Table Of ContentPALGRAVE STUDIES IN
ADAPTATION AND VISUAL CULTURE
Shakespeare’s
Fans
Adapting the Bard
in the Age of
Media Fandom
Johnathan H. Pope
Palgrave Studies in Adaptation and Visual Culture
Series Editors
Julie Grossman
Le Moyne College
Syracuse, NY, USA
R. Barton Palmer
Clemson University
Clemson, SC, USA
This new series addresses how adaptation functions as a principal mode of
text production in visual culture. What makes the series distinctive is its
focus on visual culture as both targets and sources for adaptations, and a
vision to include media forms beyond film and television such as videogames,
mobile applications, interactive fiction and film, print and nonprint media,
and the avant-garde. As such, the series will contribute to an expansive
understanding of adaptation as a central, but only one, form of a larger
phenomenon within visual culture. Adaptations are texts that are not
singular but complexly multiple, connecting them to other pervasive plural
forms: sequels, series, genres, trilogies, authorial oeuvres, appropriations,
remakes, reboots, cycles and franchises. This series especially welcomes
studies that, in some form, treat the connection between adaptation and
these other forms of multiplicity. We also welcome proposals that focus on
aspects of theory that are relevant to the importance of adaptation as
connected to various forms of visual culture.
Advisory Board:
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Deborah Cartmell, De Montfort University, UK
Timothy Corrigan, University of Pennsylvania, US
Lars Ellestrom, Linnaeus University, Sweden
Kamilla Elliott, Lancaster University, UK
Christine Geraghty, University of Glasgow, UK
Helen Hanson, University of Exeter, UK
Linda Hutcheon, University of Toronto, Canada
Glenn Jellenik, University of Central Arkansas, US
Thomas Leitch, University of Delaware, US
Brian McFarlane, Monash University, Australia
Simone Murray, Monash University, Australia
James Naremore, Indiana University, US
Kate Newell, Savannah College of Art and Design, US
Robert Stam, New York University, US
Constantine Verevis, Monash University, Australia
Imelda Whelehan, University of Tasmania, Australia
Shannon Wells-Lassagne, Université de Bourgogne, France
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Johnathan H. Pope
Shakespeare’s Fans
Adapting the Bard in the Age of Media Fandom
Johnathan H. Pope
Memorial University of Newfoundland
Corner Brook, NL, Canada
Palgrave Studies in Adaptation and Visual Culture
ISBN 978-3-030-33725-4 ISBN 978-3-030-33726-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33726-1
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A
cknowledgments
I would like to begin by thanking Andrew Hartley and Peter Holland for
organizing the ‘Shakespeare and Geek Culture’ panel for the 2017 meet-
ing of the Shakespeare Association of American. My work on Ryan North
for that session became the foundation and inspiration for Shakespeare’s
Fans. Writing for and participating in that panel helped me connect a
whole range of disparate thoughts and ideas that had been knocking
around in my head for many years, so I am forever grateful to Andrew and
Peter, as well as to my fellow panelists.
I would also like to thank everyone at Palgrave who has had faith in and
supported this project. From the moment I proposed the book through to
the completion of the manuscript, Palgrave has been a joy to work with.
Thanks especially to Lina Aboujieb, Ellie Freedman, and Emily Wood, as
well as all of the anonymous reviewers who gave constructive and encour-
aging feedback at every stage of production.
Many thanks are due to those at the Memorial University of
Newfoundland (Grenfell Campus) who supported the research for this
monograph. The staff at the Ferriss Hodgett Library ensured that every-
thing went smoothly from start to finish, no matter how strange a docu-
ment I requested. Heather Strickland, Nicole Holloway, Catherine Stone,
Krista Howell, Anita Park, Crystal Rose, and Louise McGillis work won-
ders every day. Thanks also to Jennifer Butler Wight for her good humor
and feedback on funding proposals and to Sarah Levita for her assistance
with research at a very early but essential stage. Thanks to Jeff Keshen for
his unwavering support for research activities at Grenfell. Finally, to any
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
student who got trapped in a conversation with me about Shakespeare fan
fiction: thank you, and I am sorry!
I am eternally grateful to Mary and Howard Pope for their many years
of optimism, encouragement, and emotional support. Many frustrations
and doubts about this book were vented over numerous Sunday dinners,
and the patience and drinks helped get me through this process. Most of
all, thank you to Bonnie White. You are my first and best editor, my daily
motivator, and my academic idol. I promise that I will now stop regaling
you with excerpts of Tom Hiddleston erotica.
