MLA 08 Panel Report V – Public Shakespeares

Screenshot: ‘Foul Whisperings, Strange Matters: Shakespeare’s Macbeth in SecondLife’
Image source: Flickr

Sunday, 28 December
247. Public Shakespeares
12:00 noon–1:15 p.m., Continental 1–2, Hilton
Program arranged by the Division on Shakespeare
Presiding: Mary Thomas Crane, Boston Coll.
1. “Screen Play,” Katherine A. Rowe, Bryn Mawr Coll.
2. “Stupefying Vulgarity,” Gary Taylor, Florida State Univ.
3. “The Shakespeare Brand,” Marjorie Garber, Harvard Univ.

The highlight here for me was Katherine Rowe’s fascinating look into three Shakespeare locations within the online virtual world, SecondLife. SecondLife has many virtual libraries, book stores, facsimile editions, and even offers a replica of Lincoln’s library and Dante’s Inferno (not to scale…) Creators retain the intellectual property rights to what they build in SecondLife, a key change in the site’s terms and conditions.

Katherine covered three SecondLife addresses in particular:

The Parish of Reading Primley on Renaissance Island (Slurl link) where permanent ‘residents’ act as landed gentry while ordinary visitors take up the role of peasants, and which has an interactive library.

Image source: Flickr

The SLiterary Globe Theater (Slurl link) which stages performances of Shakespeare’s plays, with participants assuming certain roles. The virtual world means features such as changing weather conditions can be controlled and a director’s camera can move the perspective at will. These multiple viewpoints are reminiscent of the many videos on YouTube that audience members at the Globe in London have made, offering many angles. However, such a project in SecondLife does not come cheap – rent for the virtual land on which the Globe Theatre stands comes in at $1400 a month.

Finally, Katherine showed an interactive space on SecondLife related to Macbeth, called ‘Fouls whisperings, Strange Matters’ (Slurl link). Built by the New Media Consortium, this location offered great audio and visuals and seemed well worth further exploration.

Kivmars Bowling
Senior Managing Editor, Literature Compass.

Tags: Dante, Globe Theater, Globe Theatre, Inferno, Lincoln, Macbeth, new media, Renaissance, Renaissance Island, SecondLife, Shakespeare, virtual world