Rubén Jarazo Álvarez

Universidade da Coruña, Spain

rjarazo@udc.es

 

 

Digital Shakespeare in the Youtube Era:

Forcing the boundaries of literature to expand the audiovisual text

 

 

Abstract: The new possibilities that digitalising audiovisual performances as well as palaeographic records have in this high-technological globalised era are not unknown to early modern England and Shakespearean scholars and teachers. However, what are the advantages and disadvantages, if any, in this process of globalisation and the digitalisation of Shakespeare’s texts and performances? This article will try to settle some of the most urgent issues related to Shakespeare’s multiplicity of records on the Internet, and more specifically, on youtube and in the Shakespeare Electronic Archive. We will also decipher some of the changes that one of the most global canonical writers in universal literature is experiencing in digital literature.

Keywords: Shakespeare; Youtube; Digital text; Audiovisual text; Performance; New trends.

 

 

November 25^th 2009 represents a key date in the field of Shakespearean studies. This is the date when researchers, teachers and readers could access the Henslowe Alleyn Archive’s files in digital format without impediment. This news, although not very striking at first sight in the era of Information and Technology, represents a revolution in Shakespearean studies. The official Archive of Dulwich College in London holds thousands of manuscripts left by its founder and actor Edward Alleyn (1566-1626). This archive, which also includes the records inherited from his father-in-law Philip Henslowe (d. 1616), could be considered as the most important single archive of material on the professional theatre and dramatic performance in early modern England. The name of the Archive is indebted to Henslowe and Alleyn, who built several London public playhouses, namely the Rose, or the Fortune, and also commissioned plays from dramatists, ran several acting companies of the time, becoming the backbone of professional theatre in England.

The ambition of this project, the single most important digital archive on early modern English theatre, designed by experts at King’s College London and the University of Reading, make available the only surviving records of theatre box office receipts, as well as building contracts, listings of designs of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, and many other digital materials. The Henslowe-Alleyn Project, (2004-2009) mainly designed to protect the fragile manuscripts in Dulwich College, has become an essential tool to make more widely available in an electronic format early Modern England legal, economic, or drama records[1].

But how does the global expansion of information in digital format, namely this project, affect established concepts in Shakespearean studies? The Henslowe-Alleyan Archive is just an example of the changing trends in early modern England Studies, which are becoming more and more digital and global. Although Shakespearean studies have already suffered a severe deconstruction from revolutionary methodological approaches (e.g. Postcolonial Shakespeare, or Shakespeare in Popular Culture Studies, and many others), Polysystem’s Theory is maybe the most flexible and convenient to explain the effects of digital literature in traditional print writing.

Even-Zohar and the School of Tel-Aviv undertake the study of the literary creations as a dynamic and heterogeneous phenomenon, essentially opposed to the synchronistic approach, predominantly structural or functional, which has dominated for decades the study of Shakespearean Studies. The term “system” is already a commitment to the concept of functionality (dynamic), that is, a network of relationships that may be hypothesised for a given observable set of assumptions. This implies that “this set” is not an “entity” or an independent “reality”, but dependent on the relationships that one is willing to propose[2]. The greater the number of parameters to be considered in an analysis, the more complex and controversial will the latter be. We are therefore on a system open to discussion, and as the author himself states, “it must be accepted that the level of detailed analysis may be more limited, since it is more difficult to manage an open system, than a closed one”[3]. In this open complexity is where digital literature, as well as translations from one literary system into another take place.

Tel-Aviv School also distinguishes between two different relational dependencies: intra-relations and inter-relations. For Itamar, a semiotic (poly)system as literature is essentially a component inside another macro(poly)system: culture. In fact, this tendency enhances a complex hypothesis about literature’s concern with language choice, society, economy, politics, ideology, and so on. Systems and literatures are framed taking into account culture as a unifying framework. Thus, a unifying cultural community is represented by individuals and groups that act as producers and consumers of these literary creations. These concepts are of great interest, since the concepts of producer and consumer cannot be divorced from writer and reader, especially in digital literature.

