Shakespeare and Tourism: Place, Memory, Participation

This is the first book-length academic publication that expands the ongoing exploration of cultural tourism related to Shakespeare in the direction of non-English speaking cultures, and it does so in an emphatically interdisciplinary framework. Having developed from a 2015 Shakespeare studies seminar, the volume calls attention to Shakespeare tourism as cultural practice and Shakespeare tourism as part of a ‘media circuit’/transmedia communication as it highlights the contribution of this cultural and creative practice to defining, redefining, enlivening – in other words, making – sites of culture and heritage. Shakespeare and Tourism also nuances the discussion of how local, regional, national and global aspects of identity are negotiated in touristic contexts and in both contemporary and historically oriented case studies around cultural capital validated as ‘Shakespearean’. Discussion centres on a plethora of contexts and instances of Shakespeare-focused tourism, ranging from the history of «The Interior of the Swan Playhouse» sketch, to the Victorian writer Marie Corelli’s contribution to what Stratford means today, Francesco da Mosto’s 2012 BBC documentary Shakespeare in Italy, the «Globe to Globe Hamlet» tour, ‘Shakespearean’ study abroad experiences, easyJet’s 2014 Shakespeare flight with on-board performance by the Reduced Shakespeare Company and Japanese touristic Shakespeare ‘prosumption’.