Wartime Shakespeare

This is the first book-length interdisciplinary study of how Shakespeare has been mobilized in performance at times of conflict spanning the eighteenth to the twenty-first century. It sets out a brand-new critical methodology that recognizes how wartime theatre is mediated by networks of production and reception that control its meaning and impact. Performances of Shakespeare''s plays like the texts themselves do not have single or fixed meanings and one production context often brings together conflicting agendas and responses. Amy Lidster explains how differing productions of Shakespeare shed light on issues at the heart of conflicts and negotiate concepts such as patriotism commemoration and propaganda. With wide-ranging transhistorical coverage she argues that wartime Shakespeare is defined by its malleability and plural (mis)understandings which determine its power to shape the experience of war the political issues at stake during a period of crisis and the construction of narratives of conflict.