Shakespeare's far‐reaching influence in the arts past and present is the subject of this collection of 30 essays. The editors do not claim to be exhaustive but their contributors cover a huge amount of ground chronologically and thematically. Shakespeare has “cultural authority”, they justifiably say, and is distinctive “as a measure of global value”. The Companion is divided into six differing but complementary sections. It logically begins with textual matters, including means of production, poetry and anthologies. The second section explores music in the plays and in the work of various composers. From there, we proceed to the stage and performance. Youth Culture, perhaps surprisingly, comes next and brings us right up to date with chapters on teenagers and on the Comic Book. The fifth section, Visual and Material Culture, deals with such “manifestations of the Bard in the arts” as portraits and festivals. Finally, we have Media and Culture, taking into account the modern technologies that have brought us radio, films, television and the internet.
Shakespeare's relevance to today's culture is made apparent in many parts of the book. Peter Holbrook, in Shakespeare and Poetry, has references to Ted Hughes and John Berryman and a lengthy discussion of the work of Thom Gunn, whose “fusion of energy with order is the true Shakespearean inheritance”. A range of novels is used by Marianne Novy to show how he has shaped fiction past and present, notably the Scylla and Charybdis episode in Joyce's Ulysses. Modern critical methodology (like narrative and reception theory) can open new routes into classical music associated with Shakespeare, as Julie Sanders suggests in the conclusion to her article on the subject. Adrian Streete notes by the way that Shakespearean operas are relatively unexplored and Rodney Stenning Edgecombe writes a fascinating piece on Shakespeare, Ballet and Dance. Innovation in stage production also throws new light on Shakespeare – Andrew James Hartley identifies the ways in which different spaces today can shape performances, as in the activities of some American companies. Films from the silent days onwards are among the most striking examples of his work in modern times. They have of course been produced for well over a hundred years (from the 1890s to the present day) and are surveyed in three chapters by Judith Buchanan, Anne‐Marie Constantini‐Cornede and Ramona Wray. Stephen Purcell writes on Shakespeare on Television and it is very welcome to see a chapter by Susanne Greenhalgh on Shakespeare and Radio – a medium ideally suited to his work and often overshadowed by television. Michael Best in the last part of the book agrees that the rapid and continual development of new technologies can be seen as daunting but says that it offers a challenge to “Shakespeareans and students of the Humanities”.
Children's responses to Shakespeare have been nurtured from the beginning of the nineteenth century as Amy Scott‐Douglass shows. Charles and Mary Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare are the best known versions. Kevin J. Wetmore Jr thinks that teenagers' attitudes can be shaped by films and rewritings from their own youthful perspective and by a conviction that Shakespeare engages with issues that concern them. Kate Rumbold points out in Shakespeare Anthologised that schoolchildren in the UK, whether they like it or not, must study some Shakespeare as part of the National Curriculum. Comic books can be helpful as well as humorous and there are always festivals and exhibitions to delight us all, as Michael P. Jensen and Mark Thornton Burnett describe in chapters on those various amusements.
Scholarly historical material is present throughout the Companion. A fine example is the opening chapter on Textual Shakespeare by Sonia Massai, who analyses, among other things, the editorial achievements of influential editors like Nicholas Rowe and Dr Johnson. Fascinating, too, are the detailed accounts of Shakespeare and the Renaissance, Restoration and Eighteenth, Victorian and Modern Stages by Edel Lamb, Fiona Ritchie, Richard Foulkes and Christie Carson. Here students and teachers will find the essential characteristics, works and actors that they need for theatrical studies. Chapters on Shakespearean portraits and sculptures Erin C. Blake and Balz Engler are well illustrated. There are, in fact, quite a number of illustrations in the Companion although strangely enough none to accompany the film and television chapters.
I realise that I have omitted a good deal from my account of this substantial book, which is fully informative in the best kind of traditional way. The chapters conclude with lists of further reading and the works cited. The Companion, an attractively produced volume, is expensive but it is a necessary and rewarding investment for scholarly libraries.
