Exhibition: Shakespeare at the OU

There is not space here in this online exhibition even to begin to do justice to the Open University’s thorough treatment of all aspects of Shakespeare’s texts and the challenges and rewards of performance. But it is necessary to take a brief glance at the treatment of critical theory. The Open University invites students to confront and evaluate differing (and sometimes competing) critical approaches to Shakespeare. ‘Shakespeare: Text and Performance’, after all, also implies ‘Shakespeare: Performance and Text’!

And to modern aficionados the context in which the plays were written, as well as the culture in which they are set and also in which they are performed, are essential to anything approaching a fully rounded understanding and appreciation of the texts. Such schools of criticism as New Criticism, Feminism, Post-Colonialism, New Historicism and Cultural Materialism (and others) are explored and evaluated in the Open University video materials (Clip 18).

View Clip 18