The Really Real, Authentic, Original Shakespeare

Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance vol. 13 (28), 2016; DOI: 10.1515/mstap-2016-0002 Abstract: This essay considers the question of how original/new interpretations help redefine (or reify) the original/old perception of Shakespeare and the work its cultural capital performs, demonstrating the inherent impossibility of reconciling an original Shakespeare with contemporary performances of his plays through a reading of Twelfth Night, and address some of the ideological implications of trying to conflate the two. It then takes a detour into contemporary marketing and consumer-psychology literature to explore the crucial roles which the concepts of authenticity and originality have come to play in contemporary consumer culture, circling back to Shakespeare, to ruminate on the implications of the use of his cultural capital as an ultimate positional good in the 21st century. Keywords: authenticity, consumer capitalism, consumerism, identity, individuality, originality, Shakespeare, Twelfth Night I would like to begin by showing how the concept of originality has a twofold opposing denotation. One, following Baldwins cited observation, travels backwards in time to a (perhaps mythologized) point of an authentic origin that roots and undergirds later existence. The second refers to original interpretation of Shakespeare, one thatby definition of its newnessdisrupts the continuity of tradition, and provides a transversal glimpse of a differential perspective. As such, while intrinsically linked to it, the second conception of originality (which I will here call original/new) negates the first conception (here, original/old) by, minimally, erasing the continuity of previous interpretation to derive back at an origin (e.g. previous interpretations of Shakespeares Taming of the Shrew reified the subjection of women to men, but here I demonstrate that Shakespeare really meant to deliver a blow to male chauvinism), and, in the opposite extreme, juxtaposing a new interpretation of the Shakespearean canon against the canon itself, perhaps undermining a particular aspect of the Shakespearean cultural capital and cultural industry (e.g. Shakespeare did mean us to delight in anti-Semitism in the Merchant; how do we reconcile the idea of Hamline University. Marcela Kostihova The Really Real, Authentic, Original Shakespeare 12 Marcela Kostihova a disgustingly racist Shakespeare with the general perception of the uber-humane Bard?). I propose to interrogate this tension in considering the question of authentically original Shakespeare overall: what do we mean when we say original or authentic Shakespeare? Why and how do we seek it? What are the ongoing implications of defining and reifying it through academic, theatrical, and educational practice? And, how do original/new interpretations help redefine (or reify) the original/old perception of Shakespeare and the work its cultural capital performs? In The Authentic Shakespeare, Stephen Orgel destabilized the very source to which were claiming authenticity.1 In a series of thematic articles, he undermines, one by one, the traditional touchstones that have anchored our interpretation of Shakespearean work. Since the plays were written for performance rather than publication, we can hardly recognize their published textual iterationsno matter how carefully preservedas anything stable or purposeful; the texts attributed to him do not in any way represent the true, or final, or accurate, or authentic text of the work they presented (Orgel 7). Furthermore, our obsession with the published work seems to be dissonant with the Renaissance nonchalance about text, cutting and rewriting at will, not to mention the 2 hour expected maximum duration for all traffic of the stage requiring dramatic textual cuts that leave the plays open to radical reinterpretation. Focusing on the author works poorly as well, considering how little we know of Shakespeare and how collaborative the writing process was; we know for (almost) certain that other Renaissance playwrights have written some parts of some of the plays at some time (the witches in Macbeth seem to have been radically altered after the death of the playwright for instance, Orgel delights in telling us). …