Shakespeare Inside: The Bard Behind Bars

by Amy Scott-Douglass, Ewan Fernie, Simon Palfrey

Overview

Shakespeare Inside goes behind the scenes to reveal Shakespeare at work in the most decisive institutional context of our time - in prisons. Based upon the author's experience of watching prison yard rehearsals and performances, and interviewing inmates, program directors, and wardens, Shakespeare Inside is not an objective, dispassionate account of how Shakespeare is bastardized by repressive institutions but offers a record of fiercely personal experiences. We hear ex-offender Mike Smith detail how playing Desdemona was vital to his rehabilitation; we sit in the audience of women inmates as they respond to the all-male Shakespeare Behind Bars touring production of Julius Caesar; and we listen to a chorus of unnamed voices explain how rewriting Hamlet helps them to survive solitary confinement. Shakespeare Inside probes any assumptions we might have about Shakespeare's performative function and asks what - if anything - is the proper place of Shakespeare in today's society.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780826486998
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	05/29/2007
Series:	Shakespeare Now!
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	160
Sales rank:	725,841
Product dimensions:	5.06(w) x 7.81(h) x 0.35(d)

About the Author

Ewan Fernie is Professor and Chair of Shakespeare Studies at the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, UK. He is the author of Shame in Shakespeare, the editor of Spiritual Shakespeares and general editor (with Simon Palfrey) of the Shakespeare Now! series.

Simon Palfrey is a Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford University. His books include Late Shakespeare: A New World of Words (Oxford, 1997); Shakespeare in Parts (Oxford, 2007), written with Tiffany Stern and awarded the Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society's David Bevington Prize for best new book; Romeo and Juliet (Short Books, 2011); and the novel Dunsinane, written with Ewan Fernie. He is the founding editor (with Fernie) of Continuum's innovative series of 'minigraphs', Shakespeare Now! His new work includes a book on possible worlds in early modern drama and philosophy, and a play inspired by Spenser's Faerie Queen. His book Doing Shakespeare was published by Arden Shakespeare in 2005, reissued 2011.

Table of Contents

AcknowledgementsAct OneShakespeare Behind Bars: Julius Caesar at Luther Luckett Correctional ComplexSpiritual Shakespeare: Criminality and the Discourse of Conversion
Act Two"Words Before Blows": Sammie Byron, Brutus"Most Noble Brother, You Have Done Me Wrong": DeMond Bush, Mark Antony"Have You Not Love Enough to Bear with Me?": Ron Brown, Cassius
Intermission: Othello: Unplugged at Luther Luckett Correctional Complex
Act ThreeThe Luckett Symposium on Shakespeare and Race: Titus Andronicus, Merchant of Venice, and Othello"George Bush Doesn't Care about Black People": Agnes Wilcox's Julius Caesar at Northeast Correctional Center
Act Four"Romans, Countrymen, Lovers!": The Shakespeare Behind Bars Tour at the Kentucky Correctional Institute for Women"Unsex Me Here": Playing the Lady at LuckettRapshrew: Jean Trounstine and the Framingham Women's Prison
Act FiveA Visit with Warden Larry ChandlerDesdemona Speaks: Mike Smith on the OutsideShakespeare in Solitary: "To Revenge or to Forgive?": Laura Bates' Hamlet and Othello at the Wabash Valley Correctional Facility
Epilogue

Editorial Reviews

-Mention. Daily Telegraph/ April 8, 2007” —Daily Telegraph

“"Scott-Douglass's book is especially powerful because she captures these prisoners' lives in all of their complexity...Shakespeare provides beauty; catharsis; empathy for their victims; therapy." -Studies in English Literature” —Peter G. Platt

“[Shakespeare Now! is] an innovative new series... Series editors Simon Palfry and Ewan Fernie have rejected the notion of business as usual in order to pursue a distinctive strategy that aims to put "cutting-edge scholarship" in front of a broad audience. Shakespeare Now! with its insistent appeal to the contemporary- this is fresh Shakespeare for readers turbaned off by the prospect of dry-as-dust scholarship-aims to reach a general audience... One of the most winning aspects of the book [Shakespeare Inside] is its skillful presentation of testimony, largely drawn from interviews with the actor-prisoners. Scott-Douglass places herself squarely in the picture, acknowledging her own strong reactions to what she discovers in prison and reminding readers that her embodied presence provoked comments, just as her questions elicited confidences from the prisoners. In a compelling passage near the conclusion, Scott-Douglass describes in novelistic detail attending a parole hearing for one of the actors whose bid for freedom is denied... Shakespeare Inside offers firsthand reporting on contemporary Shakespeare that speaks to an enormous range of social and cultural issues and takes full advantage of the small format's immediacy. It is a thought-provoking account of the uses to which Shakespeare is being put outside the confines of the academy and the privileged performance venues that steadily attract a strange mixture of enthusiasts and the variously coerced... Shakespeare Inside is compelling jourbanalism” —Shakespeare Quarterly

“"Where is Shakespeare now? This question is the brief for a new series of short books from Continuum, an enterprising publisher trying to break down the border between academic literary criticism and books for the thoughtful general reader. Amy Scott-Douglass's book Shakespeare Inside based on observations and interviews, reveals how Shakespeare really can change lives." Jonathan Bate, The Sunday Telegraph” —Jonathan Bate, Sunday Telegraph

“"The author faced her fears, a decision, she says, that resulted in one of 'the most important and enlightening experiences of [her] adult life.' Based on observations and interviews, Shakespeare Inside: The Bard Behind Bars offers a voyeuristic peek inside the prison theatre program at Luther Luckett Correctional Complex in La Grange, Kentucky...like an 'adventure story.'" - Text and Presentation” —Sara L. Warner, Tidings

From the Publisher