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From page to stage: editing two Shakespeare plays for use in the theatre.

Summary of the impact

Academics at King's have long been involved in the editing of Shakespeare. Their editions have benefited school students and teachers, general readers, and theatre practitioners. Here we describe the impact which two King's-edited plays have had on theatrical performances and cultural life. Both were published in the Arden Shakespeare series, the general editorship of which has been located at King's for nearly 30 years. Hamlet and King Henry the Eighth, edited by Ann Thompson (co-editor, with Neil Taylor) and Gordon McMullan respectively, were used in major theatrical productions by the RSC in 2009 and Shakespeare's Globe in 2010. Impact is demonstrable in sales figures, directors' statements, viewing figures, and in related media appearances by Thompson and McMullan.

Submitting Institution

King's College London

Unit of Assessment

English Language and Literature

Summary Impact Type

Cultural

Research Subject Area(s)

Language, Communication and Culture: Cultural Studies, Literary Studies

Shakespeare in Performance: informing theatrical productions and promoting Britain's cultural engagement

Summary of the impact

Performance brings Shakespeare alive and each performance reveals new contexts for, and meanings to his plays. Research on Shakespeare in Performance is a core departmental activity that encompasses complementary themes and leads to impacts across a wide range of strands and fields. Warwick's Shakespeare scholars have explored the relationship between text and performance to bring a new understanding of Shakespeare to professional theatre companies and a renewed enjoyment to public audiences. In particular, their research has impacted on theatre productions, exhibitions, and public understanding through screenings, workshops, talks, young people's theatre and schools.

Submitting Institution

University of Warwick

Unit of Assessment

English Language and Literature

Summary Impact Type

Cultural

Research Subject Area(s)

Language, Communication and Culture: Cultural Studies, Literary Studies
History and Archaeology: Historical Studies

Debating Shakespeare in the Olympic Year

Summary of the impact

This project created a new space for public debate surrounding the World Shakespeare Festival, which was a key strand in the UK's 2012 Cultural Olympiad. By creating a collaborative online forum that invited cultural conversation, the project facilitated discussion about the role of Shakespeare and the arts in twenty-first century culture as well as generating the only complete, critical, and publicly-accessible account of the largest intercultural celebration of Shakespeare ever staged. The project is an examplar of interdependent research and impact.

Submitting Institution

University of Birmingham

Unit of Assessment

English Language and Literature

Summary Impact Type

Cultural

Research Subject Area(s)

Studies In Human Society: Policy and Administration
Language, Communication and Culture: Literary Studies

William Hazlitt

Summary of the impact

The 19th century essayist William Hazlitt is a great, but neglected, master of English prose. Uttara Natarajan's research into his writings is a major factor in the revival of public interest of his multi-faceted achievement. She has led public discussions of his works and life at the Hazlitt Society and Hazlitt Day School, both of which she co-founded. In 2008, she launched the annual Hazlitt Review which reaches a wide general readership and academics. Her study has led to a range of invited public engagements, such as speaking on BBC Radio 4's In Our Time-William Hazlitt programme and delivering various public lectures.

Submitting Institution

Goldsmiths' College

Unit of Assessment

English Language and Literature

Summary Impact Type

Cultural

Research Subject Area(s)

Language, Communication and Culture: Cultural Studies, Literary Studies
History and Archaeology: Historical Studies

Extending Shakespeare’s cultural capital

Summary of the impact

Professor Brean Hammond's scholarly attribution of Double Falsehood as containing what remains of the `lost' Shakespeare/Fletcher Cardenio (1612/13) and his edition of the play for the prestigious Arden Shakespeare series contributed to the preservation and presentation of an element of literary cultural heritage that had previously been marginalised. Hammond's research has:

  • contributed to the economic prosperity of the Shakespeare publishing industry, delivering `unusually high' sales for Bloomsbury (publishers of his Arden edition), and more broadly serving as a stimulus for the publication of editions by rival publishers (CUP, Palgrave)
  • expanded theatrical repertoire through informing new theatre productions internationally, including the Royal Shakespeare Company's Cardenio (2011), reaching audiences in London, New York, Calgary and Utrecht
  • increased public awareness and knowledge of the play, and stimulated public interest in issues of canonisation, attribution and collaborative authorship through a broad range of international media engagement, and an international series of talks and lectures. The effect of this media engagement on Arden sales suggests engagement from a wider audience than that usually reached by scholarly editions.

