Shakespeare and Dance

Alan Brissenden’s 1981 Shakespeare and the Dance is the only full-length scholarly analysis of dance and dancing within Shakespeare’s play texts. Despite considerable growth in interdisciplinary and intermedial studies – and the development of dance studies as an academic field of study – Shakespeare’s employment of dance, and the reimagining of his writing as dance works, remain neglected as subjects for research. In recent years, however, a multidisciplinary community of scholars has, in collaboration with dance practitioners, developed the study of Shakespeare and dance from its disparate past and provided an important focus for discussion of the relationship between text and movement. This article examines the critical history of Shakespeare and dance, surveys key developments in the field and considers future directions for this diverse area of study.

Publisher Statement: This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: McCulloch, L 2016, 'Shakespeare and Dance' Literature Compass, vol 13, no. 2, pp. 69-78, which has been published in final form at https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/lic3.12313. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.