation arise when Shakespeare is used in communities, online and otherwise, that catalyze a new economy of creative and critical appropriation. Fan agency, transmedia representation, and creative critical use point to a new intracultural identity for Shakespeare, encouraging critics and users to rethink Shakespeare’s presence in cultural and intellectual thought.