Submitting Institution

University of Nottingham

Unit of Assessment

English Language and Literature

Summary Impact Type

Cultural

Research Subject Area(s)

Language, Communication and Culture: Cultural Studies, Literary Studies
History and Archaeology: Historical Studies

Bridging the Gap between Academic and Professional Theatre Discourses in the Reception of Shakespeare’s Plays on Stage and in Translation – A Romanian Case Study

Summary of the impact

Dr Nicoleta Cinpoeş's research played an instrumental role in opening up a `cultural space' in Romania for revised public understanding of, and engagement with, Shakespeare's plays, through: (i) dismantling formerly entrenched distinctions, in Romania, between academic scholars' engagement with Shakespeare and the engagement of professional theatre makers and critics; (ii) seeding discussion and consideration amongst theatre makers, young people in formal education and the general public, of recuperation of Shakespeare in Romania through achievement of an uncensored history of appropriation and, within that project, of new, `clean' translations of the plays; (iii) supporting new translations of Shakespeare's plays directly, by providing rigorous, non- specialist, reader-friendly introductions that trace individual plays' stage and textual histories, as well as provide an up-to-date survey of their reception in criticism, stage practice and film adaptation.

Submitting Institution

University of Worcester

Unit of Assessment

English Language and Literature

Summary Impact Type

Societal

Research Subject Area(s)

Language, Communication and Culture: Cultural Studies, Literary Studies
History and Archaeology: Historical Studies

Shakespeare in Hong Kong

Summary of the impact

In collaboration with the HK Education Bureau, the British Council, theatre practitioners, teachers and school pupils and answering to their needs, Shakespeare in Hong Kong examined the current role and reception of the world's most studied author in order to reconfigure his work as a site for the debate of issues facing the people of Hong Kong today, thereby opening it to intercultural dialogue. The project induced policy change in the British Council's Shakespeare World Wide Classroom project as well as with the Hong Kong Education Bureau, influencing curriculum and informing cultural content regarding race, gender, sexuality, class and colonialism.

Submitting Institution

University of Greenwich

Unit of Assessment

English Language and Literature

Summary Impact Type

Societal

Research Subject Area(s)

Education: Curriculum and Pedagogy, Specialist Studies In Education
Studies In Human Society: Sociology

Sulayman Al-Bassam’s Arab Shakespeare Plays

Summary of the impact

The impact of Graham Holderness's work lies in the establishment of a synergy between academic research and the professional practice of a successful dramatist, Sulayman Al-Bassam, whose adaptations of Shakespeare into Arabic have played in theatres on four continents. Originating as a critical study, the research developed, via direct engagement with the writer, into a public `conversation', thus giving ideas derived from the research a global reach. The insights of the research have been both internalised in the plays and disseminated via accompanying public events, thus conveying them to the audiences attending the performances. This continuing rapprochement reveals a demonstrable influence of the research over the writer's artistic choices.

Submitting Institution

University of Hertfordshire

Unit of Assessment

English Language and Literature

Summary Impact Type

Cultural

Research Subject Area(s)

Language, Communication and Culture: Cultural Studies, Literary Studies
History and Archaeology: Historical Studies

'Tis a mad world at Hoxton’: Leisure, License and Local History in The Tempest

Summary of the impact

The impact described here concerns the history of Hoxton, London, in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, especially in relation to Shakespeare's The Tempest and the anonymous poem Pimlyco, or Run Red Cap`Tis a mad world at Hogsdon. As outlined below, the project adds to the cultural capital of this inner-city area of London, and gives one of Shakespeare's most famous plays `back' to the inhabitants of the city where it originated.

Submitting Institution

St Mary's University, Twickenham

Unit of Assessment

English Language and Literature

Summary Impact Type

Cultural

Research Subject Area(s)

Language, Communication and Culture: Literary Studies
History and Archaeology: Historical Studies

Reading Shakespeare’s Sonnets in the Digital Age

Summary of the impact

While Shakespeare's plays enjoy a strong presence in popular culture (including through film adaptations), the Sonnets have remained relatively less accessible. Practice-led research in the School, conducted by Don Paterson, twice winner of the T. S. Eliot prize for poetry, and informed partly by the historical research of Renaissance colleague Neil Rhodes led to Paterson's Reading Shakespeare's Sonnets, a full-length popular commentary written from the perspective of a practising sonneteer. Subsequently Paterson's research benefitted World Book Night 2012 and involved him in work as consultant and contributor for Faber/Touch Press on their highly successful Shakespeare's Sonnets iPad application. The impact of this research has been that (1) an historically remote and formally challenging body of poetic work has been reinterpreted for a wide non-academic audience; (2) contribution has been made to innovative, entrepreneurial activity in the digital publishing sector, while cultural heritage has simultaneously been `curated'; (3) economic prosperity in the publishing and software industries has been stimulated. The users of research in this case study are the reading public; a major charitable trust; a relatively new digital publishing company; the print publishing industry.

Submitting Institution

University of St Andrews

Unit of Assessment

English Language and Literature

Summary Impact Type

Cultural

Research Subject Area(s)

Language, Communication and Culture: Cultural Studies, Literary Studies
History and Archaeology: Historical Studies

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