Finally, thank you Jack for your love and enthusiasm and for being a
willing recipient of my own fannish nature.
c
ontents
1 Introduction: To Squee or not to Squee? 1
2 “My love admits no qualifying dross”: Affect and the
Shakespeare Fan from 10 Things I Hate About You to
Garrick’s Jubilee 33
3 “my worthless gifts”?: Shakespeare, Legitimacy, and the
Gift Economy 67
4 “the rest is …”: Shakespeare and Online Fan Fiction 99
5 “There is no slander in an allowed fool”: Shakespeare,
RPF, and Parody 133
6 Conclusion 169
Index 177
vii
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: To Squee or not to Squee?
At a recent meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America (SAA), I
participated in a conversation with some fellow panelists about why we all
chose to study Shakespeare in the first place. Some spoke about the intel-
lectual rewards offered by texts, while others told more personal stories
about reading the plays as a child with their parents. While some of us did
not contribute to the conversation, others held back until someone postu-
lated that in trying to answer the question, many of us were probably
looking for the ‘right’ answer, one that was suitably scholarly or poignant
enough that it would not compromise our standing with our peers in the
room, a room which was filled—as SAA sessions often are—with junior
scholars through to the titans of our field. This person joked that none of
us wanted to say, “I got interested in Shakespeare because I had a crush on
Leonardo DiCaprio in Romeo + Juliet.” We laughed, and the conversation
soon moved in a different direction. The whole discussion reminded me
of the game of Humiliation played by a group of professors in David
Lodge’s Changing Places (1975) in which the participants admit which
famous work of literature they have never read. The ‘winner’ of the game
is an English professor who admits to having never read Hamlet, a revela-
tion so ghastly that he loses his job because of it. Saying that you came to
Shakespeare because of Leo seemed to be the equivalent of being ignorant
of Hamlet: there are just some things you do not say, no matter how true
© The Author(s) 2020 1
J. H. Pope, Shakespeare’s Fans, Palgrave Studies in Adaptation and
Visual Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33726-1_1
2 J. H. POPE
they are. In the case of Romeo + Juliet (1996), the fear being danced
around was of being seen by your peers as immature and overly affective
rather than appropriately serious and academic. In fan cultures, ‘squeeing’
describes excessive “emotional exuberance” when discussing a favorite
film or meeting the actors from a favorite television series.1 It is also a term
that is almost always used in a pejorative sense, the suggestion of shame-
lessly overdoing it by gushing, by getting too excited. Many of us are at the
SAA because we love Shakespeare or because we love talking about his
works with other people who love talking about the same thing. But we
are scholars and critics. We do not confuse infatuation with critical inquiry.
We do not squee, not when we are talking about Shakespeare, and not
when we are meeting our academic idols at the conference.
When we think of fans, Shakespeare does not come immediately to
mind. Rather, we tend to think of media fandom, particularly fans of sci-
ence fiction and fantasy, that image of the fan that has come to dominate
popular culture depictions of the fan, whether they be Trekkies or fans of
Star Wars or Harry Potter. Images of enthusiastic individuals dressed up as
a favorite character while waiting in line to buy a movie ticket or the new-
est book in a series might spring to mind. We might also think of sports
fans devoted to a favorite team, decked out officially licensed gear, and
proclaiming that ‘this is the year!’ Or we might think of fans of a particular
band who are continually saving for plane tickets and concert tickets.
Maybe we think of collectors of sports or film memorabilia, passionate
proponents of a particular videogame console or cellphone manufacturer,
or adherents of celebrity culture. Shakespeare, however, tends to remain
on the margins of our conception of fandom in spite of—or, perhaps,
partly because of—his cultural and educational pride of place as the canon-
ical author. This also in spite of the fact that, as I argue throughout this
book, Shakespeare’s fans have been around for centuries, even if they have
not often been written about or conceptualized as fans. Rather, we have a
different name for Shakespeare fandom: bardolatry.
For Shakespeare scholars unfamiliar with it, fan studies has grown sub-
stantially as a field of study over the past three decades, especially since the
publication of Henry Jenkins’ Textual Poachers (1992), exploding further
with the advent of Web 2.0 in the late 1990s when fan practices became
both more visible and more accessible. Jenkins wrote in response to the
1 Mark Duffett, Understanding Fandom: An Introduction to the Study of Media Fan
Culture (New York and London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 46.
