Crossing Media Borders: From Intermedial Shakespeares to Shakespearean Intermediality

This chapter discusses the relations between Shakespeare and intermediality. Early twenty-first-century Shakespearean criticism has paid attention to an intermedial canon of Shakespearean productions. These productions are characterized by their deployment of digital technology. Yet, scholarly approaches to intermediality in Shakespeare are gradually expanding the range of analysis: Instead of solely approaching intermediality as a feature of digital performances of Shakespeare, intermediality is seen as a critical lens. This lens invites us to think of the multiple border crossings between material, spatiotemporal, sensory, and semiotic traits in Shakespeare’s plays. The chapter distinguishes the concepts of intermedial Shakespeares and Shakespearean intermediality. The former refers to intermediality in artistic practice, and the latter, to the intermedial features of Shakespeare’s plays. After explaining the context in which intermedial Shakespeares are studied, I critically analyze scholarship on Shakespearean intermediality in performance as well as in the plays. The results reveal that uses of intermediality in Shakespearean performance on the stage, on screen, and in social media emphasize and stress the relevance of medial borders. Likewise, these results show that intermediality and transmediality are lenses that may productively help rethink Shakespeare in specific contexts in a systematic and sustained manner. Importantly, it is shown that intermediality in Shakespeare depends on creatives’ interpretive decisions and on receivers’ perceptions. Thus, rethinking Shakespeare in intermedial terms can potentially be achieved by considering verbal language as just one more of the many facets of Shakespeare’s semiotic richness.