Shakespeare in Canada is the result of a collective desire to explore the role that Shakespeare has played in Canada over the past two hundred years, but also to comprehend the way our country’s culture has influenced our interpretation of his literary career and heritage. What function does Shakespeare serve in Canada today? How has he been reconfigured in different ways for particular Canadian contexts?

The authors of this book attempt to answer these questions while imagining what the future might hold for William Shakespeare in Canada. Covering the Stratford Festival, the cult CBC television program Slings and Arrows, major Canadian critics such as Northrop Frye and Marshall McLuhan, the influential acting teacher Neil Freiman, the rise of Québécois and First Nation approaches to Shakespeare, and Shakespeare’s place in secondary schools today, this collection reflects the diversity and energy of Shakespeare’s afterlife in Canada.

Collectively, the authors suggest that Shakespeare continues to offer Canadians “remembrance of ourselves.” This is a refreshingly original and impressive contribution to Shakespeare studies—a considerable achievement in any work on the history of one of the central figures in the western literary canon.

Ce livre est publié en anglais.

IRENA R. MAKARYK. Professor of English, cross-appointed to Theatre, at the University of Ottawa. Her research interests focus on Shakespeare’s afterlife, Soviet theatre, modernism, and theatre during periods of great social duress. Her most recent book is April in Paris 1925: Theatre, Politics, Space (forthcoming).

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KATHRYN PRINCE. Theatre historian at the University of Ottawa, where she is an Associate Professor and, in 2016, recipient of the Excellence in Education prize. Her current work focuses on the practice of emotions in early modern drama. She has published widely on Shakespeare in performance from the seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries.

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ANNIE BRISSET. Professor emerita, University of Ottawa, School of Translation and Interpretation, FRSC. Prize-winning author on translation, founding member and past president of IATIS (International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies), consultant to UNESCO on translation-related projects.

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RICHARD CAVELL. Professor, Department of English, University of British Columbia. Expertise in Canadian cultural studies and cultural memory, Marshall McLuhan, and media theory, and a published playwright.

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DANA COLARUSSO. Ontario educator since 1998, with varied roles from high-school English teacher to instructor at Trent and UOIT Faculties of Education. Currently FSL Teacher, Durham Catholic Board of Education. 2010 Dissertation Award from the Canadian Association for Teacher Education for her book Teaching English in the Global Age: Cultural Conversations.

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DANIEL FISCHLIN. University Research Chair, University of Guelph. Founder and Director of the Canadian Adaptations of Shakespeare Project (canadianshakespeares.ca) with numerous publications on Shakespeare in / and Canada.

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TRONI Y. GRANDE. Associate Professor and Head of the English Department at University of Regina, where she teaches Shakespeare, early-modern and eighteenth-century drama, and feminist theory. Her publications include Northrop Frye’s Writings on Shakespeare and the Renaissance (co-edited with Garry Sherbert), Marlovian Tragedy: The Play of Dilation, and two feminist essays on Frye.

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PETER KULING. Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre at the University of Ottawa. He has edited issues of Canadian Theatre Review on “Digital Performance” and “Sports and Theatre” while completing his forthcoming monograph Queer Shakespeare in Canada: Adaptations and Performances of Nationalism and Sexualities.

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SARAH MACKENZIE. Assistant Professor at the University of New Brunswick, where she teaches Indigenous Literature. Her dissertation examined the ways Indigenous women playwrights address the colonialist legacy of violence against women in contemporary North American contexts. Her academic research interests include Indigenous theatre, postcolonial feminist theory, Canadian history, and Indigenous literatures.

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C. E. MCGEE. Professor Emeritus in the English Department of the University of Waterloo. A member of the Board of Governors of The Stratford Festival from 1992 to 1999, he continues to serve on its Education and Archives Committee. Besides ongoing work on the New Variorum Othello and the REED Wiltshire and Yorkshire West Riding, he studies productions of Shakespeare’s plays in Canada.

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DON MOORE. Instructor, Department of English, University of Guelph. Expertise in literary theory, film studies, and Shakespearean adaptations. He received his PhD in English and Cultural Studies from McMaster University in 2008 for a dissertation interrogating the ethical rhetoric of 9/11. His recent research has focused on the ethics and politics of post-9/11 global cinema and mass media, and on the cultural impacts of intermedial adaptations of Shakespeare.

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IAN RAE. Associate Professor, Department of Modern Languages, King’s University College at Western University. Expertise in Canadian literature, recipient of an Insight Development Grant entitled “Mapping Stratford Culture.”

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TOM SCHOLTE. Professor in the Department of Theatre and Film at UBC, recipient of Canada Screen Awards as actor/director/writer for theatre and film, with performances on professional stages across Canada and work screened at film festivals including Sundance, TIFF, Rotterdam, and the Berlinale.

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KAILIN WRIGHT. Assistant Professor, St. Francis Xavier University. Expertise in Canadian drama with research published or forthcoming in Canadian Literature, Studies in Canadian Literature, and Theatre Research in Canada. Her critical edition, The God of Gods: A Canadian Play by Carroll Aikins, was published by the University of Ottawa Press in 2016.

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The best of these essays provide interesting overviews of how Shakespeare is performed in this country, particularly at Stratford. C. E. McGee’s opening chapter on Stratford’s nine productions of The Merchant of Venice is particularly rewarding for its investigation of how Merchant’s characters have been made to evolve. Robert Ormsby offers a detailed analysis of Stratford’s “multinationalist” productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Twelfth Night, cleverly tying director Leon Rubin’s imaginative concepts to Stratford’s role in creating cross-border tourism. Among the other thoughtful contributions are intriguing explorations by Kailin Wright and Don Moore of the CBC’s Slings & Arrows, the TV series inspired by the Stratford Festival; a tough, uncompromising, but gracefully written overview by Sarah Mackenzie of Stratford’s various attempts at acknowledging Indigenous traditions in Canada; and Annie Brisset’s fascinating take on the history of Shakespeare translations and productions in Quebec

Graham Nicol Forst