General Editors’ Preface

Summary

There is a divide between the energy and joy with which the public engages in Shakespeare and what we do as academics. The Recreational Shakespeare series crosses this divide with a series of new, playful, and challenging voices that look at public engagements with Shakespeare in popular culture and education.

Recreational Shakespeare has two emphases. The first is the study of the ways that artists have recreated Shakespeare and his texts on screen, stage, radio, the internet, in other performance media, and in novels, comics, and poetry. Adaptations, riffs, and reimaginings that are clearly inspired by Shakespeare and those that partly or completely hide their origins are in the purview of this series. The other “recreational” element emphasizes the ways these artifacts are consumed as people spend their money and free time enjoying them. Books in this series are quite short. Academic rigour is required. Academic language is not. Recreational Shakespeare books are fun.

The General Editors invite new and established authors to contribute to the Recreational Shakespeare series. We are looking for writers of monographs and editors of anthologies. Please visit the website for a more technical introduction and all the contact information: https://arc-humanities.org/our-series/arc/recs/