The video-sharing platform YouTube signals exciting opportunities and challenges for Shakespeare studies. As patron, distributor and archive, YouTube occasions new forms of user-generated Shakespeares, yet a reduced Bard too, subject to the distractions of the contemporary networked mediascape. This book identifies the genres of YouTube Shakespeare, interpreting them through theories of remediation and media convergence and as indices of Shakespeare's shifting cultural meanings. Exploring the intersection of YouTube's participatory culture - its invitation to 'Broadcast Yourself' - with its corporate logic, the book argues that YouTube Shakespeare is a site of productive tension between new forms of self-expression and the homogenizing effects of mass culture. Stephen O'Neill unfolds the range of YouTube's Bardic productions to elaborate on their potential as teaching and learning resources. The book importantly argues for a critical media literacy, one that attends to identity constructions and to the politics of race and gender as they emerge through Shakespeare's new media forms. Shakespeare and YouTube will be of interest to students and scholars of Shakespearean drama, poetry and adaptations, as well as to new media studies.

Author Biography

Stephen O'Neill is a Lecturer in the School of English, Media and Theatre Studies, National University of Ireland Maynooth, with teaching and research interests in Shakespearean and English Renaissance drama and also Shakespeare adaptation, especially in popular culture and new media. His publications include Staging Ireland: Representations in Shakespeare and Renaissance Drama (2007) Shakespeare and the Irish Writer (2010), co-edited with Janet Clare; and essays on the reception of Shakespearean drama