In Shakespeare and the Problem of Adaptation, Margaret Jane Kidnie presents a rigorous and engaging exploration of what it is that distinguishes the Shakespearean work from its apparent other, the adaptation. Kidnie brings current debates in performance criticism into contact with recent developments in textual studies to show that the mutually defining categories of work and adaptation are unfixed, the products of ongoing and sometimes conflicting debates, arguments, and desires. Adaptation emerges as the conceptually necessary but culturally fraught category that results from...

In Shakespeare and the Problem of Adaptation, Margaret Jane Kidnie presents a rigorous and engaging exploration of what it is that distinguishes the Shakespearean work from its apparent other, the adaptation. Kidnie brings current debates in performance criticism into contact with recent developments in textual studies to show that the mutually defining categories of work and adaptation are unfixed, the products of ongoing and sometimes conflicting debates, arguments, and desires. Adaptation emerges as the conceptually necessary but culturally fraught category that results from...