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'Richard Wilson's meticulously researched, powerfully argued and brilliantly written account of Shakespeare's 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's plays and poems were persistently misread as documents which voiced the fascist sympathies of their author. Wilson argues that the version of Shakespeare this caricature produced - authoritarian, jingoistic, racially intolerant, misogynistic - was viewed with satisfaction by many of the leading figures of the century's cultural establishment in Britain and America, while noting striking cases of the same bias in Germany and France.
Some of the names this book focuses on will surprise: many of the right-wing political views or leanings of the prominent figures discussed have been left unexplored or ignored: 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 and writers, artists and theatre practitioners including W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, Edward Gordon Craig and Marshall McLuhan. At a time when democracy is under threat, populism is on the rise and far right views are increasingly prominent in our political discourse, Richard Wilson's book makes an especially vital contribution to Shakespeare scholarship.
Contents
Foreword, Roger Holdsworth (University of Oxford, UK), Robert Stagg (University of Birmingham and University of Oxford, UK) and David Thacker (University of Bolton, UK)
Introduction: Blackshirt Shakespeare
Chapter 1. All Perform Their Tragic Play: Yeats Goes to Stratford
Chapter 2. Hamlet in Weimar: Gordon Craig and the Nietzsche Archive
Chapter 3. Dance of Death: Lawrence and the Morris Men
Chapter 4. Memory Theatre: The Bad Demons of Frances Yates
Chapter 5. Broken Coriolanus: Eliot's March on Rome
Chapter 6. Black Swan: Shylock and the Chestertons
Chapter 7. Crooked Cross: Wilson Knight and the Sun-Wheel
Chapter 8. What Light Through Yonder Window Breaks: Marshall McLuhan's New Dawn
Chapter 9. Operation Sea Lion: Carl Schmitt and the Scepter'd Isle
Chapter 10. Bad Faith: Clara de Chambrun and Le Grand Will
Epilogue: Shakespeare and the Merchant of Hamburg
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index
