Slings & Arrows and the State of Play in Shakespeare Studies

What is it about?

The critically celebrated but academically controversial Canadian television series Slings & Arrows presents a poignant exploration of the interrelations between art and life. By depicting a dialectic of faith in and doubt about the transformative power of fictional narrative, Slings & Arrows mirrors the larger world of Shakespeare studies as it has unfolded not only since the Bardbiz debate of the early 90s but across much of the last century. In large part, this is because the show allegorises some of the key distinctions outlined in Peter Brook's landmark work The Empty Space (1968). In doing so, the series rises above the status of a televisual roman-à-clef about the Stratford Ontario Shakespeare Festival under the direction of Richard Monette to become a convincing account of the dialectic between conviction and malaise typical of modern classical theatre as a vocation, and, by extension, of early modern literary studies as a vocation. Ultimately, the show's avowal of Shakespeare's cultural authority does not rest on camera-angles, keenly timed arpeggios, emotional realism, or hunky actors. More fundamentally, it derives from its overall narrative conception, its weaving together of the plays, the show's own story, and the producers' real lives.

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