Teaching Shakespeare through Performance

Abstract

My personal experience of Teaching English through Shakespeare to students of English at the University of Salerno in the last decade is recorded in the article and related to the critical and theoretical development of the relationship between Shakespeare and Performance, which in very recent years has become an autonomous discipline in Shakespeare Studies (W. B. Worthen). The first performative turn inaugurated by J. L. Styan’s The Shakespeare Revolution in the 1970s has been superseded by a second one in the postmodern era marked by the electronic and new media revolution. In the first phase Shakespeare in performance was still, in a way, subordinated to his text, while in the second Shakespeare is absorbed in the performative process which is growing more and more inclusive going from the page to the stage, to the screen, to the new media. In the last part of the article Almereyda’s Hamlet 2000, following Worthen’s lesson, is considered paradigmatic in revealing how a “spectral” Shakespeare contributes to a self-reflexive critique of performance. In the end the 2012 h.a.m.l.e.t (“How A Man Loves Entertainment Technology”) by the students of the University of Salerno is presented as following the steps of Almereyda’s movie on the stage, documented by declarations of some contributors to the performance and links on YouTube.