Bakhtin vs Shakespeare?

Authors

  • David Schalkwyk Queen Mary University of London and University of Warwick

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.13136/a1t6wr43

Abstract

This essay returns to Bakhtin’s place in Shakespeare criticism in the light of his relative neglect by Shakespeareans over in the twenty-first century. It asks whether Bakhtin is correct to dismiss the theatre as insufficiently ‘dialogical’ and offers a critical account of his remarks on Shakespeare in the “Bakhtin on Shakespeare”, published in 2014. It argues that Bakhtin’s remarks on Shakespeare show his lack of a proper, historical, knowledge of the nature of Shakespeare’s theatre and stagecraft, which was much closer to the carnivalesque nature of the marketplace than he understands, and that his denigration of the theatre as such stems from the “theatre with footlights” of his experience in Russia and the Soviet Union. Rather than dismiss Bakhtin, however, the essay argues that a combination of his work on carnival and his broader philosophy of language may be used productively in a new critical reading of Shakespeare. It closes with a brief example from King John to illustrate this argument.

KEYWORDS: Bakhtin; Shakespeare; Weimann; Rabelais; carnival; heteroglossia; dialogism

Author Biography

  • David Schalkwyk, Queen Mary University of London and University of Warwick
    Academic Director, Global ShakespeareSchool of English and DramaQueen Mary University of London

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Published

2024-12-31

Issue

Vol. 10 No. 2 (2024): Memory and Performance. Classical Reception in Early Modern Festivals

Section

Miscellany

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Copyright (c) 2024 Skenè. Journal of Theatre and Drama Studies

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