Shakespeare’s Contested Nations

<p><em>Shakespeare’s Contested Nations</em> argues that performances of Shakespearean history at British institutional venues between 2000 and 2016 manifest a post-imperial nostalgia that fails to tell the nation’s story in ways that account for the agential impact of women and people of color thus foreclosing promising opportunities to re-examine the nation’s multicultural past present and future in more intentional self-critical and truly progressive ways.</p><p>A cluster of interconnected stage and televisual performances and adaptations of the history play canon illustrate the function that Shakespeare’s narratives of incipient British identities fulfill for the postcolonial United Kingdom. The book analyzes treatments of the plays in a range of styles—staged performances directed by Michael Boyd with the Royal Shakespeare Company (2000–2001) and Nicholas Hytner at the National Theatre (2003 2005) the BBC’s <em>Hollow Crown</em> series (2012 2016) the RSC and BBC adaptations of <em>Wolf Hall</em> and <em>Bring Up the Bodies</em> (2013 2015) and a contemporary reinterpretation of the canon Mike Bartlett’s <em>King Charles III</em> (2014 2017).</p><p>This book will be of great interest to scholars and students of Shakespeare theatre and politics.</p>