People have been writing about Shakespeare for almost 400 years now. His works have been analyzed and re-analyzed using all of the latest literary and psychological and sociological theories. His works have been translated and transposed into countless languages and settings. There is truly a universality to the works of William Shakespeare, and the advent of internet technologies and Web 2.0 are no exception.
What does it mean to study Shakespeare in the Digital Age? How does one make the collected works of William Shakespeare accessible to an audience that is growing more global and more technologically savvy? How does a four hundred year old play stand up against the latest 3-D movie or video game?
These are the questions that we need to be asking ourselves as scholars of Shakespeare in the 21st century. These plays have so much humanity in them that they have continued to be relevant and insightful throughout history and across cultures. People enjoy reading Shakespeare and watching it performed, they enjoy taking the stories and characters of Shakespeare and using them and adapting them to whatever situation or circumstance they can. These plays still have meaning and purpose, but we need to start discussing how we can continue to use these plays in the world of Facebook and Twitter and YouTube. Just doing a quick search for "Shakespeare" on YouTube returned 93,500 results. People are talking about Shakespeare, discussing Shakespeare, performing Shakespeare, reinterpreting Shakespeare on the Internet almost daily.
I hope to use this space to explore my own thoughts and experiences with Shakespeare. I will be reading several plays, some old favorites and a few that I have yet to read. I will also be watching a few movie versions of his plays, but I am also looking for any online media content related to Shakespeare or his plays. I also am very interested in Shakespeare in Germany, since my major is German and I have studied both German and Theatre since middle school. I am going to look for different German translations of Shakespeare's plays as well as researching the history of translating Shakespeare into German. I will write here regularly with what I have found and what I am thinking. I love the collaborative nature of the internet that allows anyone and everyone to be connected and share thoughts and ideas and help guide and direct research. Hopefully this blog will become a place where together we can explore what Shakespeare continues to mean to us in an era of Web 2.0 and how we can go about utilizing all of the wonderful resources that are available to help promote a better understanding and a love of William Shakespeare.
