Shakespeares Fascist Followers: Modern Friends

(Hardback)

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Richard Wilsons meticulously researched, powerfully argued and brilliantly written account of Shakespeares 20th-century fascist followers is not just an important but a genuinely essential book. Robert Shaughnessy, Guildford School of Acting, UK In this illuminating book, Richard Wilson demonstrates how in the 20th century Shakespeare and his plays were subjected to a sustained institutionalized misreading, which served the purposes of proto-, present and future fascism. It exposes how Shakespeare was misappropriated by the far right to represent Britains supposedly glorious history, and the ways in which they utilized him and the cultural capital of his work. Wilson argues that in Britain the plays were invoked as a way to anglicize fascism, as its leaders campaigned to recover theatre for the national cause by looking back fondly to Elizabethan England. His extensive and rigorous research also gestures beyond Britain, taking in case studies from North America, Germany and France. Some of the names this book unearths will surprise: many of the right-wing political views or leanings of the prominent figures discussed have been brushed under the carpet, left unexplored or ignored. Across its ten chapters, this book provides in-depth case studies of a wide variety of figures, from A. K. Chesterton, who was both editor of the British Union of Fascists' newspaper Blackshirt and former manager of press and publicity at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, to celebrated Shakespeareans such as G. Wilson Knight, through to writers, artists and theatre practitioners including W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, Edward Gordon Craig and Philip Larkin, among many others. At a time when democracy is under threat, populism is on the rise and far right views are increasingly prominent in our political landscape, Richard Wilsons book makes an especially vital and timely contribution to Shakespeare scholarship.

Reviews

Richard Wilsons meticulously researched, powerfully argued and brilliantly written account of Shakespeares 20th-century fascist followers is not just an important but a genuinely essential book: one that includes in its ranks not only known outliers and eccentrics but some of the most celebrated and influential figures in the Shakespeare business. With a cast that includes Edward Gordon Craig, G. Wilson Knight, Philip Larkin and Frances Yates, Shakespeare's Fascist Followers: Modern Friends assembles the devastating evidence of a modernist, fascist Shakespeare that is more deeply embedded in the critical and theatrical canon than many would care to admit; it is hard-hitting and also scathingly funny. * Robert Shaughnessy, Guildford School of Acting, UK *
A fascinating tour of the darker side of Shakespeares political afterlife in the 20th century. * Andreas Hfele, University of Munich, Germany *

Author Bio

Richard Wilson is the Sir Peter Hall Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Kingston University, UK. Roger Holdsworth is a member of Linacre College, University of Oxford, UK. Robert Stagg is Leverhulme Research Fellow at the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, and Senior Member of St. Anne's College, University of Oxford, UK. David Thacker is Professor of Theatre at the University of Bolton, UK.