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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Shakespeare and Fun: The Birth of Entertainment Value

Shakespeare and Fun: The Birth of Entertainment Value

Hedrick, Donald

Paperback

Literary CriticismShakespeare

ISBN10: 1350529842
ISBN13: 9781350529847
Publisher: Arden Shakespeare
Published: Sep 17 2026
Pages: 336
Weight: 0.85
Height: 0.69 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English

In this bold, original study Hedrick proposes an early modern 'entertainment value' revolution, to which Shakespeare contributed and in which he played a competitive role.

As London's nascent capitalist industry developed and the variety of entertainments proliferated, theatre contributes to the birth of entertainment value and a commercial trajectory toward what Marxist critic Adorno theorizes as 'fun, ' seen contemporaneously in LasVegasization and the election of Donald Trump to U.S. Presidency.

In this innovative approach to Shakespeare's plays through their compulsory, competitive relation to other choices from London's entertainment industry, such as sex work and gaming, Hedrick recovers a coherent internal dynamic of theatre's 'pleasure enclosure' accompanying the revolutionary logic of capital's new cultural and economic extremes.

Applying these relations to original, insightful readings of A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Winter's Tale, and The Taming of the Shrew, Hedrick draws from cultural studies, contemporary and personal parallels, wide-ranging historical materials, and political theory. These include: the semantic shifts in keywords of pleasure, the practice of betting on actors, the psychology of paying admission before an entertainment, and various 'reality shows' such as contests of prose and verse. Continual insights emerge, both broad and specific: from ten 'entertainment value axioms' to Shakespeare's awareness of entertainment value's birth at moments in his late plays, marking a logic of value crisis, bubbles, and the danger of 'too much fun.'

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