eBook - ePub

Shakespeare and Fun

Name: Shakespeare and Fun
ISBN: 9781350002852

The Birth of Entertainment Value

Donald Hedrick,

English
ePUB (mobile friendly)
Available on iOS & Android

eBook - ePub

Shakespeare and Fun

The Birth of Entertainment Value

Donald Hedrick,

About this book

In this bold, original study Hedrick proposes an early modern 'entertainment value' revolution, to which Shakespeare contributed and in which he played a competitive role. As London's nascent capitalist industry developed and the variety of entertainments proliferated, theatre contributes to the birth of entertainment value and a commercial trajectory toward what Marxist critic Adorno theorizes as 'fun, ' seen contemporaneously in LasVegasization and the election of Donald Trump to U.S. Presidency. In this innovative approach to Shakespeare's plays through their compulsory, competitive relation to other choices from London's entertainment industry, such as sex work and gaming, Hedrick recovers a coherent internal dynamic of theatre's 'pleasure enclosure' accompanying the revolutionary logic of capital's new cultural and economic extremes. Applying these relations to original, insightful readings of A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Winter's Tale, and The Taming of the Shrew, Hedrick draws from cultural studies, contemporary and personal parallels, wide-ranging historical materials, and political theory. These include: the semantic shifts in keywords of pleasure, the practice of betting on actors, the psychology of paying admission before an entertainment, and various 'reality shows' such as contests of prose and verse. Continual insights emerge, both broad and specific: from ten 'entertainment value axioms' to Shakespeare's awareness of entertainment value's birth at moments in his late plays, marking a logic of value crisis, bubbles, and the danger of 'too much fun.'

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Yes, you can access Shakespeare and Fun by Donald Hedrick in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in History & Shakespeare Drama. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.