Shakespeare in Love and New Historicism

Ever since formal study began, there have been methods of formal study. And even when these methods are not followed strictly, or combined in a patchwork to serve different needs, they still tend to be more or less categorical when standing alone. One such method is known as New Historicism. Its main focus is on outside factors that influenced a particular work, and thus serves as a counterbalance to New Criticism, which ignores entirely almost everything but the unvarnished text itself.

One example of New Historicism – though perhaps not so much an example as a byproduct of it – is the film Shakespeare in Love. It is almost an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, but rather than focusing on the characters or words of the play, it focuses on how Shakespeare might have come to write it (or not). It shows the interactions between social classes of the time. It shows the barriers between them. It promotes the idea that no work of art springs from one man’s imagination alone.

And perhaps from a certain perspective the film is indeed an adaptation of the play, and perhaps it is the truest of them all. For if the history is as important as the text, does that not, in some way, make the history a part of it?

However, though the approach worked well for this movie, I wouldn’t want to see it spring up everywhere. After all, when I watch Hamlet, I want to hear “To be, or not to be,” not “What the devil do I put here? This writer’s block is consuming me! And my ink just dried again!” I am less interested in Shakespeare than his work.