Kate Flaherty

Ours As We Play It: Australia Plays Shakespeare Kate Flaherty

Shakespeare's plays are permeable to the contexts in which they are performed, taking on and speaking to local concerns. Early modern audiences would have experienced the humor and resonance of local identification with his plays. The same is true in present day Australia, where the content of that local identification with Shakespeare's plays is uniquely Australian. Ours As We Play It documents the use of Shakespeare's works to explore contemporary issues. The book takes a close look at several contemporary Australian productions of three of Shakespeare's best-loved plays: exploring masculinity and madness in Hamlet, the role of landscape and the multiple roles of Rosalind in As You Like It, and hierarchies of gender and social order re-imagined in relation to Australian understandings of power in A Midsummer Night's Dream.