Shakespeare and Childhood. Ed. Kate Chedgzoy, Susanne Greenhalgh and Robert Shaughnessy

• Velma Bourgeois Richmond

This richly detailed volume is a welcome addition to a growing recognition of the significant relations between children’s literature and canonical writing for adults. Its two-part structure – I. Shakespeare’s Children and II. Children’s Shakespeare – reflects a “dual concern with the historical origins and concerns of Shakespearean childhoods and their continuing history of cultural reinvention” (p. 6). Each part has seven articles that range from analyses of early modern views of childhood and of children’s roles in Shakespeare’s plays to twenty-first century reinventions in popular media and markets. All offer substantial data, often making unfamiliar connections. Three introductions prepare the reader for the collection’s diversity and indicate how the articles foster an understanding of Shakespeare and childhood. Both topics embody an infinite variety that age cannot wither nor custom stale, albeit many overlook or ignore the fascination. In his general “Introduction” Robert Shaughnessy identifies contexts – critical, theoretical, historical, cultural, methodologies of childhood studies, performance and pedagogy.

Seiten 183 - 185