Similarly, and according to Even-Zohar, the producer’s role in contemporary culture is not as clear as one might believe at first sight. It is convenient to note that a literary creation is the outcome of the activity of a producer. On the other hand, the role of consumers in creative writing also helps to understand the Shakespearean play. In this sense, both producers/writers and consumers/readers participate in several levels of the literary activity. In this regard, Even-Zohar distinguishes between direct and indirect consumers. Every member of any community is at least an indirect consumer of literary texts. As such, we, as members of the community, simply consume a certain amount of literary fragments, digested and transmitted by various cultural agents and integrated into everyday speech. Fragments of old stories, allusions and idioms, parables and coined phrases, cultural references and images, all these and more live repertoire are deposited in the warehouse of our culture[4].

Similarly, in regard to the strong intertextualisation of literary creations, it is also of interest that, naturally, any canonical text such as Shakespeare’s can be recycled at any given moment into the repertoire in order to become a canonised model again. But once it is recycled, it is no longer considered a finalised product, but as a potential set of instructions, e.g., a model. The fact that it had once been canonised and become canonical, sanctified, “may or may not be advantageous for it vis-à-vis no-canonical products that have as yet in position at all”[5]. So what happens then to Shakespeare’s canonical works when they are recycled into digital literature? Do these new phenomena assume a new definition? What is essentially digital literature? Is digital literature and literature in the digital formatting the same?

As a topic, digital literature is very hard to define. Scholars such as Kettman[6] make at least four basic distinctions:

 

– Digitalisation of print literature. Platforms such as the already mentioned The Henslowe-Alleyn Project, The Project Gutenberg, or its Scandinavian counterpart The Project Runeberg would definitely fall in this category. These platforms keep old texts safe from physically deteriorating, and mostly make rare records available for a larger audience, creating a useful corpus for researchers, teachers and students. Let alone, it opens a lot of new possibility of statistical analysis (e.g. humanistic computing) of word and phrase search.

– Digital publication of original literature. These literary creations do not employ any hypertextual language codification. Literature in digital form is regarded as a means of effective distribution. This publishing technique is generally used by amateur writers, although established authors are becoming more and more aware of its advantages (e.g. cheaper editions). This tendency is mostly followed by international scholarly journals and cultural magazines that need to accommodate not only to our Information and Technology society, but to the impact factors of universities and academia.

– Hypertext literature. In this category we could include every literary piece from hypernovels to hypertext poetry and multimedia encyclopaedias, amongst other materials. Michael Joyce’s novel Afternoon. A Story (1987), considered as the first hypertext novel, tells the story of a man who sees a car accident in the morning. We can actually read the text in different sequential orders depending on the link we launch. The reader’s interactive action within the literary work results in quite different stories. Unfortunately, only a few publishers are working with hypernovels. Surprisingly, university websites and creative writing forums are usually the servers housing these projects.

 

As for Interactive poetry, hypertext poems have no specific order. The poems are generated in response to the reader/user choosing. After Jim Rosenberg’s Intergrams (1997), André Vallias, Eduardo Kac, Giselle Beiguelman, Caterina Davinio, Robert Kendall, Jason Nelson, or Jean-Pierre Balpe, are some of the most representative producers in this genre.

 

– Networked literature. Hypertextual literature allocated in an Internet server.

– Other digital types such as narrative structures, based on computer games, simulations, IRC (Internet Relay Chat), or virtual realities.

 

All along these two final categories, there is a space for non-textual objects, or audiovisual texts. In this specific category we should include Shakespeare’s performances recorded on video and published on youtube. In his presentation “Visualizing Shakespeare in Performance: The Digital Video Archive in the Age of YouTube,” Donaldson explores new directions in education and research on Shakespeare made possible by digital video collections. Using materials drawn from YouTube’s Shakespeare Performance in the Asia archive, as well as video tools XMAS developed by MIT and Columbia University, Donaldson has made clear that the new audiovisual text is about to force the boundaries of literature to expand the audiovisual text, forging a new reality in Shakespeare Studies.

But is there a movement of resistance to media such as the audiovisual text in literature? In fact, there were always some discrepancies towards the conceptualisation of literature. If we go back in time, there is, however, no discrepancy that the history of reading is closely related to the history of the book. The first revolutionary act in the history of the book was the adoption of the codex format during the times of Ancient Rome. The codex allowed important changes in the way we read. It freed our hands, gave more visibility to the content of the book, allowing artists to illuminate the manuscripts, the introduction of spaces between words[7] and punctuation[8]. After Gutenberg and the printing press, page numbering, the delineation of paragraphs, titles, or tables were other minor relevant additions.

