{"title":"The Hollow Crown: Quality Television and Colonial Performances","authors":"Dan Leberg","doi":"10.5325/RECEPTION.10.1.0027","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"abstract:The Hollow Crown's adaption of Shakespeare's history plays as a Quality Television miniseries is replete with an opulent production design, a fast-paced and lucid narrational strategy, and an all-star Royal Shakespeare Company and BBC cast. At the same time, the miniseries' political commentary is a complicated blend of contemporary dramaturgical interventions within traditionally conservative interpretations under the guise of literary fidelity. As a transnational production, the miniseries precariously commodifies British literary correctness to present the miniseries to international audiences as \"authentically\" British and therefore \"authoritatively\" Shakespearean. The miniseries' representation of Welsh and French characters often equates non-English languages and accented non-British English with savagery, subordinance, and arrogance. In particular, the Henry V episode normalizes the play's imperialist politics as an authoritative interpretation by presenting Henry V as a traditionally virtuous hero while avoiding any significant commentary on economically motivated preemptive wars of conquest.","PeriodicalId":40584,"journal":{"name":"Reception-Texts Readers Audiences History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1000,"publicationDate":"2018-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Reception-Texts Readers Audiences History","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.5325/RECEPTION.10.1.0027","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
abstract:The Hollow Crown's adaption of Shakespeare's history plays as a Quality Television miniseries is replete with an opulent production design, a fast-paced and lucid narrational strategy, and an all-star Royal Shakespeare Company and BBC cast. At the same time, the miniseries' political commentary is a complicated blend of contemporary dramaturgical interventions within traditionally conservative interpretations under the guise of literary fidelity. As a transnational production, the miniseries precariously commodifies British literary correctness to present the miniseries to international audiences as "authentically" British and therefore "authoritatively" Shakespearean. The miniseries' representation of Welsh and French characters often equates non-English languages and accented non-British English with savagery, subordinance, and arrogance. In particular, the Henry V episode normalizes the play's imperialist politics as an authoritative interpretation by presenting Henry V as a traditionally virtuous hero while avoiding any significant commentary on economically motivated preemptive wars of conquest.
期刊介绍:
Reception: Texts, Readers, Audiences, History is a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal published once a year. It seeks to promote dialog and discussion among scholars engaged in theoretical and practical analyses in several related fields: reader-response criticism and pedagogy, reception study, history of reading and the book, audience and communication studies, institutional studies and histories, as well as interpretive strategies related to feminism, race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, and postcolonial studies, focusing mainly but not exclusively on the literature, culture, and media of England and the United States.