However, not every written record was about to be labelled as literature. One of the most ancient disputes about what literature is and its format was already established in the seventeenth century in France between literature and journalism. The Media becomes more important and relevant for the social reputation in the French court, due to its ideological role and control exercised in society. It will be during the eighteenth century when the relationship between Press and literature will be consolidated in form and content. That is, literary works will become more frequent in the periodical Press throughout Europe and, in turn, new established literary forms to meet the requirements of its frame: newspapers or magazines. This relationship, first in France, and some years later in Spain, will be a defining thrust in French revolutionary ideas that gradually bury the social system established during the Middle Ages. However, the French Enlightenment will soon see Mass media as a danger, so they will show a certain contempt for it. Literature will be considered of high cultural value, whereas journalism will not.

But journalism led to a new type of reader, a new form of reading, and a new point of view on daily events in political, social and cultural development of all sectors of Western communities. Journalism, similarly, led to critical reading since for the first time, the average bourgeois reader had access to the same news, reported from different viewpoints, showing the rational spirit coming from France. This new type of reading allowed for a more open interpretation, to debate in rooms or cafes.

Another novelty of the periodical press aimed at the big audiences is the relationship established between the reader and the writer. For the first time, the producer and consumer of a newspaper are defined (the role of a journalist is to sell newspapers, and it is essentially influenced by this fact). What we cannot deny, it is the close relationship between journalism and literature, providing a space for the cultural reader. The periodical press, especially designed for mass consumption, will be an appropriate vehicle for years to come to establish a reading culture that initially was considered for minorities, extending the power of literature in general, and works and their authors in particular.

That revolution established in the journalism-literature by-product is similar to the revolution that literature has experienced in our current over-technological society. Personal computers at the beginning of 1980s allowed us to neatly readjust our literary editing techniques and time in terms of effort and accuracy. The Internet has solved the problem of the portability of those edited works, becoming ubiquitous records in the era of Globalisation. Even with the availability of powerful search engines such as Google, these texts are not only permanently available, but also efficiently hunted and analysed by the reader/consumer.

There is no doubt that disciplines, Shakespeare studies amongst them, have been altered by the migration of literature and fiction to media supports. The following example will show us a case study in Shakespeare Studies: the Shakespeare Electronic Archive[9]. The aim of the open online Archive is to create an easy-to-use system where audiovisual and digital records of Shakespeare’s plays are closely linked to digital copies of primary materials. With images from Shakespeare First Folio (1623), more than a thousand illustrations, and many audiovisual texts, including the Forbes-Robertson silent film (1913), or Richard Burton’s production (1964), the audiovisual compositions (both video records and palaeographic records) become not a piece of data, but digital literature open to dialogue, as they take many forms. The texts are “not singular, not authoritative, not secure […] it is unstable, it is subject to dialogue and it takes many forms”[10]. For Donaldson and the MIT, these records, its versions, and different audiovisual performances become “instantiations in all media across time […] that actually affect what the text is”[11]. Digitalising Shakespeare and its performance is no longer a self-evident process. Digital records do not replace the originals, but their visual representations, when it comes to facsimiles or recorded performances, are open to provoke discussion. Digital Shakespeare, like any other digital literature, following Even-Zohar’s reflections on literature, has become the highest interactive dialogic system of culture.

In view of the multiplicity of folios, and the idea of text in Shakespeare, digital literature let us observe the variants and play with them. The reading text we might choose for a first experience to Shakespeare might not be relevant. However, online access facsimiles allow us to show students and researchers how small variations sometimes affect specific lines in a play.

Shakespeare in Asia has also become of the most representative audiovisual archive in the platform. With over 200 performances catalogued, and many of them, recorded and freely accessed, analysing the reception of Shakespeare’s text and performance in the Global village is reaching its climax. East Asia, India, Europe, Brazil or the Arab world, are just the starting milestone of an archive that has revolutionised both Shakespeare’s text nature and its analysis. As for the new tools that critics and scholars are developing in order to fit the text’s new nature, video annotation tools are the most representative ones. One more time, the nature and success of audiovisual texts in Shakespearean Studies is here manifested. XMAS Video Tool software, developed by the MIT in the United States, allows, for instance, scholars and teachers to analyse the hand gestures in Olivier’s Henry V. Over seventeen kinds of hand gestures have been catalogued in the Olivier’s recorded performance, “six of which are repeated within thirty seconds at moments of climax within the act”[12]. The new possibilities both in the teaching and researching realm are clearly obvious. But the highly interactive features of these products also readjust the established relationship between writer and reader.

In other words, there is a readjusting effect on digital literature that requests a re-appropriation of the writer-work-reader relationships. Günter Grass’ comments are clarifying in this sense. He claims how he can tell from a manuscript, after reading just ten pages, if it is written on computer or not. Writing on a personal computer is too easy, “and text proceeds faster than thought”[13]. However, if digital literature will fundamentally change in this age or simply adopt new forms, it is such a hasty guessing. Nonetheless, digital literature has alienated traditional literature formats into a highly interactive product. With Internet based texts it is also possible to update the texts continuously. Changes are immediately present for the readers, without the need to purchase new versions. On the Internet the reader’s feedback is easily arranged and immediate, which also makes it possible to let the readers participate in the writing and communication process. In fact, the forums established on youtube video walls enhance pure interactivity between the audiovisual text and the consumer/reader/audience.

Interactivity as a term in regard to literature is quite compromising though, since every literary composition, after all, is interactive[14]. However, the reader is nowadays considered an active participant in the signification process. The difference between interactivity in conventional literature and the digital one has been described by Espen Aarseth as a four-category reader function: interpretation, navigation, configuration, and writing[15]. But to interactivity, we should add another concept into digital literature: the manipulation of temporal dimension. Aarseth found out how digital texts are able to control the time of exposure / reading activity (e.g. closing the web, editing the original,…), whereas it’s not an option in print texts. Some of the consequences of this high interaction and malleability of time are:

 

– The text only stays on the screen for a limited period of time. The best example is Agrippa by William Gibson. In Agrippa the text scrolls on the screen and then vanishes.

– The text cannot be consumed after a certain period of time. This is the case of audiovisual texts in platforms such as Megavideo.

– The text might be updated, edited, or simply deleted, being always hybrid, in the process of becoming something else.[16]

 

Such interactivity and malleability in digital literature demand theorists to look for tools to not only analyse, but also to define these new genres. However, digital literature is still considered nowadays as an amusing toy suited to its intended purpose as an “interactive program that allows museums and libraries to give members of the public access to precious books while keeping the originals safely under glass”[17]. Digital scholarship in Medieval Studies has allowed scholars to do more than ever possible in print, to build more comprehensive dictionaries, to compile statistics, or to publish more facsimiles (e.g. XMAS Video Tool software, and many other flash products). But digital literature has opened a new door with multiple paths to, not only research and teaching, but also to interpretation, performance and reception of early Modern literature, and more specifically, to William Shakespeare and his works.

All in all, it may be premature to make predictions about the future of print literature in general, or specifically, in Shakespearean or early Modern literature print studies. But let us face that a print book is nowadays also a product of digital processing. The Internet is already an important distribution channel for books. Bookshops such as Amazon are still very uncommon, although they are almost focused on print traditional books. However, the first consequences, not in Shakespearean Studies for obvious reasons, are already affecting the writers and the concept of authority:

In imagining a huge, virtually infinite wordstream accessed by search engines and populated by teeming, promiscuous word snippets stripped of credited authorship, are we not depriving the written word of its old-fashioned function of, through such inventions as the written alphabet and the printing press, communication from one person to another — of, in short, accountability and intimacy?[18]

After Gutenberg’s printing press, writers have gained a status that tended “to magnify the distance between the author and the reader, as the author became a monumental figure, the reader only a visitor in the author’s cathedral”[19]. Now literature producers both in digital and traditional formatting face an anonymous over-collaborative cyberspace in forums or encyclopaedias such as Wikipedia. It will be challenging to investigate in the near future whether this phenomenon will also affect the works and performance of one of the most global of the canonical writers in the English-speaking world and world literature.

 

This article has been possible thanks to research projects “Teatro isabelino en Galicia: Recepción Cultural y Literaria en Álvaro Cunqueiro” (Deputación da Coruna), and Programa Ángeles Alvariño 2009 (Programa de Recursos Humanos) by Xunta de Galicia. All these grants are here formally acknowledged.

 

 

Notes